Dutchess Outreach acts as a catalyst for community revitalization and exists in Dutchess County as an advocate and provider of hunger and relief programs in order to ensure that everyone, regardless of income, has access to fresh, healthy food, and the support they need.
Dutchess Outreach works to widen community food security and food sovereignty, increase advocacy, and provide emergency relief by offering a range of vital food access programs for those in need to ensure that equitable physical and economic access to safe, nutritious, culturally appropriate, and sustainably grown food is available at all times across our community, regardless of income or zip code.
Why We Exist:
1 in 7 of all US households are Food Insecure according to 2014 research by Feeding America. That’s 14% of the population.
1 in 4 households in the City of Poughkeepsie are considered Food Insecure. Around 26.8% of the City’s Population.
In Dutchess County alone 26,130 individuals suffer from Food Insecurity. That’s 8.8% of the population.
46.5 Million Americans seek help from food assistance and relief programs, like Dutchess Outreach.
What is Food Access?
Determined among consumers by the spatial accessibility and affordability of food retailers—specifically such factors as travel time to shopping, availability of healthy foods, and food prices—relative to the access to transportation and socioeconomic resources of food buyers. The consistent dependability of adequate food access helps to enable food security whereby a person’s dietary needs and food preferences are met at levels needed to main a healthy and active life.
What is Food Insecurity?
In the language of the federal government, this is what we call it when a person or a family has “limited or uncertain availability of nutritionally adequate and safe foods or limited or uncertain ability to acquire food in socially acceptable ways.”
What is Food Sovereignty?
The right of peoples to healthy and culturally-appropriate food produced through ecologically sound and sustainable methods, and their right to define their own food and agriculture systems.
