My 2026 Resolutions for Food Security

Like many people, I’ve spent the first week of 2026 thinking about the year ahead.

What are my personal resolutions? I’m so glad you asked.

This year I want to:
Buy all my clothes secondhand, learn to sew, eat the rich, get outside more, fundraise $1.2 million for the food bank, get over my disappointment in the finale of Stranger Things, cancel Netflix, and end world hunger.

I now know how to thread my sewing machine, so I’m off to a good start.

I’m also determined that this is the year we shift the narrative around food security in Clallam County.

I can’t make the rest of the country see how important it is to ensure everyone is fed. I can’t paint the picture for the masses of how a healthy breakfast can be the difference between passing or failing an algebra test. I can’t single-handedly convince America that the reason life feels so unaffordable isn’t the people using food banks — it might just be the billionaires siphoning wealth upward.

But I can try here.

I can’t end world hunger. But hunger in Clallam County? I might be able to help there.

In the past five years, the number of people needing food assistance here has risen dramatically, while grocery prices, rent, and healthcare costs continue to climb. At the same time, federal supports are shrinking or disappearing altogether. This is not a temporary increase in need. This is the new reality and it demands a new way of thinking.

So here are my resolutions for food security in 2026, and why they should matter to you simply because you are a member of this community. We can’t change the world, but we can take care of our own. And what better place to start than at The Market.

1. Resolve to Treat Food Security Like Public Safety

Food security shouldn’t be something we only think about when prices spike or benefits are cut. In 2025, millions of people faced rising grocery bills, higher rent, and the loss of healthcare coverage — often all at once. What if we treated access to food the way we treat emergency response: as an ongoing, essential priority?

What if we viewed food banks the way we view fire departments?

Because they are just as important.

Real food security is built with infrastructure. It’s built with planning. It’s built with the assumption that people deserve to be taken care of regardless of income level and there need to be solid systems in place to ensure we can take care of each other.

2. Look Beyond “Charity” Toward Justice

Food drives and fundraisers are vital. But food insecurity isn’t just about occasional shortages or generosity. It’s about systems that make healthy food affordable and accessible year-round.

I don’t love the word charity when we talk about food banks. It creates a hard line between “us” and “them,” between the giver and the supposedly less fortunate. But a food bank isn’t a place for “them.” It’s a place for us.

No one is immune to falling just because they’re standing right now. The food bank is a community resource in the same way libraries and fire departments are community resources. Supporting it isn’t an act of kindness toward someone else — it’s an acknowledgment that we all need systems in place when life inevitably gets hard.

In 2026, the people using the food bank are not “less fortunate.” They’re grocery store clerks, bank tellers, teachers, caregivers. They’re our neighbors. They are us.

Food banks aren’t charity because food isn’t charity.
Access to food is a human right.

Charity fills gaps. Justice reduces how many gaps exist in the first place.

3. Lean Into Local

Too often, hunger is framed as a problem that happens somewhere else, to someone else. Meanwhile, we’re told the economy is booming and billionaires just had another record-breaking year. Can you feel it? I can’t.

Most of us are already using the food bank or are one or two missed paychecks away from needing the food bank. That means the food bank isn’t “there for someone else.” It’s there for all of us. And it should matter to all of us.

If we want real change, we have to talk about food insecurity not as a misfortune or a political talking point, but as a basic condition of human dignity. Everyone deserves to eat. If even one person in our community is hungry, that’s a collective failure.

While wealth piles up at the top — tucked into offshore accounts and private islands — kids in our community don’t have enough food. Who we choose to support and where we focus our energy will define us. Are we building a community where everyone can thrive? Or one where only those with the means to live here get to stay?

A food bank in 2026 is a pillar of it’s community. It’s an investment in stability, resilience, and the understanding that hard times can happen to any of us.

I’m not asking you for a donation today, just a quiet call to action:
Talk about food banks differently. Treat them like infrastructure. Defend them, fund them, and value them the way you would any system you’d want there for you if everything went sideways.

The future of the country may feel uncertain. But the future of Clallam County doesn’t have to.

This could be the year we show up for each other — consistently, locally, and unapologetically.

And if I happen to make progress on ending world hunger along the way, I’ll call that a bonus resolution well kept.