NEWBURGH – Every Thursday between the hours of 10 a.m. and noon, nearly 700 people line up in front of the A.M.E. Zion Church on Washington Street in the City of Newburgh to take advantage of its food pantry.
Over the past couple of years, the line has gotten longer and could stretch out almost long enough to reach Washington’s Headquarters, a half block east of this community icon that opened its doors just 40 years after George Washington left town and the American Revolution was won.
On Tuesday, this 200-year-old church was the setting for storytelling of sorts—an all-too-common story that pastors, regional food bank employees, volunteers, agency partners, farmers and lawmakers agree has become an American tale of woe and a tale that is unlikely to change anytime soon.
The story in a nutshell is not a surprise– Hunger is on the rise in the Hudson Valley.
“Pantry lines are longer than ever, and those lines are not getting shorter.” said Tom Nardacci, CEO of Regional Food Bank, who presented his 2026 State of Hunger, Hudson Valley report, to a packed house in the church’s sanctuary.
“Policies are taking place at the federal level that are cutting. Last year, the Regional Food Bank was cut 7 million pounds of food by the USDA. This is why we have less produce, less protein and less food to distribute.”
In a power point presentation, Regional Food Bank administrators released its latest statistics, provided in part by Feeding America and drawn from USDA economic research.
The report shows that in the six Hudson Valley counties served by the food bank–Dutchess, Orange Putnam, Rockland, Sullivan and Ulster–nearly 170,000 people face food insecurity, which means they don’t know where their next meal will come from.
Nearly 54,000 of those people are children. That’s an increase of 5,000 children over the previous year.
Leading the counties in food insecurity is Sullivan at nearly 15 percent. Right behind Sullivan are Ulster, Orange and Rockland, all hovering between 12 and 13 percent. Dutchess County came in at nearly 11 percent, while the lowest rate of food insecurity is in Putnam County at nearly 9 percent.
Food Bank officials say low wages, expensive housing and food inflation are just some of the reasons why people are finding it hard to keep food on the table.
They say the “Meal Gap,” which represents the number of missing meals in the Hudson Valley also represents a food budget shortfall of over $127 million.
Congressman Pat Ryan (D, NY-8) who took part in the forum, said he intends to use these statistics to fight for restoration of federal funding that was cut last year with the passing of President Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill.”
“A year’s worth of need here in the Hudson Valley is $127million. We’re spending over a billion dollars a day right now in the war in Iran. Just a tenth of that would cover this gap of hunger here in the Hudson Valley for a year,” said Ryan. “And by the way, the American people and Congress didn’t for this war, so we are literally taking food out of the mouths of kids while we’re bombing other countries. It’s just deeply wrong.”
One client of the Zion Food Pantry is a Newburgh resident, who asked to remain anonymous. She is a mother of two, who also supports her disabled brother and said that without the church’s food pantry, her family would be in trouble.
“I want people to know that I’m not some lazy person sitting at home, watching TV, not working and asking for a handout,” she said. “That’s what most people think, but I’m working and working and working, and I just can’t make enough to pay all my bills, give my kids what they need and still keep food in my refrigerator. What choice do I have?”
Food provided by Regional Food Bank Hudson Valley helps to feed over 350-thousand people each month. With its main Hudson Valley distribution Center in Montgomery, it distributed more than 53 million pounds of food to 23 counties in New York last year.
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