It’s a sad irony that those of us who grew up in farming communities – where life and work revolve around growing and harvesting food – have a deep personal understanding of food insecurity. You learn early on that seasons of abundance can be followed by months of stretching resources to the point of breaking. Backbreaking labor can yield uncertain rewards because of factors beyond your control. And you learn, too, that when hard times come, even the most self-reliant people need the support of neighbors and community.
I suppose that some of this experience growing up helped motivate me to get involved with the Food Bank for Larimer County, where I served on the board for a number of years. There, I got a close-up look at what hunger looks like – even in prosperous cities with ready access to grocery stores and farmers’ markets. Local restaurants may have long waiting lists on a Friday night, but across town, children are still going to bed hungry. Single parents and the elderly are skipping meals to make a limited income last through the month. Families stand in the checkout lane trying to decide between the Cheerios and the pound of hamburger because they can’t afford both.
The break in SNAP benefits during the government shutdown put a bright spotlight on an issue that is too often in the shadows. But hunger in our country is always a reality, even when it’s not the focus of political gamesmanship. And it impacts all aspects of life, including, significantly, mental health.
This isn’t new. King Henry IV of France is the first leader on record promising “a chicken in every pot,” somewhere around 1598: “I want there to be no peasant in my realm so poor that he will not have a chicken in his pot every Sunday.” But pronouncements and politics are only as good as the people on the ground who do the hard work of feeding their neighbors, and Sunday dinner will only carry a growing child so far into the next week.
All of which brings me back to food banks. It’s no secret that the government shutdown has put enormous strain on our local food banks. Pleas went out last week via day care centers and churches across our community. Every year, this season of Thanksgiving inspires people to donate canned goods and dollars – but this year, the need is particularly great.
CSU, as a land-grant university, has been part of fighting hunger in Colorado since its inception – whether sending emergency food to people on the Eastern Plains during the Dust Bowl or working with producers on new crop varieties particularly suited to Colorado soil and climate.
Today, that fight also includes working in partnership with area food banks and operating food pantries on our campuses in Pueblo and Fort Collins. Our Rams Against Hunger Pantry in Fort Collins has had more than 6,700 visits between July and November this year. During the recent government shutdown, they hosted an additional mobile pantry in the Lory Student Center, providing groceries to 842 people in our community. Much of the food distributed is raised by our students: for several years now, a group of graduate students has led efforts to grow tens of thousands of pounds of fresh produce for the CSU pantry and others, this fall harvesting more than 23,000 pounds of food for distribution. For decades now, CSU students have also raised donations to the local food bank through their Cans Around the Oval Food Drive, which this year brought in more than $63,000 and 22,000 pounds of food. At CSU Pueblo, a student in 2014 led the creation of the Pack Pantry that now operates Monday through Thursday on campus, thanks to support from Southern Colorado’s Care and Share Food Bank and generous community donations. The Community Alliance for Education and Hunger Relief – a project of the Colorado Agricultural Experiment Station and its Western Colorado Research Center – annually harvests and delivers food grown on the campus to people in need on the Western Slope, totaling more than half a million pounds to date.
These efforts typically happen in partnership with – and as an addition to – the excellent work of local community food banks like those I’ve mentioned here. And all of it is driven by the energy of neighbors and communities who step up all year long, in good times and bad, to fight the battle against hunger. This fall, let’s all do our part and donate – generously – to support their efforts.
– tony
Tony Frank, Chancellor
CSU System
This message was included in Chancellor Frank’s November 2025 newsletter. Subscribe to the Chancellor’s monthly letter.