For many West Virginians, food is our love language. Want to let someone know you care about them? Ask if they’ve eaten yet. It makes sense, then, that state officials have put together what they call a “whole-of-government” approach to helping those who face food insecurity.

At the West Virginia National Guard Food Distribution Center in Rock Branch, Putnam County, state officials and representatives of the Mountaineer Food Bank and the Facing Hunger Food Bank opened the new Hunger Free West Virginia Cooler, which will allow the two food banks to share food storage. This is combined with $10 million in initial state funding for the Posey Perry Emergency Food Bank Bucket, to serve as a reserve account for the two food banks.

Gov. Jim Justice is right when he says “this incredible cooler and the Emergency Bucket are going to help feed a lot of people, but it’s still not enough.”

In a state full of farms and forests that provide plenty of good food, it seems unfathomable that there are Mountain State residents who go hungry because their families don’t have the financial resources to avoid it. The problem is compounded by the number of people who live in food deserts and don’t have reliable, affordable transportation to travel for healthy food.

It’s easy to spout about how our grandparents and great-grandparents had backyard gardens and went hunting; they canned and preserved and knew how to survive. But that is looking backward and ignoring some modern realities. What West Virginians need now is not more lectures, but a whole-of-government approaching to bring good paying jobs to all parts of the state, enough educational improvement that our own people can fill those jobs, and programs to encourage remote farmers markets, pop-up grocery stores and/or routine affordable transportation for trips to the store. Again, those who developed new supports for the Mountaineer Food Bank and Facing Hunger Food Bank are to be commended. And the rest of us are to be reminded, it truly is not enough.