The Arizona Food Bank Network () is trying to manage the effects of rising inflation as it strives to make every Arizona citizen “food secure,” which means ensuring every citizen has access to enough safe and nutritious food for an active, healthy life at all times. 

The national is 8.5% as of March, but is even higher in metro Phoenix, reaching nearly 11% — and rapidly accelerating housing costs account for much of that spike.

According to , Arizona’s largest database of food banks in the state, “One in seven Arizonans struggle with hunger,” which is a total of 937,000 people, 311,390 of whom are children.

The rise of inflation has made it a to make ends meet for basic necessities such as food and travel for many Arizonans, creating a supply and demand issue for food banks. The amount of help and donations needed have increased while the willingness to help and donate has decreased. 

has experienced an approximately 20% increase in the families visiting their food banks compared to last year. They see an average of 100 families per morning. 

“We are always in need of extra food here because we are seeing more people and because of the higher food prices, we are also seeing that it’s hard for us to purchase as much food as we have been able to in the past. So those donations are critical at this time,” said Tim Kromer, director of outreach and partnerships at Interfaith Community Services. 

The Maricopa Food Pantry has also experienced a significant because of a fire causing them to lose 40,000 pounds of canned goods. 

There have been several efforts made to assist local food banks through this difficult time.

At the beginning of the year, Bank of America announced that it would make a $100 donation for each of its employees in Phoenix who would voluntarily report having received a Covid-19 vaccine or booster shot. Bank of America donated $275,000 to local food banks within Arizona last February, providing the equivalent of 1.8 million meals through their booster initiative.

The Community Food Bank of Southern Arizona was able to raise through Arizona Gives, a platform where citizens can donate to nonprofit organizations within the state. The funds raised on Arizona Gives Day, April 5, will be matched which will double the funding received on that day. 

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Sunlit Chemical, a Taiwanese chemical company serving the semiconductor industry, has chosen Phoenix as the company’s first U.S. location. 

The multi-million-dollar investment is yet another sign of Arizona’s place in the race to meet the worldwide demand for semiconductors.

The says it has 40 semiconductor manufacturers and supplier network businesses in its pipeline, representing 10,000 jobs and $45 billion of new capital investment. 

The Arizona Commerce Authority has developed and released the, a plan designed to advance the production of semiconductors for not only the state of Arizona but for the entire U.S. This plan has received the backing from higher education institutions including Arizona State University, Northern Arizona University, and the University of Arizona, all of which are aligning their educational offering with the state’s workforce needs. 

“Arizona is proud to welcome Sunlit Chemical’s first manufacturing facility in the U.S.,” Gov. Doug Ducey said at the company’s groundbreaking earlier this year. 

“Sunlit’s decision is a testament to Phoenix’s advancement as a national and global leader in the semiconductor industry,” Phoenix Mayor Kate Gallego said. “Its new fabrication facility in north Phoenix adds to the quality jobs and research excellence significantly expanding in our region.”

The 900,000-square-foot facility will be an investment of $100 million on 17 acres. Construction will take place in two phases. The first phase will concern the production of high purity grade industrial chemicals which should be operational in 2023. The second phase will concern raw material purification and should be operational in 2025.

“Sunlit is excited to expand into Arizona,” Sunlit Group President Bryan Lin said. “This new milestone marks Sunlit’s commitment to our partners that we are ready to expand our reach beyond Asia and set sights on the global front.”

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SRP’s Healthy Forest Initiative (HFI), a partnership between SRP and the U.S. Forest Service to strategically thin 500,000 acres of overgrown forests by 2035, is getting a helping hand from Terracon, an engineering consulting firm that operates in all 50 states.

The forest thinning in the HFI will aid the watersheds found in the 8.3 million acres of forest in northern and eastern Arizona.

Terracon has donated $10,000 to HFI, becoming the first commercial customer to contribute to do so.

“Terracon has been fortunate to have profitable operations in Arizona for nearly 30 years,” Terracon Senior Client Development Manager Chuck Reynolds . “In this season of giving, we wanted to impact our community in the broadest, most sustainable way possible.” 

SRP says it appreciates the contribution to the important effort to improve the health of forests and watersheds.

“We are grateful for Terracon taking action to invest in the protection and restoration of forests, and we invite other Arizona businesses to partner with SRP on important forest restoration projects,” SRP Forest Health Management Principal Elvy Barton . “Not only is this important to the Valley’s water supply, but it’s also critical to the state’s tourism industry for the beautiful forests of northern Arizona and helps protect the residents who live there.”

Arizona’s environment has experienced heavy damage from wildfires and water depletion. Wildfires can induce in the ecosystem that can put the land and several species at risk. There has been an accumulation of damage that the soil has been unable to recover from, resulting in that prohibit the soil from absorbing water and nutrients and making the soil susceptible to erosion. 

“There is no ‘wildfire season’ anymore in Arizona. Fires can happen year-round. We stress the importance of prevention,” according to the . “We all need to work together to reduce wildfire risk across our great state.” 

In 2020 alone, a total of burned nearly 980,000 acres of land throughout the state. In the last 20 years, wildfires have burned through 3.2 million acres of land surrounding the Salt and Verde River and East Clear Creek , which are areas of land that channel snowmelt and rainfall into streams and rivers. Watersheds are an important water supply source for Arizona.

In northern Arizona, should support an average of 100 trees per-acre, but unhealthy forestation has resulted in many of these lands supporting thousands of trees. 

The State Fire Assistance under the Department of Forestry and Land Management divides the forest landscape into what are known as firesheds and watersheds. These two are conceptually the same and are used to mark land that is particularly at risk from potential forest fires. 
“Given that it is impossible to treat all of the hazardous fuels across a landscape, the identification and prioritization of the most critical and beneficial hazardous fuels to treat is critical,” according to the National Fireshed Assessment

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The U.S. Â鶹´«Ă˝Ół»­ of Commerce and the Arizona Â鶹´«Ă˝Ół»­ of Commerce & Industry on Tuesday night convened a statewide tele-townhall about why the groups are urging Sen. Kyrsten Sinema , D-Ariz., to oppose the massive social spending bill known as Build Back Better.

Arizona Â鶹´«Ă˝Ół»­ President and CEO Danny Seiden and U.S. Â鶹´«Ă˝Ół»­ of Commerce Chief Policy Officer Neil Bradley discussed the bill’s negative effects on inflation, the tax environment and federal budget deficits. 

Seiden said Arizona’s economy was one of the fastest states in the country to recover the jobs it lost during the pandemic-induced downturn and he noted the consistent rate at which the state is attracting new jobs. 

The reconciliation bill, warned Seiden, could hurt the state’s positive growth trajectory, and his chamber is urging Sen. Sinema and her colleague Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., to reject the legislation. 

Seiden said the bill is too expensive and that it will make the “already Jimmy-Carter-level inflation rates even worse.” 

Bradley, a public policy veteran, said that the bill was one of the worst pieces of legislation he has seen in some 25 years of tracking Congress’ work. 

Bradley also noted that Arizona’s economic growth can be hindered by policy crafted in Washington, D.C.

“Arizona is what we want the nation’s economy to be: dynamic, vibrant, growing –  that’s the definition of what we want to emulate,” Bradley said. “The problem is that sometimes Washington can throw a wet blanket on all that growth and at the same time raise prices for everyday families and businesses.”

Bradley said that last weekend around 1,880 pages of the bill were received by lawmakers on Capitol Hill containing “taxes, new powers for the Internal Revenue Service, and [new] ways of regulating businesses.” 

Sixty-three percent of small businesses across the U.S. have had to raise their prices due to inflationary pressures, and Bradley said he’s certain that the bill will add to these pressures partly because of the amount of money that it requires, which will “have to be borrowed, in this case from mainly overseas creditors, and paid back by higher taxes later.”

Seiden said he’s concerned with the penalties that the bill would enforce on Arizona’s economy, pointing to a portion of the legislation that offers a more generous tax credit for electric vehicle purchases if the car was assembled in a unionized factory.

Seiden said the provision conflicts with , which enshrines the state’s “right to work” (RTW) status and makes labor union membership voluntary. He argued that Arizona’s growing electric vehicle manufacturing sector is thanks in part to Arizona’s status as an RTW state, which the bill would undermine.

“This provision would punish non-union companies to choose between operating at either a competitive disadvantage or protecting their employees,” Seiden said. 

Both Bradley and Seiden called for the bill to be scrapped and that Congress should start over. They both expressed appreciation for Sinema’s work to improve the bill, but that their chambers are urging her not to support it and instead back pro-economic-growth policies. 

“Arizona’s Â鶹´«Ă˝Ół»­ and the U.S. Â鶹´«Ă˝Ół»­ are working together on an advocacy campaign here in the state thanking Sen. Sinema for so far standing up to the big tax and spend agenda in Washington and urging her to not let up, to keep fighting back against policies that will drive up costs more than they already are,” Seiden said.

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