Feeding America?

More than 37 million people, one in eight Americans—including 14 million children and nearly 3 million seniors—receive emergency food each year through the nation’s network of food banks and the agencies they serve.

A new study released by Feeding America, Hunger in America 2010 (based on data collected from February through June 2009), exposes the tragic reality of just how many people in the United States don’t have enough to eat.

Here are some of the key findings:

• The 37 million Americans served annually by Feeding America include nearly 14 million children and nearly 3 million seniors.
• Each week, approximately 5.7 million people receive emergency food assistance from an agency served by a Feeding America member. This is a 27percent increase over numbers reported in Hunger in America 2006, which reported that 4.5 million people were served each week.
• These numbers are based on surveys conducted at emergency feeding centers, such as soup kitchens and food pantries, but do not factor in many individuals also served at non-emergency locations, such as Kids Cafe programs and senior centers.
• 76 percent (10 million) of client households served are food insecure, meaning they do not always know where they will find their next meal.
• 36 percent of these client households are experiencing food insecurity with hunger, meaning they are sometimes completely without a source of food.
• 79 percent (11 million) of households with children served are also food insecure.

According to Vicki Escarra, president and CEO of Feeding America,

Clearly, the economic recession, resulting in dramatically increasing unemployment nationwide, has driven unprecedented, sharp increases in the need for emergency food assistance and enrollment in federal nutrition programs.

And the food programs just can’t keep up. According to the report, 70 percent of food pantries and soup kitchens and 73 percent of emergency shelters report they are facing one or more problems that threaten their ability to continue operating.

Not only can’t capitalism adequately feed people in the United States. It’s forcing more and more people to rely on noncapitalist food pantries and soup kitchens, which simply can’t keep up.

Cruel choices

Neoclassical economics is all about individuals making choices. What are the choices being faced by the people who are forced to have the freedom to turn to Feeding America?

• 46 percent of client households served report having to choose between paying for utilities or heating fuel and food.
• 39 percent of client households said they had to choose between paying for rent or a mortgage and food.
• 34 percent of client households report having to choose between paying for medical bills and food.
• 35 percent of client households must choose between transportation and food.

Let’s see if those choices are ever used as examples in the teaching of economics. . .

Struggling with hunger

According to a new study released by the Food Research and Action Center (based on data collected by Callup), nearly 1 in 5 Americans is struggling with hunger.

Here are some of the findings:

• Food hardship in the Gallup survey for the nation as a whole rose from 16.3 percent of respondent households in the first quarter of 2008 to 19.5 percent in the fourth quarter of 2008. In 2009, the rate dropped slightly, with the rate in the four quarters of 2009 hovering between 17.9 and 18.8 percent. In the fourth quarter of 2009, it was 18.5 percent.
• The food hardship rate is even worse for households with children. Respondents in such households reported food hardship at a rate 1.62 times that of other households – 24.1 percent versus 14.9 percent in 2009.
• In 2009, in 20 states, more than one in five respondents said that they experienced food hardship; in 45 states more than 15 percent reported food hardship. For households with children, in 22 states one quarter or more of respondents reported food hardship.
• Of the 100 largest Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs), 82 had 15 percent or more of respondents answering that they did not have enough money to buy needed food at times in the last 12 months. For the 50 largest MSAs, 15 had more than one in four households with children reporting food hardship.
• Of the 436 Congressional Districts (including the District of Columbia), 311 had a food hardship rate of 15 percent or higher. In 139 of them the rate was 20 percent or higher. Practically every Congressional District in the country had more than a tenth of respondents reporting food hardship.

Clearly, food hardship—running out of money to buy the food that families need—is a national problem. It is a national problem both because the rate is appallingly high and because it touches virtually every corner (almost every state, Metropolitan Statistical Area, and Congressional District) of the nation.

So, while mainstream economists dither on about per capita income levels, the current crises of capitalism are throwing people out of work, lowering the wages of many others who still have a job, and making it impossible for millions in both groups to put a decent amount of food on the table.

Hunger and unemployment

Käthe Kollwitz, "Hunger"

I need to follow up on a couple of recent topics.

On food stamps and hunger in Vermont: the Burlington Free Press reports that the use of food stamps in Vermont is soaring.

Vermonters using food stamps have increased nearly 80 percent over the last four years, and about 1 in 8 state residents now relies on this federally funded program.

Of those in Vermont who are receiving food assistance, about 1 in 12 has no other source of income.

Meanwhile, more than 14,000 Vermont households are experiencing severe food shortages, according to a different USDA study. About 15,000 low-income Vermont children are eating free school breakfasts, up 15.5 percent from last year — the highest rate of increase in the nation, according to yet another study.

The irony, of course, is that Vermont is being known around the country as one of the centers of high-quality, local, sustainable food practices and world-class cheesemaking.

On the new unemployment numbers: the Christian Science Monitor reports that the number of  long-term unemployed has hit the highest rate since 1948 (when the number was first calculated).

the number of people out of work for 27 weeks or more hit 6.1 million Americans, or 40 percent of all 15.3 million jobless. . .On average, it now takes 20.5 weeks to find a new job – double the amount of time in the 1982-83 recession.

While mainstream economists, finance capital, and the business press are becoming increasingly vocal about long-term fiscal deficits, we all would be better served worrying about and finding solutions to the real problems of hunger and long-term unemployment.

Nothing but food stamps

U.S. capitalism keeps getting uglier and meaner.*

Food-stamp use is at an all-time high. (One in eight Americans now receives food stamps, including one in four children.) And now we learn from the New York Times that six million Americans receiving food stamps report they have no other income.

In declarations that states verify and the federal government audits, they described themselves as unemployed and receiving no cash aid — no welfare, no unemployment insurance, and no pensions, child support or disability pay.
Their numbers were rising before the recession as tougher welfare laws made it harder for poor people to get cash aid, but they have soared by about 50 percent over the past two years. About one in 50 Americans now lives in a household with a reported income that consists of nothing but a food-stamp card.

This is what we’ve come to as a society: a growing number of people barely keep themselves alive by relying on food stamps—and, in many cases, nothing but food stamps.

*Maybe that’s why I feel compelled to add art and graffiti to this blog.

Cartoon of the day

Not stamping out hunger

Whether it’s called hunger or food insecurity, the problem is causing a rise in the use of food stamps in the United States.

According to Kevin Concannon, an under secretary of agriculture,

“This is the most urgent time for our feeding programs in our lifetime, with the exception of the Depression,” he said. “It’s time for us to face up to the fact that in this country of plenty, there are hungry people.”

Here are the current numbers:

• the number of food stamp recipients has climbed by about 10 million over the past two years, resulting in a program that now feeds 1 in 8 Americans and nearly 1 in 4 children
• 36 million people currently use food stamps
• the program is now expanding at a pace of about 20,000 people a day
• there are 239 counties in the United States where at least a quarter of the population receives food stamps

Find your county here.

Hunger in Vermont

Vermont is the sixth hungriest state in the latest USDA survey of food insecurity in the United States. This is a state in which, if you have the money, you can eat very well: locally produced food, award-winning cheese, and so on. But 12 percent of Vermont households struggled to get enough food on the table in 2008, and one in 20 Vermonters was “severely hungry.”

Foodbank CEO John Sayles said the Vermont Foodbank deliv­ered 7.5 million pounds of food in 2008 — 1 million more pounds than the previ­ous year — and expects to deliver 8 million pounds this year.

The need is growing and will likely continue to rise even as the economy im­proves, he said.

“We’ve seen a 35 to 40 percent increase in demand over the last year,” Sayles said.

A Bellows Falls drop-in center has served 53 percent more meals in the past year while the Chittenden Emer­gency Food Shelf in Burling­ton, the largest food distri­bution outlet in the state, had 1,000 more people com­ing in for help this year, Sayles said.

Marissa Parisi, director of the Vermont Campaign to End Childhood Hunger, said she’s heard of children tak­ing home part of a school snack in their pocket for later and others who line up for school breakfast on Mon­day, famished after a week­end at home.

“We really believe that hunger is an injustice that should not exist in this coun­try and should not exist in this state,” she said.

Yes, emergency food supplies are needed but they’re not going to solve the real problem. The existing food system—consisting of both farmers and consumers—needs to be changed.

 

 

Capitalist hunger

According to a just-released report from the United States Department of Agriculture, covering 2008, 49.1 million people are living in food insecure households (up from 36.2 million in 2007), of which 32.4 million are adults (14.4 percent of all adults) and 16.7 million are children (22.5 percent of all children).

The rest of the numbers are just as bad. For example, 17.3 million people lived in households that were considered to have “very low food security,” a USDA term (previously denominated “food insecure with hunger”) that means one or more people in the household were hungry over the course of the year because of the inability to afford enough food. This was up from 11.9 million in 2007 and 8.5 million in 2000.

The Food Research and Action Center explains the USDA’s definitions:

• Low Food Security: This term replaces “Food Insecurity without Hunger.” Generally, people that fall into this category have had to make changes in the quality or the quantity of their food in order to deal with a limited budget.

• Very Low Food Security: This term replaces “Food Insecurity with Hunger.” People that fall into this category have struggled with having enough food for the household, including cutting back or skipping meals on a frequent basis for both adults and children.

And the trend lines indicate that hunger in the United States was growing even before the current crisis. But, of course, in the last year, it’s gotten much worse.

Food pantries across the country are being overwhelmed because they were only ever designed to cover short-term emergency situations. Hunger in the United States is now, however, endemic—and its causes systemic.