Growing Hunger in America

by Stephen Lendman for The People's Voice

In January 2010, Feeding America (FA, formerly America's Second Harvest) released its disturbing new report on growing hunger titled, "Hunger in America 2010." The Chicago-based organization is the nation's "leading domestic hunger-relief charity," serving the needy "through a nationwide network of member food banks, over 200 in all 50 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico."

Its study is based on interviews with over 62,000 clients served by the FA network, as well as information provided by 37,000 FA agencies - emergency food providers, including food pantries, soup kitchens, and emergency shelters for short-term residents.

FA's system serves an estimated 37 million people annually, up 46% since 2005, including 33.9 million pantry users, 1.8 million kitchen ones, and 1.3 million in shelters.

About 5.7 million people (or 1 in 50) get emergency food aid from the system in any given week, an increase of 27% since 2005, and one in eight Americans (37 million people, including 14 million children and three million seniors) are food insecure, meaning they don't get enough to eat. As a result, they need emergency help from food banks throughout the country. The latest data represent "a staggering 46 percent increase since" FA's 2006 study.

"Indeed, the existence of so many people without secure access to adequate nutritious food represents a serious national concern....More than one in three client households are experiencing very low food security - or hunger - a 54 percent increase" compared to 2006.

FA calls food insecurity "a complex, multifaceted phenomenon that varies along a continuum of successive stages as it becomes more severe." In contrast, food security enables "access by all people at all times to enough food for an active, health life."

FA agencies serve households across America:

-- 38% of their members are children under 18, compared to 36% in 2005;

-- 8% of household members are elderly, down from 10% in 2005;

-- about 40% are white; 34% black; 20% Hispanic; and the remainder from other racial groups;

-- 36% of households include at least one employed adult, the same as in 2005;

-- 71% of households have incomes below the federal poverty level during the month preceding the survey, up from 69% in 2005;

-- median monthly household income decreased by 7% from $825 to $770 in 2009 dollars; and

-- 10% are homeless, compared to 12% in 2005.

Overall, 75% of client households are food insecure (based on the government's food security scale), an increase from 70% in 2005; 39% of households have low food security; 36% very low.

Client households with children are 78% food insecure, up from 73% in 2005. "Many clients report having to choose between food and other necessities:"

-- 46% between food and paying for utilities, including heating oil, up from 42% in 2005;

-- 39% between food and paying rent or mortgages, compared to 35% in 2005;

-- 34% between food and medical care, including drugs, up from 32% in 2005;

-- 35% between food and transportation; and

-- 36% between food and gasoline for a car.

Government-Provided Help

-- 41% of households get Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) aid, up from 35% in 2005;

-- 54% of households with children aged up to three get Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) help, compared to 51% in 2005; and

-- 62% of households with school-age children participate in federal school lunch programs, unchanged from 2005; 54% participate in school breakfast programs, up from 51% in 2005; 14% participate in the summer food program.

As in 2005, 29% of households report at least one member in poor health. Most clients are grateful for FA help - 92% very or somewhat satisfied and 93% with food quality. The FA network includes about 33,500 food pantries, 4,500 soup kitchens, and 3,600 emergency shelters, up 13% for pantries from 2005, and down 20% for kitchens and shelters.

Faith-based agencies run 72% of pantries, 62% of kitchens, and 39% of shelters. Some also offer other services.

Sources of Food Provided

-- food banks account for 75% of pantry distributions, 50% for kitchens, and 41% for shelters;

-- religious organizations, government, and direct wholesale and retail purchases are other important sources;

-- the Commodity Supplemental Food Program supplies 33% of pantries, 24% of kitchens, and 22% of shelters;

-- The Emergency Food Assistance Program supplies 54% of pantries, 34% of kitchens, and 31% of shelters; and

-- the Emergency Program on Indian Reservations supplies 2% of pantries, 1% of kitchens, and 2% of shelters.

FA's president and CEO, Vicki Escarra said:

"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. Hunger in America 2010 exposes the absolutely tragic reality of just how many people in our nation don't have enough to eat. Millions of our clients are families with children finding themselves in need of food assistance for the very first time. It's morally reprehensible that we live in the wealthiest nation in the world where one in six people are struggling to make choices between food and other basic services."

In November 2009, the US Department of Agriculture's Economic Research Service (USDA) reported that 49 million Americans, including 17 million children, are food insecure; that is, they "had difficulty providing enough food for all their (family) members due to a lack of resources. The prevalence of food insecurity was....the highest observed since nationally representative food security surveys were initiated in 1995."

In September 2009, the US Census Bureau reported rising poverty, falling incomes, and growing numbers of uninsured US households. Even by the Bureau's conservative estimates, 39.8 million Americans were impoverished, the highest level since 1960, and 17.1 million lived in extreme poverty at below one-half the official threshold.

A revised October 2009 Census analysis showed 47.4 million (15.8% of the population, including one-fifth of the elderly) below the poverty line, much higher than the above figure and rising.

The official poverty level for a family of four is $21,203, a way outdated threshold developed over 40 years ago. In 2007, the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) said a family of four in Peoria, IL needed $42,900 to be above poverty. In Chicago, it was $49,000 and in New York nearly $72,000. The same reality exists in large and smaller cities throughout America.

A recent Brookings Institute report titled, "The Effects of the Recession on Child Poverty" was equally disturbing, showing one in five US children under age 18 in families below the official poverty level, based on September 2009 Census data. According to Brookings' Julia Isaacs:

Census 2008 information "lag considerably behind current economic conditions. Job losses and wage reductions occurring in 2009 were obviously not captured. In addition, many adverse events in 2008 were only partially captured."

As a result, current conditions are far worse than reported and will keep deteriorating ahead, for at least several years according to Isaacs. She called the situation "sobering."

It showed in late November when reported food stamp usage was at record levels, and according to a study by Cornell University's Thomas Hirschl and Washington University in St. Louis' Mark Rank, half the children in America will need food stamps at some point in their childhood, 90% for black children.

Despite a growing national crisis, Obama proposed less, not more, saying "our fiscal situation remains unacceptable," not growing poverty, homelessness, hunger and despair at levels not seen since the 1930s.

On February 1, he sent Congress a budget freezing social spending for three years, a de facto cut in real terms. At the same time, he lets Wall Street keep pillaging, plans more wealth transfers to the rich, and proposed the largest ever defense and homeland security budgets, leaving little for cash-strapped states and growing millions of desperate people out of luck and on their own.

Stephen Lendman is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization. He lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to the Lendman News Hour on RepublicBroadcasting.org Monday - Friday at 10AM US Central time for cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on world and national issues. All programs are archived for easy listening.

http://republicbroadcasting.org/Lendman

Chicken a la Carte - a true story

One in ten Americans collecting 'food stamps'

by Caroline Hedley for The Guardian

A record 32.2 million people took advantage of the US welfare initiative that allows low-income individuals to exchange "stamps" for groceries in January, according to a United States government report.

The average recipient was given $112.82 (£77) per month to spend through the recently-renamed 'Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program', or 'SNAP'.

The figures show an increase of over 4.3 million claimants in just ten months, and mark the third time in five months that enrolment has set a new record.

Many Americans have turned to food stamps as a direct result of the economic crisis, which saw national unemployment levels soar to 8.1 per cent in February – the highest in 25 years. The figure was just 4.8 per cent in the same month in 2008, and it is estimated that some 4.4 million jobs have been lost since the start of the recession in December 2007.

Enrolment in the food stamps programme rose in all but four of the 50 states, according to statistics released by the US Department of Agriculture. Significant increases were recorded in Vermont, Alaska, South Dakota, California and New York.

"A weakened economy means that many more individuals are turning to SNAP/Food Stamps," a spokesman for the anti-hunger group Food Research and Action Centre, said.

President Obama has approved a temporary 13 per cent increase in food stamp benefits, beginning this month, as part of his government's economic stimulus plan.

Iraqis now face a cutting down of their monthly food ration – much of it already eaten away by official corruption

Corruption Eats Into Food Rations

By Ali al-Fadhily and Dahr Jamail for Inter Press Service

FALLUJAH, May 2 (IPS) - Amidst unemployment and impoverishment, Iraqis now face a cutting down of their monthly food ration – much of it already eaten away by official corruption.

Iraqis survived the sanctions after the first Gulf War (1990) with the support of rations through the Public Distribution System (PDS). The aid was set up in 1995 as part of the UN's Oil-for-Food programme.

The sanctions were devastating nevertheless. Former UN programme head Hans von Sponeck said in 2001 that the sanctions amounted to "a tightening of the rope around the neck of the average Iraqi citizen." Von Sponeck said the sanctions were causing the death of 150 Iraqi children a day.

Denis Halliday, former UN humanitarian coordinator for Iraq who quit his post in protest against the sanctions, told IPS they had proved "genocidal" for Iraqis.

During more than five years of U.S.-occupation, the situation has become even worse. The rationing system has been crumbling under poor management and corruption.

From the beginning of this year, the rations delivered were reduced from 10 items to five.

"We used the PDS as counter-propaganda against Saddam Hussein's regime before the U.S. occupation of Iraq began in 2003," Fadhil Jawad of the Dawa Party led by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki told IPS in Baghdad. "But then we found it necessary to maintain basic support for Iraqi people under occupation. We blamed Saddam for feeding Iraqis like animals with simple rations of food -- that we fail to provide now."

"When the Americans came to occupy Iraq, they promised us a better life," Ina'm Majeed, a teacher at a girls school told IPS in Fallujah. "After killing our sons and husbands, they are killing us by hunger now. The food ration that was once enough for our survival is now close to nothing, and the market prices are incredibly high. It is impossible for 80 percent of Iraqis now to buy the same items they used to get from the previous regime's food rations."

Ina'm's husband was killed in a U.S. air strike during the April 2004 siege of her city, leaving her with four children to bring up.

A World Food Programme (WFP) report in May 2006 found that just over four million people in Iraq were "food-insecure and in dire need of different kinds of humanitarian assistance."

According to the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) in April 2007, of the four million Iraqis who cannot regularly buy enough to eat, only 60 percent had access to PDS rations. The situation is worse today.

The former Iraqi ministry of trade used to distribute fair quantities of food in the PDS, then low quality food at the beginning of the UN sanctions. The quantities were reduced after the sanctions lasted longer than the former government expected. After Iraq signed the memo of understanding in 1996 with the UN, the quality and quantity of food notably improved.

"Do not blame Iraqis for calling the sanctions days 'the good old days' because they were definitely good compared to the dark days we are living under U.S. occupation," Abu Aymen, a 45-year-old lawyer with eight children told IPS in Fallujah. "All Iraqis complained about life under Saddam's regime because it was bad, but it seems that all the good things, little as they were, have been taken away along with his statues."

Aymen added, "We used to get cheese, powdered milk for us and our children, shaving paste and blades, tomato paste, special food for children, beans, soap and cleaning detergents, and even chicken, as well as basic foods like flour, rice, cooking oil, tea and sugar. Now we get bullets and missiles and polluted food and medicines."

Haj Chiad, a PDS distribution agent in Fallujah, told IPS that he now also distributes illness.

"I used to deliver food, but now I distribute poison with it," he said. "It has happened many times during the past four years that the food given to us by the ministry of trade was either rotten or actually poisoned. We distributed rice and sugar from sacks that had been stored a long time in damp places, and tomato paste that was long past its expiry date before we received it."

The Iraqi parliament's Committee for Integrity has demanded comprehensive interrogation of minister for trade Abdul Falah al-Sudany for the "vast corruption in his ministry." But as with other complaints of corruption, Maliki has taken no action.

(*Ali, our correspondent in Baghdad, works in close collaboration with Dahr Jamail, our U.S.-based specialist writer on Iraq who has reported extensively from Iraq and the Middle East)