31 posts categorized "U.S. Hunger"

The 2012 Hunger Report executive summary is Bread for the World Institute’s overview of the state of hunger.

Tomorrow night, President Obama will deliver his 2012 State of the Union address, laying out his national priorities based on current conditions in the United States.

Will he discuss the 15 percent of Americans who wonder whether they will have enough to eat this month? Will he say it’s a top priority to make sure that no child goes to bed hungry?

2012 is a particularly important year for hungry people in the United States because Congress is scheduled to reauthorize the farm bill, which will define U.S. farm policies for the next five years. The bill shows exactly how much our country values nutritious food for all as a goal of our farm policies.

Bread for the World Institute’s 2012 Hunger Report recommends effective ways for the U.S. government to respond to the agriculture and nutrition challenges of 2012 and beyond. Read an excerpt from the executive summary of the 2012 Hunger Report: Rebalancing Act: Updating U.S. Food and Farm Policies to learn what we hope President Obama will say in the 2012 State of the Union:

The global agricultural system faces many daunting challenges. Seven billion people currently inhabit the Earth, and the population is expected to rise to 9 billion by 2050. Food production must increase as climate change puts additional stress on natural resources. Nearly one billion people around the world suffer from hunger, and in the United States one in four people participate in a federal nutrition program. U.S. food and farm policies absolutely need to be aligned.

The 2012 Hunger Report recommends ways for the federal government to better respond to the agriculture and nutrition challenges of today and tomorrow. Normally change in food and farm policy occurs incrementally. The 2012 Hunger Report calls for bolder, more determined thinking about how U.S. food and farm policies can meet the global and domestic challenges of the 21st century.

Farm policies should significantly increase production of healthy foods. But farm policies alone can’t automatically improve access to nutritious foods for low-income families. Strengthening the nutrition safety net is also critical. Nutrition programs need to do more than provide food for hungry people; they must ensure that healthy food is available to all.

The 2012 Hunger Report recommends ways for U.S. development assistance and food aid programs to work together more efficiently. Food aid programs should follow the lead of Feed the Future—the new U.S. Global Hunger and Food Security Initiative—by focusing more deliberately on improving nutrition outcomes for the most vulnerable people, especially pregnant and lactating women and children under the age of 2. This will help achieve the strongest possible nutrition outcomes with the limited resources available.

On the eve of 2012, Congress is negotiating dramatic cuts in the federal budget. Cuts to programs designed to overcome the effects of poverty are in neither the short- nor the long-term interests of the nation. The recommendations in the2012 Hunger Report are all the more relevant because the budget decisions are so urgent.

+To read more, download the executive summary of the 2012 Hunger Report: Rebalancing Act: Updating U.S. Food and Farm Policy.

Kate Hagen is Hunger Report project assistant at Bread for the World Institute.

Improving nutrition among children is essential to the future of the United States. Unfortunately, childhood hunger and poor nutrition is not among the frequently-discussed issues of this primary season. 

Before the “First in the South” primary – South Carolina’s on January 21-- the candidates would do well to read the 2012 Hunger Report to hear about childhood hunger from South Carolina resident and public health expert Ed Frongillo:

“The idea that children are somehow protected from food insecurity by parents is a myth,” says Frongillo, professor of public health at the University of South Carolina. “Children are aware of the inadequate quantity or quality of food, the struggles that adults are going through to meet food needs, and the limitations of resources for meeting those needs.” 

The effects of multiple hardships on children have been well documented by Frongillo, Chilton and her colleagues at Children’s HealthWatch, and researchers elsewhere—and portrayed more bluntly in the images and words of Witnesses to Hunger. Violence, evictions, parental anxiety rising to crescendo as the month comes to an end and the refrigerator empties—the list goes on.

There is only so much any one program can do to soften the effects of these problems on children. But an analysis by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities shows that SNAP lifts more families with children out of poverty than any other assistance program except the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC). About half of all Americans will receive SNAP benefits at some point before age 20. Among African-Americans, the figure is 90 percent.

The EITC offers a tax refund, a lump sum payment that comes once a year and is ideal for paying down debt, fixing a busted car, dealing with a lingering medical problem, or other such expenses. Low-income working families find it difficult or impossible to budget for these items, because all their resources are simply consumed by day-to-day needs.

SNAP and other nutrition programs, on the other hand, come through for low-income families all year long. They also help the many people who have short-lived scrapes with hunger without experiencing the other hardships of poverty. This is why programs such as SNAP are so vital to meeting the needs of all families, regardless of the harshness of their environment.

Good nutrition is essential, while hunger and malnutrition before age 2 cause harm that is generally irreversible. In addition to providing foods needed for a healthy pregnancy and early childhood, WIC includes nutrition education and access to health care. The program has been proven to reduce rates of fetal mortality and low birth weight and to enhance the nutritional quality of a baby’s diet.

A landmark study in 1991 showed that every dollar spent on WIC saves the government between $1.77 and $3.13 in Medicaid costs for newborns and their mothers. The findings in the study and the strong support for the program from doctors and other medical professionals contributed to bipartisan support for steady increases in WIC funding to ensure that no family would be denied participation. But 20 years later—in spite of volumes of additional research that confirms the value of WIC—it seems that ideological differences among elected officials threaten funding for a cost-effective program with broad public support (94 percent in a 2010 study).

Cutting WIC, SNAP, and other nutrition programs goes against everything we know about the value of preventive care in saving on long-term healthcare costs.

Nutrition programs are one of the most cost-effective ways to control rising healthcare costs, which in the long run are a much greater threat to the nation’s economy than the cost of nutrition programs. Hunger makes people more vulnerable to chronic health problems. Intermittent hunger also contributes to binge eating and overeating to cope with stress and depression. Hunger in babies wreaks havoc on their metabolism and makes them susceptible to obesity later in life. And hunger among children affects cognitive development and leads to lower academic achievement.

Read more on the issue “Women and Children First” from the 2012 Hunger Report.

+The 2012 Hunger Report is available at www.hungerreport.org.

Kate Hagen is Hunger Report project assistant at Bread for the World Institute.

Iowa farmer Arlyn Schipper talks with Mannik Sakayan, deputy director of government relations at Bread for the World.

Last week, we witnessed the Iowa caucus. This week, we meet Arlyn Schipper, a large-scale farmer in Iowa who is proud to grow food for people. Read the following excerpt from the 2012 Hunger Report:

On a shelf alongside the kitchen table in his home, Arlyn Schipper has a collection of miniature scale models of all the farm tractors he’s owned since he started farming almost four decades ago.

Schipper farms 6,000 acres of corn and soybeans in central Iowa. With so many acres, he is considered a large operator even by Iowa’s farm-size standards. The model tractors illustrate how technology has transformed the U.S. agricultural sector over the last half-century—and they also explain why Schipper has built a farm operation of 6,000 acres. When modern tractors allow him to plow 6,000 acres as easily as 600, and a single tractor puts him hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt, it makes sense to try to use the investment to its full potential.

As a board member of Foods Resource Bank, a U.S. based anti-hunger organization (and a sponsor of this report), Schipper volunteers with other U.S. farmers from the Midwest to share some of what they’ve learned about farming with smallholders in the developing world. On a trip to Zambia in the winter of 2011, he couldn’t resist the urge to strap himself to a mule and plow a row of corn as farmers do in the village he was visiting. One row was enough for him.

Since the beginning of the 20th century, breakthroughs in agricultural technology have transformed farming in the United States, making possible astonishing increases in productivity and efficiency. Productivity gains in agriculture have coincided with farms getting bigger. The data show that each U.S. farmer is now producing enough to feed 155 people—compared to 19 people in 1940. Arlyn Schipper has never tried to calculate how many people his farm feeds, but he takes immense pride in the fact that the food he produces prevents people in the United States and around the world from going hungry.

Consumers in the United States spend a lesser share of their incomes on food than people in any other nation. Leaving aside issues of quality for the moment, everyone in the country benefits from low food prices. Low-income households, with the least to spend on food, perhaps benefit the most. Production agriculture—the kind done by Schipper and other large-scale operators—is crucial to maintaining U.S. food security and preventing hunger. This does not mean hunger has been eradicated in the United States—not as long as its underlying causes, primarily poverty, persist—but hunger rates would surely be higher if not for the relatively low cost of food.

+The 2012 Hunger Report is available at www.hungerreport.org.