New stats show increase in hunger
New data shows that the number of children in homes in the U.S. that sometimes lacked enough nutritious food jumped from 430,000 to 691,000 in just one year – and that was 2007, before the recession really took hold.
This statement was part of the intro to the data released by FRAC, the Food Research and Action Center, in their annual report, State of the States 2008. You can find more at www.frac.org. The report doesn’t go as deep as county data but does report by state and gives a snapshot of how each is doing in using federal programs to ease hunger and improve the health and economic security of our low-income families.
In 2007 Indiana ranked 24 (52 being highest) in poverty rate and 22 in child poverty. Not that we should rest on any laurels here. A poverty rate in 2007 of 12.3 percent meant 757,813 Hoosiers lived in poverty in Indiana with 267,610 being children.
There is another economic group that struggles to make ends meet. Many of the working poor fall into the category between poverty and 185 percent of poverty. A family of four with two children meets the 2007 federal poverty threshold with an income not exceeding $21,027 a year. The same family would fall into the next category with a household income of $21,028 to $38,863. Both categories are eligible to receive some forms of federal food assistance.
Results of Hunger in America 2006 showed 63,900 Hoosiers using pantries and kitchens in East Central Indiana that year. Each week 9,300 people benefited from food supplied by Second Harvest Food Bank to our eight county region.
This year pantries report even greater need. Some have limited the number of people they can serve on a given day; others have reduced the amount of food households can take. Tallies from the Second Harvest Tailgate Program reveal the increases in families served rising from an average of 329 households per stop in June to 488 in October. We set a goal of distributing 800,000 pounds of food through the Tailgate in 2008 and reached that goal at the end of October with two months to go.
We chart all the pounds we receive and pounds distributed - the numbers are climbing toward a record 5 million pounds by year’s end.
Our regional, multi-county food bank would be hard pressed to carry the full load of nutrition assistance for needy residents. Our increased distribution cannot meet the growing need. This sad situation would be catastrophic if federal programs were unavailable.
We work hard at Second Harvest to extend the reach of area charities by finding food for their programs locally, regionally and nationally. While they work diligently to provide services for people in need, we work hard to help them stretch their budgets by supplying food and product.
At the same time we work to support government legislation that increases funding for federal nutrition programs, and we do all we can to make those programs available to people in need in our communities.
Families using the SNAP/Food Stamp benefits in October in Delaware County had nearly $1.6 million to spend for food – quite an impact on the local economy and for those families in need! We encourage pantries to introduce their clients to this program and to help them access it.
Other federal food and nutrition programs working daily for low-income residents are the School Breakfast Program and National School Lunch Program, the WIC Program (providing nutritious food to women, infants and children), the seasonal Summer Food Service Program, and the Child and Adult Care Food Program (used by Head Start and other child care and senior programs in our community).
Second Harvest Food Bank of East Central Indiana was one of 130 summer food sponsors in the state last year and sponsored 16 sites in our region this summer. We also participate in The Emergency Food Assistance Program (TEFAP) by distributing federally purchased food to pantries and kitchens four to six times a year. We joined colleagues throughout the nation to urge our U.S. Senators and Congresswomen and men to support this program. As a result we will see more food from this source for pantry shelves in the months to come.
As important as the federal programs are local food pantries have a gap to fill when applicants are deemed ineligible, when benefits are exhausted before need is met, and when people who are normally self-sufficient run head-long into financial crisis.
USDA released its own report this month. Household Food Security in the
United States, 2007 is sixty-five pages long and full of facts and charts about the subject. The report takes the positive stance that 89 percent of Americans were food secure last year. That meant they had enough food to lead a normal active life. Our concern is of course for the 11 percent who were not.
Most households getting food stamps in the month prior to the survey had not obtained food from a food pantry during that year. This leads us to believe that food stamps gave them the boost they needed. Just over one in four food stamp households needed the extra help.
More than a third of pantry users (36.3 percent) did not participate in any of the big three federal food programs (food stamps, WIC or the National Lunch Program). Some had no need; others did not qualify or believed they did not – a challenge to local food providers to help clients with this process.
About 69 percent of households that obtained emergency food from community food pantries were food insecure – their access to adequate food was limited by a lack of money and other resources. Thirty-nine percent of those had very low food security – they were likely to go hungry at times. The rest were those on the edge - people whose circumstance had changed so drastically that they needed food assistance if only for a brief period.
The FRAC report carries an ominous prophecy. It notes that every report from food stamp offices, WIC programs, school meals programs, social service agencies, religious congregations and emergency food providers portrays a rising tide of increasingly desperate need. It states that if the recession is as long and as deep as many experts predict, we are likely to see an epidemic of hunger, among children and adults alike, unlike any we have seen for decades.
Feeding America food banks such as ours will begin our own hunger study in January. That report along with new USDA data will be released at the end of 2009. Unless we see a major economic shift, FRAC’s prophecy may well be fulfilled.
It will take extraordinarily generous and ongoing community support to see that the most vulnerable people in East Central Indiana are free from hunger. I will continue to trust in that generosity and compassion to sustain the work we do at Second Harvest Food Bank and the work done by the region-wide network of food assistance programs that we support.