America's Hunger Crisis is Worsening

[Orwellian_Ghost]

America's hidden hungry

Nicole Colson looks at the growing ranks of the hungry in the U.S.--and why the crisis is getting worse.

November 26, 2008



WHEN ORGANIZERS with the Heart of Compassion food bank in Montebello, Calif., planned a food giveaway recently, they decided to keep it low key, advertising it at just a few churches and schools.

When the day of the giveaway arrived, however, they were stunned to find 500 people in line in Montebello Park before dawn, hours before the pantry would open. "By noon, thousands of people stood in the warm November sun," reported the Los Angeles Times. "Those in line hardly spoke, gazing into the park or holding on to restless children."

In all, nearly 5,000 people showed up seeking food that day--more than double the number expected.

Such stories are becoming increasingly common--though you wouldn't know it to judge from the mainstream media. There's plenty of coverage of the economic crisis, of course--but most of the focus is on the chaos on Wall Street and in the financial system.

Meanwhile, the crisis is taking root across the U.S.--and hitting working people hard.

The Freestore Foodbank in Cincinnati set a record this week, with 7,661 people standing in the rain and cold to receive emergency food boxes before Thanksgiving--an increase of 19 percent over the first day of last year's Thanksgiving food distribution, according to WLWT news.

<snip>

http://socialistworker.org/2008/11/26/americas-hidden-hungry">America's hidden hungry

[Orwellian_Ghost]

1. Frenzy over free food

Down on the farm, a frenzy over free food
In a sign of bad economic times, more than 40,000 show up when a Weld family invites people to gather surplus produce.
By Allison Sherry
The Denver Post
Updated: 11/23/2008 12:20:46 AM MST

Want one more palpable sign of a desperate economy?

An estimated 40,000 people came to a Weld County farm Saturday to collect free potatoes, carrots and leeks.

Cars snaked around cornfields and parallel parked along Colorado 66 and 119 early in the morning to get free food from the Miller family, who farm 600 acres outside of Platteville, about 37 miles north of Denver.

As this prolonged Indian summer continued, the Millers had decided to give away produce because so much was left over at the end of their annual fall festival. Any day now, a few deep freezes would kill it off.

They expected between 5,000 and 10,000 people spread out over a couple of days. Instead, they found themselves on Saturday morning inundated with cars and people with sacks and wagons and barrels ready to harvest whatever was available.

<snip>

http://www.denverpost.com/search/ci_11052263

[Orwellian_Ghost]

2. Household Food Security in the United States

Household Food Security in the United States, 2007

By Mark Nord, Margaret Andrews, and Steven Carlson

Economic Research Report No. (ERR-66) 65 pp, November 2008

Eighty-nine percent of American households were food secure throughout the entire year in 2007, meaning that they had access at all times to enough food for an active, healthy life for all household members. The remaining households (11.1 percent) were food insecure at least some time during the year. About one-third of food insecure households (4.1 percent of all U.S. households) had very low food security—meaning that the food intake of one or more adults was reduced and their eating patterns were disrupted at times during the year because the household lacked money and other resources for food. Prevalence rates of food insecurity and very low food security were essentially unchanged from those in 2005 and 2006.

Keywords: Food security, food insecurity, low food security, very low food security, hunger, food expenditures, food spending, food pantries, food stamp program, national school lunch program, WIC, ERS, USDA

In this report ...

Chapters are in Adobe Acrobat PDF format.

* Report summary, 72 kb | HTML

* Abstract, Acknowledgments, Contents, and Summary, 73 kb.
* Introduction, 31 kb.
* Household Food Security, 268 kb.
* Household Spending on Food, 48 kb.
* Use of Federal and Community Food and Nutrition Assistance Programs, 77 kb.
* References, 37 kb.
* Appendix A—Household Responses to Questions in the Food Security Scale, 51 kb.
* Appendix B—Background on the U.S. Food Security Measurement Project, 40 kb.
* Appendix C—USDA’s Thrifty Food Plan, 53 kb.
* Appendix D—Food Security During 30 Days Prior to Food Security Survey, 39 kb.

* Entire Report, 486 kb.

Order this report (stock #ERR-66)

Updated date: November 17, 2008
For more information, contact: [email protected]

http://www.ers.usda.gov/Publications/ERR66/

[bonito]

3. Wait till they wake up that those long lines today were for the specials only

n/t

[saltpoint]

4. Kick and recommended.

[starroute]

5. 'I see one-third of a nation..."

Roosevelt's second inaugural address, January 1937:

http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/5105

But here is the challenge to our democracy: In this nation I see tens of millions of its citizens—a substantial part of its whole population—who at this very moment are denied the greater part of what the very lowest standards of today call the necessities of life.

I see millions of families trying to live on incomes so meager that the pall of family disaster hangs over them day by day.

I see millions whose daily lives in city and on farm continue under conditions labeled indecent by a so-called polite society half a century ago.

I see millions denied education, recreation, and the opportunity to better their lot and the lot of their children.

I see millions lacking the means to buy the products of farm and factory and by their poverty denying work and productiveness to many other millions.

I see one-third of a nation ill-housed, ill-clad, ill-nourished.

But it is not in despair that I paint you that picture. I paint it for you in hope—because the nation, seeing and understanding the injustice in it, proposes to paint it out. We are determined to make every American citizen the subject of his country’s interest and concern; and we will never regard any faithful law-abiding group within our borders as superfluous. The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.

[Orwellian_Ghost]

6. Food banks can't meet growing demand

Food banks can't meet growing demand
Updated 2d 14h ago
By Judy Keen, USA TODAY

Donations to many of the USA's food banks are not keeping pace with growing demand as the sour economy forces more people to seek help, charitable organizations say.

"We have seen a 100% increase in demand in the last year … and food donations have dropped precipitously," says Dana Wilkie, CEO of the Community Food Bank in Fresno, Calif.

The group, which distributes food to 200 food pantries and feeding centers, is supplying cheaper chickens instead of turkeys for Thanksgiving, she says.

Nationally, donations are up about 18%, but demand has grown 25%-40%, says Vicki Escarra of Feeding America, the USA's largest hunger-relief charity. Feeding America, formerly America's Second Harvest, has a network of 206 food banks.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2008-11-25-foodbanks_N.htm

[Orwellian_Ghost]

7. Problems elsewhere

•Denver: The Salvation Army food bank turned away 198 people last month, says Maj. Neal Hogan. Red kettle donations there are about the same as last year's so far, he says — not enough to offset growing needs.

•Knoxville, Tenn.: "What we're seeing now is very scary," says Elaine Streno of the Second Harvest Food Bank of East Tennessee, which supplies food to 300 agencies in 18 counties.

"Our community is very generous, but when you don't have it, you can't give it," she says.

•Manchester, N.H.: The New Hampshire Food Bank has distributed 4.6 million pounds of food to 370 agencies statewide so far this year, up from 3.7 million pounds over the same period in 2007, says development director Anne Dalton.

•Toledo, Ohio: Demand is up 12%-15% and donations are not increasing, says Jim Caldwell, president of the Toledo Northwestern Ohio Food Bank, which serves 250 agencies in eight counties. Next year "promises to be even more arduous," he says.

•Peoria, Ill.: Demand is up 50% at many of the 125 agencies in eight counties served by the Peoria Area Food Bank, says director Barb Shreves.

•Visalia, Calif.: FoodLink for Tulare County asks the community to help provide holiday meals to 5,000 of the area's neediest families. This year, 9,200 families already have applied, says executive director Sandy Beals. Food supplies are down 45% from a year ago; demand is up 30%, and people are being turned away.

[lib2DaBone]

8. ..if they kill for a DVD at Wal-Mart.. Imagine what they's do for food.

[saltpoint]

9. Kick.