Why there were more hungry children in 2007
Hunger will never go away in the USA because the government keeps redefining and refining what that word means, and continues to meet other nanny state goals such as decreasing obesity or distributing healthy food, promoting environmental goals, safe neighborhoods and being step-daddy and sugar daddy for women making bad choices, holding both the taxpayer and low income families hostage to these ill-thought-out goals. Yes, big announcement by USDA this week:
Household Food Security in the United States, 2007—11.1 percent of U.S. households were food-insecure at some time during the year in 2007; 4.1 percent had very low food security. This report, based on data from the December 2007 food security survey, provides the most recent statistics on the food security of U.S. households as well as how much they spent for food and the extent to which food-insecure households participated in Federal and community food assistance programs.
The word HUNGER makes the headlines, but the government term is "food security." And that only has to happen once a year, maybe at the end of the month in which you went to Disney World or got new glasses for the kids, to be included in the report. For some people "food insecurity" is not being able to go to McDonald's regularly.
I know what food security is--I've seen it at the Food Pantry in 2007. It's a mother of 4 telling me that she doesn't need cereal (allowed 3 boxes that day) because the children get that at school breakfast (where they also get lunch and after school snacks too, and are fed in the summer when school isn't in session), or it's a grandmother raising her daughter's babies while she's in Marysville Reformatory for kiting checks saying no to applesauce or peanut butter because she has too much of that at home. I can tell from the brands that they were purchased in bulk from huge storage facilities that buy from companies that depend on government contracts to keep their business going. After years of misguided farm surplus to buoy up farmers, the government now supports food overproduction by agribusiness.
Why are food pantries short right now? It's not just that more people are unemployed and running short a few days of the month. There's an actual food shortage
worldwide due to our ill advised
biofuels policies and environmental regulations, and our regulators of herbicides, pesticides and improved agricultural methods are actually causing real hunger, causing real children to starve, or causing riots in very poor countries.
Food banks now need to be "green" with squirrely light bulbs and solar panels--imagine the retro-fitting just so you can store food for the poor. So American food companies can now make more shipping their taxpayer supported surplus abroad than they can selling it to American food banks which redistribute it to our "food insecure" citizens who also have become dependent on
TEFAP,
WIC and
food stamps (SNAP). The Columbus Mid-Ohio Food Bank has an operating budget of about $8 million and distributes about $22 million in food annually and is in the midst of an $16 million capital campaign to expand and remodel.
Behind the food banks and food pantries there are teams of academics--entomologists, plant pathologists, crop managers, ag economists, horticulturalists, small business developer, food retail specialists, agronomists and soil scientists, community developers, nutritionists, registered dietitians, educators, and biosystems engineers all sifting data and publishing results to assure no child gets left behind, or no child gets a fat behind, or no child sits on his behind. There are banks set up to loan farmers money to focus on locally grown food (to help the poor make smart choices), and training programs to employ staff to teach staff of non-profits how to get more government grants for food for the "food insecure."
The government also props up a variety of non-profits such as
Children's Hunger Alliance, which in the same year received about $10.5 million from the Ohio Department of Education, over half a million from Ohio Department of Jobs and Family Services, and over $36,000 in federal grants, with the remainder of its $13,762,098 coming from foundations and contributions. This is not to say that CHA, and others like it, don't do meaningful work, but that's a huge food chain of salaries, production and distribution that are totally dependant on "hunger," who would all be out of business if hunger miraculously ended next month. Of course, we know that won't happen. The definition of hunger will most certainly be expanded in the next administration as child care block grants are expanded, affordable housing grants are expanded (convenient access to food sources), health care is expanded to ensure low fat, or low cholesterol diets, services to children of imprisoned are expanded (already in the family services budget), and all the various senior programs expanded to be sure the elderly who are taking care of grandchildren are also well fed.
There are so many jobs dependent on the poor and "food insecure", that new poor must be recruited for each one who manages to slip through the barrier to the next quintile and into a good job, self-sufficiency and pride.
Do not blame the poor. They didn't set up this system. They are the victims.
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