The U.S. Food Crisis: 1 in 5 Went Hungry Last Year. Now What? « SpeakEasy

Sometime in the fall last year, I was at my local supermarket in San Francisco’s Mission District, picking through some melons when I heard the unmistakable sound of a body hit the floor behind me — hard. I turned to find a woman being handcuffed and led into an employees-only area, as she pleaded with the security guard: “I lost my job and need to feed my children.” It was nothing short of heartbreaking.

Later, as I waited to pay for my groceries at the register, I watched another woman set off an alarm as she ran out of the supermarket with bananas and baby food in her arms. She made it — and presumably was able to feed her child that night.

I thought of that desperate day again when I read an extensive report released today on the state of food hardship in America (pdf) by the Food Research and Action Center (FRAC). In it comes the striking news that one in five Americans went hungry at some point in 2009.

Food hardship was measured as those who responded affirmatively to the question, “Have there been times in the past twelve months when you did not have enough money to buy food that you or your family needed?” By the end of last year, the national food hardship rate was 18.5 percent. For households with children, the rate was much higher, at 24.1 percent.

For the general population, food hardship, which is the most basic indicator of general socio-economic hardship, was higher in 2008 than in 2009, but let’s not pat ourselves on the back just yet — one in eight Americans are on food stamps today. Indeed, it appears that thanks to social programs like SNAP, food hardship did not continue to skyrocket throughout last year. With the recession, eligibility for food stamps was eased and benefits were increased. (Thank you, welfare state!)

Most of the report’s stats are dismal — and I could continue enumerating them to paint a more detailed picture of our hunger crisis, but I would rather hone in on the data that might hold some real political capital. You can speak about national hunger rates but hawking national data doesn’t hold reluctant or deluded politicians accountable — America is a large, amorphous entity for which everyone ought but often no one feels responsible or moved to act.

That’s why I am especially excited by the fact that the FRAC report gives us a highly localized look at hunger in America — and breaks it down by congressional district:

Of the 436 Congressional Districts (including the District of Columbia), 311 had a food hardship rate of 15 percent or higher. In 139 of them the rate was 20 percent or higher. Practically every Congressional District in the country had more than a tenth of respondents reporting food hardship.

Districts with the worst rates can be found in a whole range of states — California, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Michigan, Texas, Mississippi, New York — but, on the aggregate, hunger is most widespread in the South. These are districts represented in Washington, for the most part, by right-wingers and Democrats-only-in-name generally opposed to the expansion of welfare programs, even in the face of a massive recession.

This report could not have come at a better time. Just this morning came news that the Senate is planning a $80 billion job-creation bill that will cut Americans’ extended unemployment benefits (the House bill would not do this). This is the kind of boneheaded move that is predicated on the infallibility of the welfare-state-is-bad and/or anything-but-debt theses, and not in reality.

The battle worth fighting in 2010 is one that steers the government back to caring for the interests of regular Americans — and away from the corporations and financial institutions that have benefited most from governmental attention in this recession.

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