Childhood Hunger

Latest News on April 2009

April 30
Gleaning bears fruit for food banks

A growing army of needy people and volunteers are descending on farms, fields and backyards across the nation in search of leftover produce that might otherwise go to waste.

San Jose Mercury News (San Jose, Calif.)
Raquel Maria Dillon

The tradition known as gleaning has gone on for centuries, but pickers and organizers say the stakes are higher these days as families struggle against the recession and try to maintain healthy diets amid a national epidemic of obesity.

“I feel like I’m doing something for myself and for people who need it, like me,” volunteer Samuel Negrete said as he searched for the last pieces of fruit in a citrus orchard in Riverside County. Negrete, 43, lost his job at a home improvement store six months ago and is struggling to support his family of four children.

“When I’m home, I’m thinking about all my problems,” he said. “But here, my mind is clear.”

Negrete was among a group of about a dozen volunteers clambering up citrus trees in the tiny grove where the smell of orange blossoms filled the air.

The local gleaning program was started by Salvation Army staffer Maddy Graham to supplement food boxes given to needy families who too often rely on fast food and discount retailers for high-fat, high-sugar foods that can lead to health problems.

The volunteer pickers get financial assistance and a box of oranges in exchange for working once a week.

Negrete said his kids devour the oranges.

“When they’re sweet like this, they’re better than candy. And better for their teeth,” he said in Spanish, wiping sweat from his forehead.

Elsewhere, the Society of St. Andrew, a national gleaning organization, recruits volunteers from churches, scout troops and schools to pick sweet corn in Florida, collards in South Carolina, potatoes in Colorado and apples in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina.

“Fresh produce is expensive and it spoils quickly,” spokeswoman Carol Breitinger said. “But fresh fruits and vegetables are essential to people’s diets.”

The pantries of many food giveaway programs are stocked with packaged goods and caloric filler foods such as pasta because those products are cheap and easy to ship and store, she said. Meanwhile, perfectly good produce that could balance those offerings sometimes rots in fields because of cosmetic flaws or high shipping costs.

“I can remember going into a cabbage field on the eastern shore of Virginia to pick after the harvest,” Breitinger recalled. “There were thousands and thousands of pounds of perfectly good cabbage.”

Gleaners step in when community-minded farmers give them the run of their fields after crews of paid pickers have already passed through, or when cosmetic damage caused by pests or weather makes harvesting and shipping the produce a money-losing proposition.

In exchange, farmers get a tax credit and the satisfaction of knowing their hard work didn’t go to waste.

In Riverside County, where subdivisions have sprouted in former citrus groves, the need for free food has jumped as nearly 80,000 people lost their jobs in the past year.

Demand doubled in a single month at the Salvation Army, Graham said.

Even when struggling families stretch their dollars with food stamps and careful shopping, the produce aisle is often beyond their budgets, she said.

As a result, food banks are evolving into nutrition banks, said Willy Elliott-McCrea, who runs the Santa Cruz Second Harvest Food Bank.

Fresh fruits and vegetables now represent 60 percent of the 6.5 million pounds of food the Watsonville, Calif., organization distributes every year.

Most of that produce is donated by generous growers and distributors. But a lot more is left to rot in fields.

“Probably a hundred times more food could be gleaned if there was the people power to do it,” said Elliott-McCrea, who helped found Ag Against Hunger, a Salinas Valley group that ships donated fresh produce to food banks along the West Coast.

Farmers in the valley allow volunteers to pick crops on short notice every weekend for food banks, said Abby Taylor-Silva, executive director of Ag Against Hunger. “A grower would call us because a crop has sun damage or pest damage, and it’s still good product but not good enough for market,” she said. Still, the gleaning program provides only one percent of the fresh produce that Ag Against Hunger distributes, she said. Most donations come already picked, when market prices dip and make shipping a losing proposition for farmers.

Gleaning is also increasing in cities and suburbs among people moved by the sight of wasted fruit from backyard trees and gardeners who plant extra leafy greens to donate to soup kitchens. Those efforts also promote healthy diets, Elliott-McCrea said.

“If you have high school kids going out and picking their neighbor’s apple tree, they’ll have a different relationship with those apples,” be more likely to eat right and donate to the needy in tough times, he said.

In the tiny grove in Riverside, pickers enjoy the camaraderie of making a contribution.

Betty Mairena tugged on a long picking pole and improvised a song:

“Little orange, so golden! You’re going home with me where I’ll make a delicious juice out of you,” she cooed in Spanish as flower petals fell in her hair.

April 30
Report predicts more suburbanites will fall into poverty

According to the report, more than 253,000 people in the city and suburbs, including 87,000 children, could fall into poverty as a result of the current recession.

Chicago Daily Herald (Chicago, Ill.)
Matt Arado

Mary Ellen Durbin said there’s an easy way to see how the recession has affected people in the suburbs - just look at her parking lot.

“We had to hire a parking attendant,” said Durbin, executive director of the People’s Resource Center in Wheaton. “That’s how busy we are. We’ve seen an astronomical increase in the numbers of people who need help.”

The center, which provides emergency assistance, food and other services to people in need, served roughly 2,400 families in the month of March, Durbin said. It was the second-busiest month in the center’s 34-year history.

When Durbin joined the center in 1995, it served roughly 300 families a month.

“A lot of the people coming to us now are new clients, people who have never been in this position before,” she said.

Durbin’s observations are backed up in a new report about poverty in the Chicago area. The report, released today, was written by the Heartland Alliance, a Chicago-based research and advocacy group.

According to the report, more than 253,000 people in the city and suburbs, including 87,000 children, could fall into poverty as a result of the current recession. That projected increase would amount to a 27 percent jump in the number of people living in poverty since 2007.

“We’ve never seen that kind of increase before. It would be staggering,” said Amy Rynell, a Heartland director who helped write the report.

A family of four is defined as “poor” by the federal government if it earns less than $22,050 annually. A family defined as “extremely poor” makes less than half that amount.

A good chunk of the new poor would live in the suburbs. Rynell said the suburbs now account for 41 percent of the Chicago area’s poor. In 1980, the suburbs accounted for just 24 percent.

“Poverty is not limited to specific areas of our state,” Rynell said.

The report found that in Cook County, the number of people turning to food pantries rose by 33 percent in 2008. The increase ranged from 23 percent to 52 percent in the other suburban counties, with McHenry County showing the biggest hike.

More suburbanites used food stamps in 2008 as well, the report found. The number of households receiving them jumped by more than 10 percent in DuPage, Kane, Lake and McHenry counties. In Cook County, the number jumped by 8 percent.

Liz Eakins, associate director of Lazarus House in St. Charles, said her group has noticed a “major increase” in the number of people seeking emergency help. Many of them inquire about Lazarus House’s emergency assistance program, which provides cash to eligible residents who can’t pay their rent, mortgage or utility bill. The program is funded by a grant from the Illinois Department of Human Services.

“The heartbreaking thing is that to qualify, people have to prove that this is a temporary problem, that they can handle things on their own in the future,” Eakins said. “These days, with so many people out of work, they can’t offer that proof.”

Heartland Alliance officials said that while the outlook is grim, it’s not inevitable. State leaders can reverse the descent into poverty through judicious use of federal stimulus package money and by overhauling Illinois’ revenue system so that it sustains anti-poverty programs, Rynell said.

Durbin said stimulus aid would surely help, but not necessarily for the long term.

“People in trouble need two things to get back on track for good: a job and affordable housing,” she said. “Those are things you can’t get from a stimulus package.”

April 29
Food pantries finding cupboards bare

Hungry area residents who have to turn to food banks for their next meal are finding the shelves increasingly bare.

The Detroit News
Catherine Jun

Pontiac — Pantries throughout Metro Detroit are reporting staggering numbers of families coming through their doors, which means keeping the shelves stocked with essential food items — juice, bread and canned fruit, meat and veggies — has become much harder.

At the Salvation Army’s food pantry on Oakland Avenue, all that remained on the ceiling-high slats on a recent morning were cans of tomato soup, cereal, soda crackers and spaghetti noodles.

Both freezers were empty.

“It’s like I’m Mother Hubbard,” said Gail Hardy, a director at the facility.

At Lighthouse Outreach Center of Macomb County, food donations leave just as quickly as they come in.

“It’s just going out so fast, you can’t keep it on the shelves,” Pastor Mel Gower said. The agency provides emergency food to families as well as meals to seniors through a state program and is running low on canned meats, soup and fruit. It receives 6,000 to 10,000 people a month, up 40 percent since the start of 2008.

Food pantries have suffered through periods in the past when their shelves have been nearly empty; too often, it’s a matter of when the collection from a local canned food drive reaches the facility. But nowadays, organizers say, growing demand is to blame.

“It’s a matter of the fact that the need is so high,” said Sue Figurski, a coordinator at the Macomb Food Program, which supplies 55 local pantries and churches. Since October, her office has received about 50 percent more food requests by phone, she said.

“I’ve never seen an economic crisis like this,” Figurski added.

In February and March, Gleaners Community Food Bank distributed a million pounds more of food compared to the same time last year. That’s a 25 percent increase.

“To have a spike like this … when it’s usually a level time — it’s a warning sign to us,” said Gerry Brisson, vice president of development at Gleaners, which distributes emergency food to 450 agencies in Metro Detroit.

With higher donations and order limits placed on local agencies, Gleaners hasn’t had to turn down any food requests, he said. But when schools let out in the summer, an even higher demand is anticipated, and major food drives over the next few months will likely be scheduled to make up the anticipated shortfall.

At the Salvation Army in Pontiac, the dwindling food supply has meant providing families with bags containing fewer items than in the past, Hardy said.

“They’re running a little light,” she said. In April last year, the facility served 192 families. So far this month, 243 families have come in.

The pantry near downtown serves the poorest of Oakland County. Its location also means that area donors don’t have much to give.

Hardy stocks her shelves with food bought through Gleaners. And despite the food bank’s nominal rates, Hardy may be forced to spend more of the facility’s limited dollars, in part because the region’s Red Kettle drive last winter raised less money than in previous years.

“With budgets tight and people saving for a rainy day, people are not as apt” to give. “At this point, I’m not picky,” Hardy said. “Whatever you feed your own family, we’d love to have here.”

Hardy has made calls to local churches, but was told their food collections were committed to other pantries, she said. Her staff has resorted to handing out coupons for groceries and household items, and posting fliers from grocery stores on double-coupon days.

Many pantries are bending the rules so they can help families affected by the economic downturn.

“A guy could have been making 60 grand last week and this week, nothing,” said Chuck Vella, founder of Fish and Loaves Community Food Pantry in Taylor.

“And some of the people that were making big dollars are worse off than people who were making

April 28
Food stamp hurdles keeping some out

“It’s easier to get a driver’s license than food stamps”

UPI.com (United Press International)

Tough measures to prevent U.S. food stamp fraud are keeping legitimate prospective recipients out of the program, advocates say.

With the U.S. Department of Agriculture food stamp program poised to be boosted by a historic $20 billion in federal stimulus money, government experts predict that 2 percent of the total, or $400 million, will be lost to fraud. But in Pennsylvania, which has some of the toughest eligibility requirements for food stamps, only 1/10 1 percent of the state’s $1.4 billion total is lost to fraud, the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review reported.

Yet, anti-hunger advocates told the newspaper Pennsylvania’s procedures to receive food stamps are so onerous that thousands of struggling single mothers, students, elderly and other legitimate recipients are dissuaded from seeking help.

“It’s easier to get a driver’s license than food stamps,” said Joel Berg, a USDA official in President Bill Clinton’s administration. “You can do a lot of damage with a driver’s license. … To my knowledge, no one has died in a food stamps-fraud accident.”

State officials told the newspaper they continue looking for ways to prevent fraud, while food stamp advocates caution against making the application process even stricter, penalizing lawful recipients.

April 27
Not on food stamps but still stuck with a stigma

As part of the stimulus package, the federal government also expanded access to benefits by temporarily lifting a time limit imposed by Congress under welfare reform that gave able-bodied adults without children three months of benefits for every six months unless they work 20 hours a week. The time limit is lifted until September.

KOMO News - Seattle, Washington
Amy Roe

Elizabeth Beckett of Bellevue was consumed by food. Unemployed and short on cash, she was always thinking about what she ate, what it cost and how much she had left.

But Beckett didn’t feel good about going on food stamps, so she didn’t sign up until she learned she was pregnant: “I was like, ‘look, OK, I need help.’”

About 374,000 Washington households are on the “food stamp” program, which in Washington State has been distributed via debit cards since 1999. That’s about 70 percent of those who are eligible.

But food banks say demand for food has increased in recent months. So what’s keeping hungry people from getting benefits?

In a word: pride.

“There’s a pride thing against receiving,” said a 35 year-old Seattle woman who asked that her name not be used. She never went to the food bank, either, for the same reason, she said.

Fear of being labeled a “freeloader”

“I think that in an affluent society there are too many people who think that people who receive handouts are freeloaders,” she said.

That’s why, for months after she lost her job, the woman, let’s call her Kate, waffled on whether to apply for food stamps.

Fed up with living on peanut butter sandwiches and “way too much bread” to fill her up, she finally Googled “Washington food stamps” and signed up online.

With the $200 per month she receives she can afford to buy produce and make more nutritious meals.

“My only regret is that I didn’t sign up sooner,” she said.

Beckett, 31, believes no one should have to be worried about food, or be embarrassed to ask for help.

“I think the stigma of who uses food stamps and why they use them needs to be smashed a little,” she said. “I’m an educated individual, I have two college degrees, I’ve done AmeriCorps.”

Putting it on plastic

The switch to debit cards has helped to make using food benefits less conspicuous.

When it was food stamps, “people would roll their eyes and stuff. Now you can pretty much whip out your card,” said Jennifer McCormack, who has used both systems.

In October 2008 the state broadened the gross income limit to 200 percent of the federal poverty rate. A family of three could have a gross income of up to $3,052 per month and be eligible.

Not just for the “poorest of the poor”

Despite these changes, many still believe federal food assistance is for “the absolutely poorest of the poor,” said John Camp, who administers the program at the state Dept. of Health. “They assume that the program isn’t available to them.”

The average Washington household on food stamps receives nearly $215 per month and is comprised of two people, he said.

As part of the stimulus package, the federal government also expanded access to benefits by temporarily lifting a time limit imposed by Congress under welfare reform that gave able-bodied adults without children three months of benefits for every six months unless they work 20 hours a week. The time limit is lifted until September.

Now that more people need help affording food, will food stamps lose their stigma?

Kate, the anonymous food stamp recipient, said she hopes so.

“I read the blogs and responses to articles in the paper, and there are people who write in and still have jobs who are pretty damn mean,” she said.

She has a theory about why.

“Some of it has to be driven by fear,” she said. “In the back of their minds, they are worried.”

April 27
Growth in food stamp allotment boosts economy

Humble food stamps may deliver the single biggest bang for the stimulus buck, boosting the economy by $1.73 for each dollar spent

Newsday.com (Long Island, NY)
Elizabeth Moore

It was not exactly a shock-and-awe moment when the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act entered the life of Mercy Haven driver Andrew Kurdziel this month.

Kurdziel, of Islip, who is disabled and lives in housing run by the mental health agency, saw his April food-stamp allotment grow from $176 to $200 as a result of the federal stimulus package approved in February. Every little bit helps, but the food stamps were still gone by mid-month, handed over to cashiers at his local ShopRite and Pathmark stores.

“It was like a pebble in an ocean,” said Kurdziel, who clips coupons and dines on chicken and canned tuna, but needs special foods for his diabetes.

Still, humble food stamps may deliver the single biggest bang for the stimulus buck, boosting the economy by $1.73 for each dollar spent, according to an analysis last year by Moody’s Economy.com. And that was just one of the places the money started to flow this month as the vast machinery of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act cranks into gear.

Some $1.8 billion had been spent in New York by the middle of this month, Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli said - $1.7 billion going to cover Medicaid costs for the state and counties.

And the first “shovel-ready” project in New York State got under way last Monday as work began on a culvert repair job in Steuben County, in the Finger Lakes region.

“We’re very happy to get that project,” said Jeff Hanlon, president of Slate Hill Constructors, a former Long Islander who put twice his planned crew on the project because he has so little else for them to do. The state last week solicited bids for Long Island’s first shovel-ready project, the reconstruction of Route 112 in Brookhaven.

That job, to be awarded June 4, is estimated to cost $56 million, but if Steuben is any guide, it may come in for less: Slate Hill bid $733,831 on the culvert job - 17 percent less than the $885,000 the state expected to pay, DiNapoli noted.

Meanwhile, there have been a flurry of meetings around the region as members of Congress and state officials explain the billions in federal funds still to come, and how to find and apply for them.

Some kinks remain.

At a green-jobs fair at Farmingdale State College last week, a representative of the federal Department of Energy explained that the agency has $400 million in discretionary energy efficiency block-grant money to give out, but hasn’t decided who can apply for it.

At the state Labor Department and its local investment boards, officials haven’t yet decided exactly how to connect “disconnected youth” and unemployed veterans with the businesses that will get tax credits for hiring them under the stimulus bill.

But state stimulus czar Timothy Gilchrist told business leaders gathered at a meeting hosted by Vision Long Island Friday that his recovery cabinet will soon supply many more details in a handbook to be published on the state’s Web site, economicrecovery.ny.gov.

“The governor wants us to get every dollar we can out of this program,” said Gilchrist, who oversees all stimulus spending for infrastructure and transportation.

Long Islanders may notice the boost in their food-stamp allotment less than residents of other parts of the country, which have a much lower cost of living but receive exactly the same food-stamp allotment, said Maria Dosso, spokeswoman for Nassau-Suffolk Law Services, a nonprofit that advocates for the poor.

“Obviously for some Americans it’s going to be a bigger deal than for others,” she said. “But everything helps. It’s made a difference.”

April 2
One in 10 Americans receiving food stamps

A record 32.2 million people — one in every 10 Americans — received food stamps at latest count, the government said on Thursday, a reflection of the recession now in its 16th month.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) Food stamps are the major U.S. antihunger program and help poor people buy groceries. The average benefit was $112.82 per person in January.

The January figure marks the third time in five months that enrollment set a record.

“A weakened economy means that many more individuals are turning to SNAP/Food Stamps,” said the Food Research and Action Center, an antihunger group, using the acronym for the renamed food stamp program, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.

The U.S. unemployment rate was 8.1 percent in February, the highest in 25 years. Weekly claims for jobless benefits totaled 669,000 last week, the highest in 26 years, the government said on Thursday.

Food stamp enrollment rose in all but four of the 50 states during January, said Agriculture Department figures. Vermont, Alaska and South Dakota had increases of more than 5 percent. Texas had the largest enrollment, 2.984 million, down 65,000, followed by California at 2.545 million, up 43,000, and New York with 2.211 million, up 37,000.

Food stamp benefits get a temporary 13 percent increase, beginning with this month, under the economic stimulus law signed by President Barack Obama. The increase equals $80 a month for a household of four.

Recent food stamp data

Month Enrollment

September 2008 31.587 million

October 2008 31.050 million

November 2008 31.097 million

December 2008 31.784 million

January 2009 32.205 million

(Reporting by Charles Abbott; Editing by Christian Wiessner)