Tag Archives: hunger in the U.S.

Heifer to Participate in 2011 Little Rock Healthy Food Summit

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Perry Jones talks about Heifer’s role in the summit.

This September 28-29, Heifer International, the City of Little Rock and Little Rock Serves will present the 2011 Little Rock Healthy Food and Active Living Summit, hosted by Philander Smith College. Today, on the rotunda steps of Little Rock’s City Hall, Mayor Mark Stodola announced Little Rock’s continued commitment through the summit to focusing on increased access to affordable, nutritious foods.
The summit will bring together national and local thought leaders, including our own USA Country Program Director Perry Jones, for panels and presentations on topics like:

  • Developing and Implementing Local Food Shed Policies that will Lead to Improved Food Access;
  • Social Justice and Food Access;
  • Recruiting Full Service Grocery: Tools for Attracting Healthy Food Retail to Underserved Neighborhoods;
  • Why Breastfeeding, Baby’s First Food, is a Critical Health Issue in Arkansas;
  • Why Race and Place a in Community Health; and
  • Community Organizing Strategies for Food Policy Change.
Keynote Speakers will include  Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius; Deputy Director of PolicyLink Mary Lee, JD; Surgeon General for the State of Arkansas and Director of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Center to Prevent Childhood Obesity Joseph W. Thompson, MD, MPH; and Tyler Norris, social entrepreneur. 
I’m excited to attend the (free!) summit, and I’m glad Heifer is joining the conversation. Though our name says “International,” we must recognize the poverty in our own backyard. There are children and families in our local community and state who don’t get enough healthy food to eat. Many factors contribute to this sad situation, so I think it’s good we have so many voices coming to the table at the summit. Hunger and poverty are solvable problems, especially in a state as fertile as Arkansas.

Read more:
Record High Poverty Numbers in the U.S.

Poverty and Children in the United States
A Deeper Look at Child Poverty in the United States
Posts on local food

Record High Poverty Numbers in the U.S.

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With a new report about poverty in America out this week, our discussion of the situation is far from over. Just a month ago we were discussing how 1 in 5 children were living in poverty in the U.S. This week the U.S. Census Bureau released its report that stated 46.2 million people were living in poverty in 2010.  The nation’s poverty increased to 15.1 percent in 2010 up from 14.3 percent in 2009. According to the bureau this is the highest level of poverty since 1993.
Around 2.6 million people slipped below the poverty line in 2010, which is defined by an income of $22,314 for a family of four. In the U.S. regions, the South was the only area to show statistically significant increases in both the poverty rate and the number in poverty.  
The three states with the highest poverty rates were Mississippi, Louisiana and Georgia.  Mississippi had the highest percentage of poor people at 22.7 percent. At the lowest end was New Hampshire with 6.6 percent. 
Other statistics from the report include:
  •  Households that have “doubled up” (additional adult) rose to 21.8 million, up 2 million since 2007.
  • Working-age people between 18 and 64 saw a rise in poverty to 13.7 percent from 12.9 percent last year. 
  • Black poverty climbed to 27.4 percent from 25.8 percent in 2009, and Latino poverty reached 26.6 percent, up from 25.3 percent in 2009.

With nearly 1 in 6 Americans living in poverty and millions still struggling what do you think it will take for the U.S. to recover?                                                                                                 

A Deeper Look at Child Poverty in the United States

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At Heifer International, we talk quite a bit about the families who are stuck in the cycle of poverty and what we’re doing to help them get out of that cycle. And though we don’t often think about it in the United States, this land of plenty and opportunity, there are families facing the exact same cycle of problems.
Maegan has already provided an overview of the report published by the Annie E. Casey Foundation on child poverty, but I want to dive a little deeper into the numbers presented.
The report highlights that the 2011 federal poverty level is $22,350 a year for a family of four. But research suggests that to meet their basic needs, families actually need an income of roughly twice the official poverty level. It would be the first step to breaking cyclic poverty.
To help children grow into successful, productive adults, their parents need good jobs with good incomes, stable housing, affordable childcare and health care, and enough assets to build a more prosperous future.
Here are some other, jaw-dropping statistics straight from the report:
  • In this country, children born to parents in the lowest fifth of the income scale are quite likely (42 percent) to end up there as adults.
  • At age four, children who live in very low-income families are 18 months behind the developmental norm for their age, and by age 10, the gap is still present.
  • 7.7 million children remain uninsured, along with nearly 12 million parents with children under age 18.
  • Almost 11 percent of the nation’s children had at least one unemployed parent in 2010, affecting nearly 8 million children.

 But the finding that affected us here at Heifer was this: that the states in the South and Appalachia dominate the lower-ranking states. The 10 states with the lowest Overall Rank in terms of child well-being are all located in these regions.
Why did it have such an effect on us? Because that’s where Heifer USA will be implementing programs going forward. We can help change these numbers. Learn more about our work in the United States here.

Hunger in America

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Photo from Flickr/StevenBrisson. Creative Commons.
“Hunger in America is complicated. It’s not just getting enough food, but getting the right food — and making the right choices.”
That’s the premise of a two-part NPR story on hunger and poverty in America. The author spends time with the Williamsons, a Pennsylvania family of five who live below the poverty line. As they exhibit, hunger not a simple issue. The Williamsons’ 8-year-old son, for example, looks chubby, but the calories he consumes are not nutritious. Why? Because those empty, nutrition-scarce calories (i.e., junk food) are cheaper than healthier foods.
“You can get leaner cuts of meat, but then they’re more expensive,” [Connie Williamson] says. “You can get fresh fruit every couple of days and blow half of your budget on fresh fruits and vegetables in a week’s time, easy.”

But, you argue, wouldn’t a garden with fresh vegetables solve everything? The Williamsons live in an apartment complex, and yet they still do find a place for a small garden. But a garden doesn’t balance out the cheap, sugary snacks and drinks available to kids.
All of this is part of a larger trend of food insecurity, especially among children. The number of children living in households where getting enough food to eat was a challenge hit a staggering 17 million in 2008, a more than 30 percent jump, year-over-year, according to NPR.
So what are the poor in America to do? Should they refrain from buying the empty calories, even though that’s what is available in their price range? Should kids be learning better eating habits at school as well as at home? Or have healthy, whole foods become a status symbol, only available to those who live in the right areas and with enough money?

Beyond Local

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Photo from Flickr/acnatta. Creative Commons.

We’ve all heard the mantras, seen the bumper stickers, puzzled over the portmanteaus–”Buy local,” “locavores,” “glocal.” But what if local is not the simple solution we’ve been told? What if eating locally, in some instances, can compromise your access to fresh food or unnecessarily skew market prices? That’s the premise of a recent post at the Atlantic by Barry Estabrook, former contributing editor at Gourmet magazine. Estabrook writes:
“It has all but become an article of faith that sourcing food locally is the most sustainable alternative to our current global food production system. But there is a growing body of evidence that local may be only part of the answer.

“Speaking at the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Cooking for Solutions event last week, Richard Pirog, the associate director of the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture at Iowa State University, said larger regional food economies might be the solution.”
This approach–eating regionally, or within one’s watershed–is an idea long explored by Heifer International. In a fall 2009 article in “The Exchange” newsletter (PDF), Arthur Getz Escudero took a look at Heifer’s efforts, particularly in North America, and introduced many of us to a new term: the “foodshed.”