10B
Friday, May 4, 1990 / University Dally Kansan
Chronic hunger growing,experts say
The Associated Press
Hunger is something that the United States has come to live with.
"In the same way that we have a football season, we now have a hunger season," said Nancy Amidel, a Washington, D.C., activist. "It begins with Worlthunger Day. We help people with hunger, with a big orgy of stories about feeding huge meals at Christmas time."
The season ends, but hunger continues. And after eight years of economic improvement, those who pitched in to help their neighbors through an emergency now find themselves in a curious position.
In a nation of supermarkets and surpluses, they are forging careers in food banks and soup kitchens.
"We need to show up for work in Birkent stocks and blue jeans. Now we're talking pension plans and retirement and transferring from
one part of the country to another as food bankers," said Catherine D'Amate, director of the Western Massachusetts Food Bank.
No one knows how many people face chronic hunger in the United States. The Harvard-based Physician Task Force on Hunger in America estimated in 1985 that 20 million people were going hungry at least some days of every month. A Louis Harris poll at about the same time concluded that a minimum of 21 million people were going hungry.
The federal government disputed the findings but has released no number.
The Food Resource and Action Center (FRAC), the nation's leading hunger research and advocacy group, is conducting a nationwide study of childhood hunger. Based on its findings, FRAC believes that 8 million to 9 million children either are hungry or are at risk of going
hungry
Even though the United States has a well-developed system for carrying food from farms to markets, the 1980s saw the development of a grass-roots, anti-hunger effort to create a second distribution network. By conservative estimates, more than 20,000 food banks, soup kitchens, food pantries, church groups, community action programs and civic organizations have helped deliver food since 1982.
In an era of lower wages, higher housing costs and shrinking public programs, there is no doubt that private, non-profit food programs have become lifelines for many people.
Daniel Starling/KANSAN
But for some advocates, the crisis-driven effort of the '80s is giving way to new doubts in the '90s about whether emergency services that seem all too permanent really are the answer.
Two of Kansas City's homeless, known only as Jim and Diane, live alone on the streets without money or jobs but together they walk a few blocks to eat a free meal at a local mission.
To many people, soup kitchens are reassuring evidence of the nation's humanity, proof that the private sector — the thousand points of light — is willing to shoulder its share of the burden.
Such programs intercept millions of pounds of food that otherwise would be wasted and make it available to people who need it. In the process, they focus attention on hunger and provide people a means of addressing it, as donors, fund-raisers or volunteers.
In some cases, informal private programs offer more humane treatment than bureaucratic public programs. For those on society's fringes, the programs provide social contact along with meals or groceries. They also bring together people who otherwise might fall through gaps in the government's safety net, making it possible for social scientists to document the extent of the problem.
"Federal programs are designed to be of great assistance, but the government cannot not it all," said Rep. Bill Emmerson, R-Mo., the ranking minority member of the House and a cultural champion of private-sector initiatives. "It think it should do what it needs to do, what it can do."
Spending on food assistance makes up about 2 percent of the federal budget, according to FRAC.
Congress is considering a bill to spend an additional $2.3 billion for food programs during the next three years. The Mickey Leland Memorial Domestic Hunger Relief Act, named for the Texas congressman who died while investigating hunger in Ethiopia last year, would be the
Most of the increase would benefit the Food Stamp Program, described by FRAC as "our best and most humane line of defense against hunger."
largest anti-hunger initiative since 1977.
As written, the bill also provides increases of $70 million in each of the next two fiscal years for the commodities program known as TEFAP (Temporary Emergency Food Assistance Program).
This temporary, emergency program began eight years ago and was formalized in 1933 as the Reagan administration began using nonfat cheese to make butter and cheese acquired under the dairy price-program program.
Along with reducing stockplies — the primary objective — TEFAP also played a key role in expanding the non-profit food network.
Critics call it a poorly targeted handout program lacking nutritional goals. Supporters point to the delivery of 4.5 billion pounds of food, much more than the traditional feeding programs otherwise largely dependent upon food industry waste.
The Mickey Leland bill also continues through 1995 current financing levels of $32 million a year for private soup kitchens, which will still be necessary despite increased public spending.
"The nation will not see a major difference in terms of soup and bread lines." Brown said. "Food stamps will reach more people and last a longer time than the out of food stamps because the basic level is so inadequate to begin with."
Brown and others worry that nonprofit programs are becoming a way for the government to hand off responsibility permanently.
Many of today's federal nutrition programs — food stamps, Women, Infants and Children (WIC), school lunches and breakfasts, and senior nutrition — were started or expanded in the early 1960s. Domestically invested in the late 1960s. Within a decade, domestic hunger had been greatly reduced.
But during the 80s, spending cuts dramatically diminished the scope of these and other safety net programs, at a time when high unemployment, a downscaling of wages, and rapidly rising housing costs left millions of people below the poverty line.
The epidemic returned.
"A thousand points of light do not hold a candle to well-managed and adequately funded public programs. The main argument for not improving these programs and stamping out domestic hunger is a financial one —
Glossary of terms used in hunger aid
The Associated Press
The following is a glossary of terms commonly used to refer to non-profit agencies, private initiation programs and related programs in higher relief.
FOOD BANKS are non-profit community organizations that collect surplus commodities from the government and edible but often unmarketable foods from private industry for use by non-profit charities, institutions and feeding programs at nominal cost.
SECOND HARVEST is a national food banking network to which the majority of food banks belong. Its 200 member food banks comprise the largest charitable feeding program in the nation.
SOUP KITCHENES are small feeding operations attached to existing organizations such as churches, civic groups or non-profit agencies that serve prepared meals that are consumed on-site. Soup kitchens generally do not require clients to prove need or show identification. FOOD PANTRIES usually are attached existing non-profit businesses. They must supply bodies of groceries to people experiencing food emergencies. Foods distributed by pantries are prepared and consumed elsewhere. Referrals or proof of need often are required. There are roughly two food pantries to every soup kitchen.
TEMPERARY EMERGENCY
FOOD ASSISTANCE PROGRAM
transfers surplus government
commodities to states and localities
for distribution by non-profit
agencies to the needy.
FOOD STAMPS are the government's premier nutrition program, reaching 19 million U.S. citizens a month, half of them children. Unlike private, emergency programs, food stamps enable recipients to buy food in supermarkets. Food stamp benefits average 57 cents a person for each meal, with a maximum of about 40 cents. Food stamps are an enrollment program, meaning everyone who meets eligibility requirements is entitled to participate. But recent studies indicate that only 40 to 60 percent of those who are eligible actually participate in the program.
WOMEN, INFANTS AND CHILDREN is a federal program that provides nutritious supplements to pregnant women and new mothers, infants and children up to age 5. Studies have shown WIC to be effective in preventing low birthweight and infant mortality, and in encouraging low-income women to receive prenatal care. WIC is not an entitlement program. Only about half of those eligible are being served, primarily due to inadequate financing.
that priorities must be set for government spending in the face of the budget deficit," said Rob Fersh, FRAC's executive director.
If emergency food programs represent a gain for the poor, that's acceptable, said sociologist Janet Poppendieck, director of the Center for the Study of Family Policy at the University of Chicago. "The begin to substitute, either for individuals or at the level of public policy, they're destructive."
The New York City Interfaith Hunger Task Force in 1987-88 found many non-profit agencies serving substantial numbers who might have been eligible for public assistance but were 'not adequately or consistently informed of their availability.' Some ineligibility and delay benefits
resulted from "bureaucratic inertia."
Only 12 percent of 1,970 clients surveyed in 1987 at New York food pantries were experiencing actual emergencies.
Massive cuts in food stamps are a major factor behind the long lines at soup kitchens and food pantries. Between 1982 and 1985, the program lost $7 billion, 13 percent of its budget.
Benefits average less than 57 cents per person per meal and reach 19 million people a month, only about 8% of them were provided for them. Participation dropped from 68 out of 100 people at or below poverty in 1980, to 59 out of 100 in 1985.
See HUNGER, p. 11
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