Michelle Obama planted a WH vegetable garden to educate children about healthy eating. Unfortunately, hunger stats are dismal. A Feeding America report issued this week shows children’s hunger rate is 33% higher than adults, leaving more than 12 million children without adequate nutritious food.
Stats from prior years show hunger rates far worse when race is considered: 46% of African-American children & 40% of Latino children compared to 16% of white children. Native Americans had hunger rates 3 times higher (pdf file) than White Americans.
The economic crisis may spur many to follow Michelle’s lead by planting gardens. However, gardens remain a luxury not affordable or feasible in many urban and rural areas. We can change this by expanding the food stamp program to allow the purchase of fresh produce from the farmers’ markets that will be opening nationwide.
Access to fresh produce is important because our hunger crisis includes the silent hunger of malnutrition which is exacerbated by our economic, jobs and housing crises. Many Americans suffer from hunger even though they may be overweight, which strikes some as contrary to their own mental images of hunger associated with emaciated persons. This is the paradox of hunger and obesity (pdf file), which is caused by the need to buy cheaper foods with poorer nutritional values.
Michelle’s garden sends another message: Access to fresh produce can be used to eliminate food deserts. Food deserts are the lack of access to affordable, nutritious food due to the food infrastructure provided, particularly in low income communities:
In 2005, California had more than four times as many fast-food restaurants and conveniences stores as it did produce vendors and grocery stores. Such a dearth of eating options has turned many places in California -- especially low-income communities and communities of color -- into healthy food deserts.
The US will not have food justice for all until everyone has access to nutritious food. Not everyone has the means to grow their own organic garden to provide fresh, nutritious veggies. Not everyone has access to the common substitute of farmers’ markets.
Two things can be done to democratize healthy food. As Michael Pollen explains, our government subsidizes unhealthy food to make it cheaper than healthy food, which is just another component of the class wars of "rights" that exist only for those with money:
Much more has to be done to democratize the food movement. One of the reasons that healthy food is more expensive than unhealthy food is that the government supports unhealthy food and does very little to support healthy food, whether you mean organic or grass-fed or whatever. The incentives we have make processed food or fast food or junk food very cheap. I mean we subsidize high fructose corn syrup. We subsidize hydrogenated corn oil. We do not subsidize organic food. We subsidize these four crops—five altogether, but one is cotton—and these are the building blocks of fast food. One of the ways you democratize healthy food is you support healthy food.
Eliminating food deserts is another means to provide food justice. The problem is one of access to healthy food, particularly fresh fruits and vegetables, which can be difficult in cities as well as rural communities.
One way to eliminate or reduce food deserts is to expand government food programs, like food stamps, to include vouchers for farmer markets.
In recent years, the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children (or WIC) started paying for fresh fruits and vegetables. Previously, the "only produce WIC subsidized was carrots for breastfeeding women" even though the program is supposed to provide supplemental foods to low-income pregnant and breastfeeding women as well as infants up to 5 years old. The WIC Farmers Market Nutrition Program (FMNP) started as a pilot program in 1992 and now provides cash grants to states for farmers market programs. Last year, 45 states authorized 14,000 farmers and 2,700 farmers’ markets to participate in the program where FMNP coupons are used to buy "fresh, unprepared fruits, vegetables and herbs from farmers, farmers' markets or roadside stands that have been approved by the State agency to accept FMNP coupons."
The result is that WIC shoppers bought twice as much fresh produce than their counterparts shopping at supermarkets:
Farmers' markets are more critical to low-income people than is commonly recognized; in fact, a recent study in Los Angeles showed that low-income women who shopped at farmers' markets bought twice as much fresh produce as those who get their groceries at supermarkets. Tellingly, the women who participated in that study got $10 in vouchers per week—five times as much as the current monthly WIC produce allotment.
Communities have implemented measures to open access to fresh produce to food stamp users. The food stamp is now an electronic debit card that presented implementation issues for farmers’ markets based on cash purchases. The solution offered by some states is setting up a booth at the farmers’ market to allow the food stamp debit cards to essentially exchange electronic currency for wooden tokens that can be used at the individual booths just like cash. Food stamp users fill out a form at the booth to withdraw some money from their food stamp debit card to obtain wooden tokens equal to the amount of money withdrawn from the debit card. Then, the users can buy fresh produce at the individual booths with the wooden tokens instead of cash. Some communities offer these token booths not just for food stamp recipients, but also for credit card customers. Given that our society has made some feel embarrassed by the need to use food stamps, it is nice that the wooden tokens will not identify a person as a food stamp user.
The farmers’ market programs have been successful with farmers’ markets sprouting up in neighborhoods that previously were food deserts:
One way we've seen that works when we've experimented is that when we give people farmers market vouchers on the WIC [Women, Infants, and Children] program or food stamps, lo and behold, the farmers markets show up in those neighborhoods.
You talk to people here at Berkeley who run the ecology center and you say, "West Oakland, the first of the month there will be $15,000 worth of vouchers that can be spent in farmers markets": They'll be there. They'll set up the booths. The farmers will be there. It won't take long, either; it doesn't need a lot of infrastructure to build. That being said, one of the best things that Obama could do would be build 12-month farmers markets, especially in inner cities—that could be your legacy, those beautiful glass buildings you see in Barcelona or Reading Terminal Market in Philadelphia. This would be a wonderful way to make farmers markets a central part of these communities. It would drive economic development and local agriculture. And what happens around these neighborhoods is that you get all of these businesses sprouting up on the edges selling, you know, all kinds of groceries, or restaurants. Anywhere you go and you see a permanently located farmers market you will find economic redevelopment. You go all over Europe where they have these places—they're real economic engines.
However, the farmers’ market programs need to be expanded. For example, in Oregon, more than half of the farmers’ markets participate with WIC and ¼ accept food stamps. This is a good start, but we can do better to ensure fresh produce for all.
The dollar benefits also need to be raised:
The Federal food benefit level for FMNP recipients may not be less than $10 and no more than $30 per year, per recipient. However, State agencies may supplement the benefit level.
While the stats are dismal, we can end hunger now. It costs more to allow hunger to exist than to eliminate hunger. A study shows hunger costs the "American public at least $90 billion a year in charitable donations, reduced productivity and health care costs:"
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Those costs could be largely eliminated by boosting federal nutrition programs $10 billion to $12 billion a year, says lead author J. Larry Brown, a researcher at the Harvard School of Public Health.
Please donate to the Feeding America Summer Lunch Program today.
Or, if you would like to mail a check, send it to:
Feeding America
Philanthropic Programs
35 East Wacker Drive, Suite 2000
Chicago, IL 60601
This Weekend's Hunger Diarists:
Saturday (10 am EST): noweasels
Saturday (1 pm EST): TheFatLadySings
Saturday (4 pm EST): boatsie
Saturday (7 pm EST): Patriot Daily News Clearinghouse
Saturday (10 pm EST): Hardhat Democrat
Saturday (midnight overnight): jellybeardemmom
Sunday (10 am EST): rb137
Sunday (1 pm EST): Norbrook
Sunday (4 pm EST): srkp23
Sunday (7 pm EST): blue jersey mom
Sunday (10 pm EST): Timroff