Fewer Hungry People Nationwide, But More in DC

Feeding America’s new Map the Meal report delivers some moderately good news about food insecurity for the nation as a whole. Contrariwise for the District of Columbia.

In 2010, the national food insecurity rate, i.e., the percent of people who couldn’t always afford to buy enough food for themselves and their families, dropped a bit — 16.1%, as compared to 16.6% in 2009.

This means that about 13.3 million fewer people didn’t struggle with hunger. Moderately good news only because more than 48.8 million still did.

As in 2009, 55% of food insecure people had household incomes below 130% of the federal poverty line — the standard cut-off for food stamp eligibility and free school meals.*

An additional 16% of food insecure people had incomes below the maximum set for WIC (the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children) and reduced-price school meals.

Using a methodology that’s too complex to summarize, Feeding America calculated the average amount it would cost to fill what it calls the meal gap, i.e., the total food budget shortfall.

The standard used for the meal costs was one of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Thrifty Food plans. So filling the gap, in this report, means meals that are reasonably well-balanced and cheap.

Nationwide, we could have filled the gap for somewhat less than $21.2 billion — a mere $2.52 per meal.

The story is wholly different for District residents.

Between 2009 and 2010, the food insecurity rate rose by 0.7%. So while the local food insecurity rate was lower than the national in 2009, it was higher in 2010 — 16.5%.

The raw number of food insecure residents rose to 99.490 — an increase of 6,310 over 2009.

At the same time, the percent of food insecure residents eligible for the major federally-funded food assistance programs dropped from 63% to 45% — or by about 13,900 poor and near-poor people.

In other words, the District made significant progress at the low end of the income scale. But above 200% of the federal poverty line, the number increased by more than 20,200.

I find this big uptick rather puzzling.

The average meal cost, as Feeding America calculates it, is considerably higher than nationwide — $3.41 per meal. But that’s what it was the year before also.

And New York City, where the average meal cost is even higher, has a much lower percent of food insecure residents above the cut-off for food assistance programs — even though the cut-off is lower there.

This much is sure. And it’s a point Feeding America wants to make generally. A whole lot of food insecure people can get no relief from hunger except from nonprofit dining rooms and food pantries.

In the District, it’s well over half of all food insecure residents — 54,720 in 2010.

Food prices have increased and are expected to go even higher. Housing costs are rising. And I don’t have to say anything about petrol, do I?

Nor about the unemployment rate, which here in the District is still well over 9%. A tough job market. And long-term unemployment benefits that will nevertheless shrink.

So our nonprofit food services — and the Capital Area Food Bank that helps supply them — will be sorely pressed to keep up with rising needs.

They’ll need all the help they can get from TEFAP (the Emergency Food Assistance Program), which provides free frozen, processed and packaged foods that go through food banks to direct providers.

How much help they’ll get is an open question.

The Senate Agriculture Appropriations Subcommittee has approved the maximum authorized for ongoing TEFAP food purchases, plus about the same for storage and distribution as the program is getting now.

The House of Representatives, however, seems bound and determined to pass a budget below the level agreed to last August.

For its Agriculture Appropriations Subcommittee, this means a cap about $1.4 billion lower than what the Senate subcommittee worked with.

House appropriators — and ultimately the Republican majority as a whole — chose to cut TEFAP by $48 million last year. But they ultimately agreed to the higher figure the Senate wanted.

One can only hope that Senate negotiators hang tough again, if needs be. And need be likely for TEFAP as well as many other safety net programs.

* Recall that many states and the District have availed themselves of a legal — and endangered — option to enroll households with somewhat higher incomes.

Acute Food Needs Now Monthly Events For More Than Three Million U.S. Households

Food pantry visits are becoming “the new normal,” reports Feeding America, the country’s largest charitable food distribution organization.

The “new normal” here refers to a shift in the role food pantries play in helping low-income people feed themselves and their families.

People used to seek help from food pantries when they had what Feeding America refers to as “temporary acute food needs.”

Now, it says, a majority of clients use pantries “as part of their long-term strategies to supplement monthly food shortfalls.” In other words, “acute food needs” aren’t occasional emergencies. They’re regular, foreseeable events.

Feeding America has come to this conclusion by analyzing client responses to a survey it conducted in 2009.

According to the new analysis:

• More than half (54%) of the clients surveyed had used a pantry for at least six months during the past year.
• More than a third of them (36%) had used a pantry at least once a month during the past year.
• These frequent users reported using a pantry for, on average, more than 28 consecutive months.

We learn two different, perhaps related facts about these recurrent and/or frequent pantry clients.

First, 58% of them received SNAP (food stamp) benefits — another clear indication that the benefits often don’t cover the costs of a month’s worth of food.

Second, a disproportionate number of recurrent users were seniors. One out of three of all recurrent users was 60 or older. And 56% of them were long-term recurrent users.

This too sheds some light on the food stamp program.

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s latest report on SNAP participation trends, only 34% of eligible seniors, i.e., those at least 60 years old, were enrolled in Fiscal Year 2009. This is 38% lower than for the eligible population as a whole.

The low participation rate for seniors continues a long-term trend. Studies have produced a variety of explanations, summarized by the Food Research and Action Center in a broader review of research on access and access barriers to getting food stamps.

Some of the barriers deter participation by other groups as well, e.g., the stigma attached to “welfare,” complex applications processes, difficulties in getting to a food stamp office, long waiting times once there, the need to go back and wait recurrently to again prove eligibility.

But one barrier stands out for seniors in particular. They decide the hassles just aren’t worth the small amount they can get.

USDA’s recently-released report on the characteristics of SNAP households shows that, for most, the benefits are truly small.

Of the fewer than 2.9 million seniors who got food stamps in 2010, 80% lived alone. Their average monthly benefit was $119 — or about $1.30 per meal.

This might explain why some low-income seniors decide to rely on their own scarce resources, supplemented by free food from a friendly pantry rather than cope with the hassles involved in getting food stamps.

Also why seniors who do get food stamps would have to develop an anti-hunger strategy that includes regular visits to a pantry.

Young and old food pantry clients alike face greater risks of hunger in the months to come.

As Feeding America notes, food prices are rising. Food companies are adopting new efficiencies and thus have less surplus to donate.

Bad economic times have reduced charitable donations from other sources. Also triggered cutbacks in funding by some state and local governments.

And to top it all, Congress has cut funding for the Emergency Food and Shelter Program by 40%, leaving $80 million less for local homeless services programs, including food pantries.

The House of Representatives has approved a $63 million cut for TEFAP (the Emergency Food Assistance Program), which provides about 25% of the foods that Feeding America’s food bank partners distribute to emergency providers like pantries.

Maybe hope for TEFAP in the Senate, though ultimately the House would have to back down.

Still and all, “the beginning of the ‘perfect storm,’” as Feeding America says.

New Insights Into Food Insecurity In The U.S.

Feeding America’s Map the Meal Gap report takes studies of food insecurity to the next level. It’s a unique, multi-faceted presentation of the problem that points to changes needed in both poverty measurement and federal anti-hunger policy.

The gap in the title refers to the estimated number of additional meals that people who said they couldn’t always afford to eat would have if they did. The methodology used to calculate the gap is somewhat complicated. So I’ll just refer those interested to the executive summary.

The map is online and interactive, with different shades of green indicating different food insecurity rates in counties across the U.S.

Mouse over it and you get statewide food insecurity rates, based on the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s food security report for 2009.

But that’s only the beginning. You also get:

• The number of food insecure people.
• The percentages of food insecurity in three different income bands based on eligibility ceilings for food stamps and for some other federal nutrition assistance programs like WIC.
• The additional funds that would have been needed to provide everyone with enough to eat in 2009.
• The average cost of a meal, based on USDA’s Thrifty Food Plan — the market basket used to determine food stamp benefits.

And you can get these data in print-out form for every county and food bank service area in the country. Coming soon, I understand, will be the same data for each Congressional district.

All this detail yields some important insights.

• Food insecurity is everywhere — not just in the states or areas within states that we’re accustomed to thinking of as poor.
• A large percentage of food insecure people aren’t eligible for federal nutrition assistance programs — a nationwide average of 29% in 2009.
• People may be food insecure even with food stamps in part because the Thrifty Food Plan market basket costs considerably more in some places than the average nationwide.
• For somewhere around $22 billion a year we could provide everyone in the country with enough to eat.

The state and county-level information should help policymakers target their efforts. Also advocates, the  network of food banks that Feeding America supplies and the pantries, dining rooms and other programs that get food from the banks.

There are also several lessons — most not new — for policymakers at the federal level.

First off, we urgently need a final, more realistic poverty measure. How can a family be well above the federal poverty line if they can’t afford enough to eat?

But the new poverty measure shouldn’t just be, as now envisioned, an alternative tool for analysis and program assessment. It should be used to define income eligibility criteria for public assistance like food stamps.

Yes, this would be politically dicey. But there’s something fundamentally wrong when more than 14.5 million food insecure people couldn’t qualify for federal food assistance because they were too far above the poverty line that will still be used as a cut-off when the new measure is published.

Yet even many people in the food stamp program now report food insecurity. The latest USDA figures are yet more evidence that the way food stamp benefits are calculated should be changed.

The Food Research and Action Center has recommended ditching the Thrifty Food Plan in favor of USDA’s lowest-cost food budget for normal use. Also cutting the time lag for the annual inflation adjustment so that benefits don’t reflect food prices from as much as 16 months earlier.

Even these relatively modest changes would entail some additional costs. But if the Feeding America meal-gap closing figure is anywhere in the ballpark, the funds needed would be a miniscule fraction of the total federal budget.

Most immediately, Congress should restore at least the $2.2 billion it took from the food stamp budget last December, as the President’s Fiscal Year 2012 budget for USDA proposes.

Recall that this would still leave the program shy the $11.9 billion that was cut to help pay for last summer’s whittled-down jobs bill.

Will Congress take this minimal step to keep more people from going hungry? Your guess is as good as mine.

But given the current spending cut battle on Capitol Hill, the prospects don’t look rosy.

Emergency Food Providers Short On Supplies

The Emergency Food Assistance Program (TEFAP) is one of the lesser known but important parts of our safety net. In fact, I knew virtually nothing about it until I started working on this posting.

Thanks to the ‘net, I’ve learned how something I’ve long opposed–agricultural price supports–is linked to something I deeply care about–ensuring that poor people have enough to eat. Organizations representing these seemingly disparate interests have come together because TEFAP urgently needs additional funds.

Here’s the story.

Under TEFAP, the U.S. Department of Agriculture distributes food commodities to states, which then distribute them to food banks and/or directly to emergency food providers like soup kitchens and pantries. Feeding America, which networks food banks across the country, says that TEFAP provides a steady stream of foods to the banks–often the most nutritious foods they distribute to hungry people.

USDA purchases some of the commodities with an annual appropriation that’s linked to the costs of the Thrifty Food Plan–the agency’s lowest-cost estimate of a nutritionally-adequate market basket. It also distributes so-called bonus commodities, i.e., foods it buys to support producers’ prices when supply exceeds demand.

In Fiscal Year 2009, the regular TEFAP appropriation provided $250 million for food purchases. The economic recovery act added $150 million. And states got about $400 million in bonus commodities.

For Fiscal Year 2010, the regular appropriation for food purchases dropped to $248 million due to the dip in food prices. An additional $60 million was appropriated specifically for cheese and other dairy. (Do we perceive a successful lobbying effort here?)

So it seems that funds for regular commodity purchases are down by $92 million. Restrictions on how USDA can use certain carryover funds mean that bonus commodity donations could drop to less than $200 million.

Meanwhile, the recession has strained the capacities of food banks and the providers they serve. A September 2009 Feeding America survey found that:

• More than half of the 176 participating food banks or the agencies that help them distribute food had had to turn people away.
• About 78% of the food banks or their partner agencies had to reduce the amount of food they distributed or the frequency of distributions.
• For 91% of the food banks, unemployment was a critical factor in increasing the need for emergency food.

When the survey was conducted, the unemployment rate was 9.8%. It was just one-tenth of a percent lower in January and expected to peak at 10.5%-11% in the third quarter of this fiscal year. Last month 6.3 million people had been jobless for at least 27 weeks–900,000 more than in September.

So there’s every reason to believe that needs for emergency food assistance have already increased and will increase further before the Fiscal Year 2011 budget kicks in.

The organizations mentioned above are calling on the House and Senate Agriculture Appropriations Committees to increase Fiscal Year 2010 funding for TEFAP by $250 million.

If I’ve got the math right, this would still leave food banks with less in food commodities from USDA than they had last year. But it would minimize the emergency in emergency food assistance programs and give a boost to farmers too.