November 6, 2007
The Hunger Problem Problem
By Tom Ryan
Nearly two-thirds (64 percent) of Americans believe the U.S. hunger problem has worsened in the last year, in part due to rising food and fuel prices, according to a survey sponsored by Hormel Foods Corporation and America’s Second Harvest.
While 63 percent blame the economy for the problem, ethanol was also named as a major cause. The internet survey found that more than half (53 percent) of the 807 respondents indicated that governmental subsidies to make ethanol from corn will help reduce the U.S.’s dependence on foreign oil, but 47 percent opposed these subsidies because they will likely raise food prices.
Almost all acknowledged that food prices have risen during the past year, with half saying they have gone up a lot. Six of ten said they had to cut back on the quantity or quality of food they buy.
Seventeen percent said they or someone in their family had received food from a charity organization in the past year. In the past month, 13 percent said they or someone in their family had gone to bed hungry.
The survey showed that Americans are split on how to solve the hunger problem. Fifty-two percent believe the best way to reduce hunger would be for companies and wealthy individuals to be more generous; 48 percent believe the best way would be for the federal government to fund programs for the hungry. Sixty-four percent believe that money is not the sole solution.
“There is no one solution to ending hunger in America,” said Vicki Escarra, president and chief executive of America’s Second Harvest, the largest food recovery and rescue organization in the United States. “By sharing responsibility and taking ownership of the problem, America’s Second Harvest and our partners are making great strides in the fight to end hunger.”
The organization’s “Mission partners” are: ConAgra Foods, Kraft, Kroger, The Pampered Chef, The Starr Foundation, Supervalu and Wal-Mart.
“Ending hunger is not only a moral imperative, it is an attainable goal,” said Jeffrey Ettinger, chairman, president and chief executive of Hormel Foods.
Discussion questions: Do you think hunger is becoming a bigger problem in America, especially given rising food prices? What industry-led programs have you seen make a particularly positive impact on the problem? What other solutions offer promise in reducing hunger?
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Not to be the second cynical voice and besmirch the good work of many charities, but this “survey” seems a bit sensationalistic and self serving: if you want the answer (as to whether hunger is increasing), ask people directly, not what they think is going on with others (you don’t measure unemployment by asking people if their neighbors are out of work).
As for access to affordable food in (poor) rural and inner-city areas, I think one of the big problems is (lack of) transportation: if you can’t get a ride to that super-center twenty miles away–especially in the balmy Wisconsin winter–it doesn’t matter how cheap the bananas are!
Food stamps are the #1 most effective hunger fighting tool. Not only do poor folks benefit directly, but so do supermarkets, bodegas, and grocery stores, which further benefit the poor. In certain neighborhoods, food stamp purchases can be 10% to 20% of a grocery store’s sales. If those customers had no food stamps, those groceries would be out of business, so prices at the surviving groceries would be higher. Food stamps subsidize farmers large and small, grocers large and small, as well as the poor. Indirectly, food stamps also subsidize low wage businesses of all types, allowing their workers to eat better without getting paid more.
Yes, I believe hunger is a growing problem in the U.S. and I believe it will get worse over the next decade for any number of reasons. Second Harvest has obviously done a good job–as far as it goes–but to eliminate hunger on a long-term basis you need to attack the underpinnings of poverty–poor education, lack of sustainable employment, access to quality health care and affordable housing. If we don’t address the core issues responsible for creating hunger in the first place, all we have to look forward to are longer and longer bread lines.
The truth is, the wave of prosperity that benefited so many of us erased a large chunk of sustainable lower-middle and middle class opportunity. We can’t have an entire nation of computer geeks and CEOs. Somebody has got to start thinking about the people Bill Clinton used to call “the walking around folks.” They’re the new poor and helping them will reduce the size of the permanent U.S. underclass.
These results are just plain confusing. The more I read them, the more I become worried about what type of country we live in and the perception people living in it have of those around them. It’s just plain disturbing!
Just consider the contradiction in the following: “The survey showed that Americans are split on how to solve the hunger problem. Fifty-two percent believe the best way to reduce hunger would be for companies and wealthy individuals to be more generous; 48 percent believe the best way would be for the federal government to fund programs for the hungry. Sixty-four percent believe that money is not the sole solution.” Make sense? Not to me.
Consider this: “Seventeen percent said they or someone in their family had received food from a charity organization in the past year. In the past month, 13 percent said they or someone in their family had gone to bed hungry. There was a time in this country when this just simply wouldn’t happen–period. Family and neighbors cared for one another. Today, we don’t know them. If we as a society don’t care enough about our own families, how can we care for our neighbor? Or, care for ourselves for that matter? Maybe that’s what we’ve been doing too much of–maybe?
We are at a point where the funding from all sources thrown at this issue is staggering. So the perception is that money won’t solve the problem, right? Yet, companies and the rich should be more generous? The government should fund a solution? I think the proper response to that is “been there, done that.” If this is really the level of issue as portrayed, doing the same that has been done for 50 years or more when our society gave up, it may be time to consider something novel.
How about sharing something with someone that you know is hungry? Apparently from the results, so many know where the problem is, yet they expect it to be solved by someone else. My daughter taught my wife and I a lot when she began to ask for an extra apple or another bag of cut vegetables when she knew someone didn’t have a lunch or was truly hungry. Maybe we should look to our kids for the solution, because obviously our elders and ourselves have been miserable failures.
It seems to me as not to be an issue as to whether or not people or corporations can give, as to whether or not we are giving rightly. An honest look might say, probably not.
Remember the sayings of those calling out in distress, that if we can send a man to the moon, we certainly can end poverty and hunger? A man walked on the moon 38 years ago. Scientists, engineers and perseverance did that. It was a nation with a passion to succeed. During that same time, it was an era of building the ‘Great Society’. Did we build it? Is it what was imagined at the time? A shining city on the hill that others hoped for? It could be in many ways, yet not in others. We still have work to do. The right work.
We talked yesterday about the issue of food labeling and the presidential campaign. Where is the call to rise to a higher level and solve the hunger issue? It’s certainly an issue requiring our innovation and passion – far more important and worthy than genetic labeling.
Sorry to be cynical but, when’s the last time you saw a malnourished individual in your area? Based on observation in the greater New York area, hunger is not even an issue for street people. This country has many problems, including an obesity problem, but hunger is not one of them.
Now, switching to the global scale where it seems 20% of the population has no idea where tomorrow’s meal will come from…there you can find a hunger problem.
In the USA, I don’t believe hunger is a result of food prices. Food is cheap in this country–dirt cheap. The greatest industry lead program to solve this problem is the opening of Aldi stores and to a lesser extent, Wal-Mart Supercenters and Save-a-Lot. What the government hands out in food stamps, a person or family can eat like a king buying their food at Aldi. We have a convenience store here in Wisconsin called Kwik Trip that sells high quality bananas, potatoes, and onions for 29 cents a pound every day. That means you can get 20 pounds of produce for less than $6. Bakery thrift shops sell bread for 50 cents a loaf. We have one bakery thrift shop that runs specials where you can get about $50 of retail value for $12.50. That is a lot of carbs to keep someone from starving. A person could easily survive on $10 per week spent on food in this country. Even the dollar menu at McDonald’s will provide a significant amount of calories for a minimal price. Schools provide free breakfast and lunch to low income students, often even during the summer months. The Salvation Army near my house gives away loaves of bread just for the asking. I don’t want to sound mean but when I see people who are using food stamps, they don’t look like they’ve missed too many meals.
Mark raises an interesting argument, but as a longtime inner city resident let me make some observations about food stamps. First, they are a form of currency, often sold at discount in exchange for cash, drugs or other street goodies. Second, my experience in Detroit is that many of the stores that cater to food stamp recipients (at least in the central city) couldn’t charge more for groceries without risking their owners’ immortal souls. I pay roughly half of what I used to pay for food now that I live in an affluent suburb with upscale grocers selling to foodies. I’m also not sure that, “…allowing their workers to eat better without getting paid more,” is really a formula for reducing hunger. How about creating jobs that pay a living wage so people can purchase their own food and not need subsidies or handouts?
We waste more food in this country than all the rest of the world combined. Restaurants throw away billions of lbs. of food every year, and that is their policy. Instead of saving the daily prep, e.g. steamed vegs,, cornbread and precooked daily specials, they throw it in the dumpster at night, rather than working with a local soup kitchen for pick up the next day. My little store gives a vanload of food every week to the local soup kitchen. It’s a small sacrifice, giving the poor all of your slightly blemished produce, 2-day old baked goods, homemade salads, and some outcoded hot dogs. We don’t throw anything away, and all of the chip and cookie vendors drop off their stale food at the store so we can add to the amount given each week. It took some talking with all of my vendors, and they were glad to give the stuff to me, rather than literally throwing it in the dumpster out back.
Common sense, and a policy in each store of giving up the produce and baked goods you normally would mark-down would be smart for the store owner, and good for the less fortunate.
Besides….. selling only fresh goods, prevents customers from expecting mark-downs in the deli-bakery, by waiting that extra day. It is a passion of our family history in the business to give back what we can, and this is one of the best things we ever did. I’ve sat with these folks at the soup kitchen, and let me say, it’s incredible to see the joy a poor person gets from eating some day old baked goods, and some homemade soup from all the produce and meats we donated.
Food stamps are nice, but there is no accountability for what they buy. Instead of pot roast with potatoes, many of them buy Stouffers pizzas, and snack style microwave foods, which does not stretch their limited budgets. Can we police that??? I think not, but we as stores can start giving up our markdown goods, and serve our communities in a positive way 52 weeks a year. Remember…the poor are hungry daily, not just around the holidays.
I find it hard to believe there is a growing hunger problem in this country when obesity (and related complications such as high blood pressure and Type II diabetes) is the fastest-growing health problem among our poor.
‘MKMRetail’ has a point that everyone else missed. There are not many people who are *literally* starving in this country. Especially compared to places like Africa and India. But there are a lot of people in the US who are starving themselves of nutrition by eating nothing but fast food and junk food. In terms of the potential impact over the next 20 years, this is a much bigger problem. Food stamps can’t help someone like that, only education and knowledge can. Of course, those are relatively affordable if people only cared enough to try.
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Not to be the second cynical voice and besmirch the good work of many charities, but this “survey” seems a bit sensationalistic and self serving: if you want the answer (as to whether hunger is increasing), ask people directly, not what they think is going on with others (you don’t measure unemployment by asking people if their neighbors are out of work).
As for access to affordable food in (poor) rural and inner-city areas, I think one of the big problems is (lack of) transportation: if you can’t get a ride to that super-center twenty miles away–especially in the balmy Wisconsin winter–it doesn’t matter how cheap the bananas are!
Food stamps are the #1 most effective hunger fighting tool. Not only do poor folks benefit directly, but so do supermarkets, bodegas, and grocery stores, which further benefit the poor. In certain neighborhoods, food stamp purchases can be 10% to 20% of a grocery store’s sales. If those customers had no food stamps, those groceries would be out of business, so prices at the surviving groceries would be higher. Food stamps subsidize farmers large and small, grocers large and small, as well as the poor. Indirectly, food stamps also subsidize low wage businesses of all types, allowing their workers to eat better without getting paid more.
Yes, I believe hunger is a growing problem in the U.S. and I believe it will get worse over the next decade for any number of reasons. Second Harvest has obviously done a good job–as far as it goes–but to eliminate hunger on a long-term basis you need to attack the underpinnings of poverty–poor education, lack of sustainable employment, access to quality health care and affordable housing. If we don’t address the core issues responsible for creating hunger in the first place, all we have to look forward to are longer and longer bread lines.
The truth is, the wave of prosperity that benefited so many of us erased a large chunk of sustainable lower-middle and middle class opportunity. We can’t have an entire nation of computer geeks and CEOs. Somebody has got to start thinking about the people Bill Clinton used to call “the walking around folks.” They’re the new poor and helping them will reduce the size of the permanent U.S. underclass.
These results are just plain confusing. The more I read them, the more I become worried about what type of country we live in and the perception people living in it have of those around them. It’s just plain disturbing!
Just consider the contradiction in the following: “The survey showed that Americans are split on how to solve the hunger problem. Fifty-two percent believe the best way to reduce hunger would be for companies and wealthy individuals to be more generous; 48 percent believe the best way would be for the federal government to fund programs for the hungry. Sixty-four percent believe that money is not the sole solution.” Make sense? Not to me.
Consider this: “Seventeen percent said they or someone in their family had received food from a charity organization in the past year. In the past month, 13 percent said they or someone in their family had gone to bed hungry. There was a time in this country when this just simply wouldn’t happen–period. Family and neighbors cared for one another. Today, we don’t know them. If we as a society don’t care enough about our own families, how can we care for our neighbor? Or, care for ourselves for that matter? Maybe that’s what we’ve been doing too much of–maybe?
We are at a point where the funding from all sources thrown at this issue is staggering. So the perception is that money won’t solve the problem, right? Yet, companies and the rich should be more generous? The government should fund a solution? I think the proper response to that is “been there, done that.” If this is really the level of issue as portrayed, doing the same that has been done for 50 years or more when our society gave up, it may be time to consider something novel.
How about sharing something with someone that you know is hungry? Apparently from the results, so many know where the problem is, yet they expect it to be solved by someone else. My daughter taught my wife and I a lot when she began to ask for an extra apple or another bag of cut vegetables when she knew someone didn’t have a lunch or was truly hungry. Maybe we should look to our kids for the solution, because obviously our elders and ourselves have been miserable failures.
It seems to me as not to be an issue as to whether or not people or corporations can give, as to whether or not we are giving rightly. An honest look might say, probably not.
Remember the sayings of those calling out in distress, that if we can send a man to the moon, we certainly can end poverty and hunger? A man walked on the moon 38 years ago. Scientists, engineers and perseverance did that. It was a nation with a passion to succeed. During that same time, it was an era of building the ‘Great Society’. Did we build it? Is it what was imagined at the time? A shining city on the hill that others hoped for? It could be in many ways, yet not in others. We still have work to do. The right work.
We talked yesterday about the issue of food labeling and the presidential campaign. Where is the call to rise to a higher level and solve the hunger issue? It’s certainly an issue requiring our innovation and passion – far more important and worthy than genetic labeling.
Sorry to be cynical but, when’s the last time you saw a malnourished individual in your area? Based on observation in the greater New York area, hunger is not even an issue for street people. This country has many problems, including an obesity problem, but hunger is not one of them.
Now, switching to the global scale where it seems 20% of the population has no idea where tomorrow’s meal will come from…there you can find a hunger problem.
In the USA, I don’t believe hunger is a result of food prices. Food is cheap in this country–dirt cheap. The greatest industry lead program to solve this problem is the opening of Aldi stores and to a lesser extent, Wal-Mart Supercenters and Save-a-Lot. What the government hands out in food stamps, a person or family can eat like a king buying their food at Aldi. We have a convenience store here in Wisconsin called Kwik Trip that sells high quality bananas, potatoes, and onions for 29 cents a pound every day. That means you can get 20 pounds of produce for less than $6. Bakery thrift shops sell bread for 50 cents a loaf. We have one bakery thrift shop that runs specials where you can get about $50 of retail value for $12.50. That is a lot of carbs to keep someone from starving. A person could easily survive on $10 per week spent on food in this country. Even the dollar menu at McDonald’s will provide a significant amount of calories for a minimal price. Schools provide free breakfast and lunch to low income students, often even during the summer months. The Salvation Army near my house gives away loaves of bread just for the asking. I don’t want to sound mean but when I see people who are using food stamps, they don’t look like they’ve missed too many meals.
Mark raises an interesting argument, but as a longtime inner city resident let me make some observations about food stamps. First, they are a form of currency, often sold at discount in exchange for cash, drugs or other street goodies. Second, my experience in Detroit is that many of the stores that cater to food stamp recipients (at least in the central city) couldn’t charge more for groceries without risking their owners’ immortal souls. I pay roughly half of what I used to pay for food now that I live in an affluent suburb with upscale grocers selling to foodies. I’m also not sure that, “…allowing their workers to eat better without getting paid more,” is really a formula for reducing hunger. How about creating jobs that pay a living wage so people can purchase their own food and not need subsidies or handouts?
We waste more food in this country than all the rest of the world combined. Restaurants throw away billions of lbs. of food every year, and that is their policy. Instead of saving the daily prep, e.g. steamed vegs,, cornbread and precooked daily specials, they throw it in the dumpster at night, rather than working with a local soup kitchen for pick up the next day. My little store gives a vanload of food every week to the local soup kitchen. It’s a small sacrifice, giving the poor all of your slightly blemished produce, 2-day old baked goods, homemade salads, and some outcoded hot dogs. We don’t throw anything away, and all of the chip and cookie vendors drop off their stale food at the store so we can add to the amount given each week. It took some talking with all of my vendors, and they were glad to give the stuff to me, rather than literally throwing it in the dumpster out back.
Common sense, and a policy in each store of giving up the produce and baked goods you normally would mark-down would be smart for the store owner, and good for the less fortunate.
Besides….. selling only fresh goods, prevents customers from expecting mark-downs in the deli-bakery, by waiting that extra day. It is a passion of our family history in the business to give back what we can, and this is one of the best things we ever did. I’ve sat with these folks at the soup kitchen, and let me say, it’s incredible to see the joy a poor person gets from eating some day old baked goods, and some homemade soup from all the produce and meats we donated.
Food stamps are nice, but there is no accountability for what they buy. Instead of pot roast with potatoes, many of them buy Stouffers pizzas, and snack style microwave foods, which does not stretch their limited budgets. Can we police that??? I think not, but we as stores can start giving up our markdown goods, and serve our communities in a positive way 52 weeks a year. Remember…the poor are hungry daily, not just around the holidays.
I find it hard to believe there is a growing hunger problem in this country when obesity (and related complications such as high blood pressure and Type II diabetes) is the fastest-growing health problem among our poor.
‘MKMRetail’ has a point that everyone else missed. There are not many people who are *literally* starving in this country. Especially compared to places like Africa and India. But there are a lot of people in the US who are starving themselves of nutrition by eating nothing but fast food and junk food. In terms of the potential impact over the next 20 years, this is a much bigger problem. Food stamps can’t help someone like that, only education and knowledge can. Of course, those are relatively affordable if people only cared enough to try.