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Friday, April 04, 2008

Food Insecurity

When I was growing up, there was not a lot of money. I wore hand-me-down clothes and was glad to get them. A vacation was taken driving as fast as you could to have minimal nights on the road and ideally grandma came along to pay for the few motels. I remember once after my family walked into a restaurant, they saw the prices on the menu, and we all walked back out.

My experiences back then weren't unusual for a lot of families. There were small things that were fun, like a car that liked going for Sunday drives and couldn't pass a Dairy Queen without going in for a strawberry sundae-- my favorite. Through those years of father being out of work because the union voted to strike or once was laid off because we were going through a recession and people weren't buying as much of what his job produced, I never knew food insecurity-- nor was there a time we had to go to food banks. There might not have been luxury meals, but there was always enough food to be full at night.

When you look at the rising price of gasoline, heating costs, health insurance, utilities, and how food has gone up up up, Sunday drives are probably a thing of the past for many families; but what has been surprising to me is that food is a problem for too many people. This is not talking about starvation but rather struggling to put enough on the table to keep their children's stomachs full. School lunches used to help but have you looked at what a school provides these days. It's corporations who send it in and it's fast food and not a lot of it-- carbs and minimal on anything else.

When I first started hearing about food insufficiency, I thought no way. I understood in the world there are places where people don't have enough food, but here we have food stamps. The more I learned, the more I see why it's happening as this article depicts with working class families suffering insufficient food in Missoula.

Check out this link: Food Insecurity and hunger statistics by state.

Some of this might be people have forgotten the ways families used to get food or those networks are broken. I remember as a child going to someone local for eggs and milk. Nowadays those sources aren't available or when they are, they cost more than the grocery store, which is generally the case with farmer's markets. I love them where the grower can sell direct to the consumer. They are fun places to buy fresh produce with better quality, but they are no place to shop if you are short on funds because at least in my area, their costs are higher than at the supermarket.

On our farm, we produce beef and lamb which are cheaper than the store, but we don't have the legal right to sell small amounts to anyone. We sell a quarter or half of the animal itself and work through the local kill, hang, cut, and wrap company which is one of the few still operating in this area. I just hope they can stay open. The whole process though requires a relatively sophisticated customer, who has a freezer and enough money to buy a lot of meat at one time. When we looked into donating a beef to our local food bank, they had no way to deal with anything but canned and processed goods. That might change.

Where it comes to food stamps, I would guess, based on knowing working poor, that some have too much pride to accept help; some barely over qualify. Many families are one accident or illness away from these kinds of problems. Some children live in homes where the parents or parent don't have the wisdom or concern to make sure their children are healthily fed.

It appears that real programs to help such families, those who are stretched to their limits just to pay for rent, gasoline, medical care or insurance, and utilities, are food banks-- created and funded by individuals. The government in power doesn't believe in government subsidy programs for anybody but the wealthy-- like say oil companies or financial institutions. Even if we get a change of political philosophies in control, these kinds of problems won't be solved instantly and the problem is right now for families.

Many self-titled conservatives believe ordinary people would have all they need if they work hard enough. They should do some research, but they won't because they don't want to know. It might cause them to be uncomfortable with their expensive, gladiator war and keeping their own tax cuts.

The immediate point to this is, for those who care and are financially able, research how and then donate to good food banks-- ones with wholesome food, no religious strings attached, and with a good ratio of giving to costs.

14 comments:

robin andrea said...

Excellent points, rain. I feel like our country has taken a sharp detour back to the 30s. Hunger and poverty. Everyday we see that prices for everything are going up, and our fixed income in real value is going down. We can grow a lot of our own food, but I don't know what becomes of people who can't. The next president will be inheriting a crisis on every front: economy, war, environment, etc.

Ingineer66 said...

First just let me say that I am fired up today because of stupid actions by local city politicians so here is a rant. I also wore 2nd hand clothes and had patches on the knees of my jeans when I was a kid. We always had food to eat and my parents always had money to buy cigarettes and beer and take plenty of Sunday and other day drives but we certainly were blue collar. I also had a child at 19 and still managed to put myself through college. But now I guess I am one of those evil conservatives that you talk about. I must be since I think the lady in Missoula that is having a hard time feeding her kids should have got her tubes tied after the twins were born or maybe should have stayed where they were living instead of coming out to Montana until they were financially able to succeed. Or maybe they should have got an FHA loan instead of getting greedy and going for the sub prime loan thinking that even though it was a variable loan that it really would not go up like it said it could. They got themselves into trouble, but somehow it is my fault and I have to pay to bail them out since I have made mostly responsible financial decisions in my life.

This week I have been thinking about this idea, are things really worse now or do we just have more news about it and more time to watch and read about it. It seems like on the news today that right now is the worst of everything that has ever happened. Whether they are talking about violence or the economy or the weather for reporters history seems to only go as far back as they can remember and that is about 7 to 10 years.

My son was watching a show on National Geographic Channel about the Golden Dragon Massacre in San Francisco in the 70’s. Five innocent people were killed and several more were wounded in a gang shooting in a restaurant. None of the targeted gang members were shot. I started thinking about how in the 70’s the homegrown terrorists groups like the SLA were planting bombs and robbing banks with machine guns. I think there is a lot of violence now in our cities, but there are also a lot more people and a lot more cameras now too. It seems in the 70’s there was more of a chance of innocent bystanders being caught in violence than now. As for gas prices until just the last few months the highest gas prices adjusted for inflation in our nations history was in 1980 after the economic crises during the Carter years.

Why are healthcare costs so high? I think a large part of it is exorbitant lawsuits and malpractice insurance rates. I am all for being able to sue a doctor if they screw up because God knows it happens, but these hundred million dollar suits that only feed the ambulance chaser lawyers are ridiculous. And why bash pharmaceutical companies so much. How expensive is it to get a new drug to market? How big are the payouts if a drug goes bad. Can you say Vioxx? The new ones are the expensive drugs. Go get a prescription for good old Amoxicillin or Vicodin and they are $4 to $6. That is not the co-payment that is the entire cost. But everyone wants the fancy new drug that works miracles not some old thing that has been around for 50 years.

You keep saying that Bush is only for the rich. I say his tax cuts helped every American that pays taxes. Before Bush tax cuts the top 20% of income earners in this country paid 78% of the taxes. After the Bush tax cuts the top 20% pay 81% of the taxes. I am not sure how you can say he is only helping the rich when 80% of the people only pay 19% of the taxes. As for the Bear Stearns bailout, on the surface it does not look good. But with a little research what they did was better than letting them enter Bankruptcy. Could you image what everyone’s 401k and IRA would have done if the Dow would have taken a 2000 point crash. Then people would really be screaming.

Why not have religious strings attached to getting free food. That is how it has always been. You have to pay for your meal somehow and that has always been by listening to a sermon, whether it is the Salvation Army or Catholic charities or whatever. It may not help everyone but if it makes one persons life better then why not. Isn’t that the liberal mantra on so many things why not religion too.

Rain Trueax said...

everybody has to rant now and then. You used the word evil, not me. I simply say that conservatives blame the poor (as you just did) for their situation but unless you walk a mile in someone else's shoes, how do you know their choices were wrong? It's not a question of right or wrong when it involves children. So the parents made mistakes, the way to resolve that is to have the children go hungry?

As for religious strings, that is my preference. If you want to donate to a church that you think will do this also and not build and expensive basketball gym for their patrons, hey, go for it. My preference is that Jesus didn't say help the poor if they sat in a pew of his choice. He said just help them. He also didn't go looking for whether they had made mistakes to get there first. That's christianist thinking.

As for that tax cut helping all equally lol You want to believe it, that's your right. Statistics can be made to do anything. Why are is our debt so high if this is working so well? Why is our infrastructure crumbling? Oh I know, the poor got it all... Forget the billions to the oil companies...

Harold/AQ said...

I occasionally volunteer to help with distribution for a local 2nd Harvest food bank. The number of clients at each distribution has steadily increased month by month.
Prepared foods and beverages are, not surprisingly, items that haven't sold and most are not that nutritious (although this last time there was a pallet of old-fashioned oatmeal); and the produce has been pulled having passed its sell-by date (we inspect all of it and toss what's not fit).
If the object of this exercise was to "form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity", I think we're blowing it.

Ingineer66 said...

Rain you make me smile. I may have more to comment later.

Diane Widler Wenzel said...

My parents had four years of college at the University of California, Berkeley. My father was a white collar worker. As a child I wore hand me down clothes and clothes and coats my mother made. I still wear a wool skirt mother made from surplus World War II uniforms. We didn't go for Sunday drives. We were a one car family. Our neighbors were buying a new car every year. We had a 1934 Chevy coup when I was growing up. During my father's entire life he only had four cars and he was still driving when he died at age 89. Our vacations were camping trips. I have helped a Jewish Community once a month cook in a Catholic Soup Kitchen. I was not aware of any sermons or strings attatched for anyone who showed up wanting a nutricious hot meal. So I doubt sweeping generalizations.
The only generalization I can accept is that the next president will inherite crisis on every front.

OldLady Of The Hills said...

You are so right about how we can and should help...! And also about the Head-In-The-Sand Conservatives....I have never understood how these people do not care about the people of our country who are truly, In Need!
One wonders where this is all going to end with Food prices up and Gas Prices going sky high...We are in Deep Sh*t here in our country---economically speaking, and those same Head-In-The-Sand people blithly sit around counting THEIR money.....not caring one bit. OY!

Rain Trueax said...

My point here was no religious 'strings' attached. If churches were to run a food bank (which is different than a soup kitchen but both have value), my objection would be (for me donating) if the requirement to have the free food would be a sermon or being in that particular church.

If others wish to donate to such, evangelizing, religious groups (and they do exist), that's their preference. I think though it'd be wise to listen in on some of those sermons just to be sure you agree with the spiritual ideas being promoted...

Rain Trueax said...

Incidentally, I (personally) favor food banks over soup kitchens for donating but it does only help those who have homes. It seems to give more of a normal family environment and less of a charitable someone else is doing it for you kind of thing. I like the hand up not hand out kind of thinking best. Unfortunately not everyone has a home. :(

Diane Widler Wenzel said...

Good points Rain. Maybe I should rethink my working in a soup kitchen even one that serves in the atmosphere of a school sports gym - not a sanctuary, sacred space. And where most of the recipitants are elderly, severely disabled, mentally ill or families with children. Most of them have a shelter or home to live in.
I don't think food banks are an alternative for people who can't cook.

Rain Trueax said...

I don't see anything wrong with soup kitchens but this article was writing about food banks. They are just two different things serving different needs.

There are different ways people might choose to work in programs (soup kitchen or food bank) that help provide food to those who need it. One is evangelical, hoping to bring people to the religious group providing the service, one is purely spiritual where it's done as a service to god with no hope of proselytizing; and there is a third which could be atheist where the person does it not for their own spiritual gratification but simply because they know someone else is hungry-- with no ulterior motive beyond providing for a need.

As anyone who reads here regularly would know, I am not high on religion as such. I spent about 30 years of my life in religions, (intensely in for some of that time) and ended up believing (jaded or not) that religion mostly serves its own power needs, and it's not even mostly about spiritual goals, but that is my personal opinion (and not universally true of all religions anyway) but it's why I wouldn't donate to a food bank with any religious strings.

There are many groups working to help people with hot meals like meals on wheels, senior centers, church basements, and a lot of people benefit from those approaches especially the elderly or homeless as can provide socializing as well as a warm meal when they might not even have a home. It could teach socializing or even job getting skills (providing clothes that help someone look good for a job interview) also with the hope of getting the person independent again-- although with the elderly, that is obviously different.

Food banks provide a different purpose and to me are better for the poor families-- if they have a home. Unfortunately today, not all do and that's sad.

Kay Dennison said...

I have seen the assistance system in this country up close and personal. It is a travesty and is designed to keep those who depend on it poor. These bureaucrats do everything they can to make sure no one escapes the system. Why wouldn't they? If they actually did something to help their clients improve their lot, they might lose their jobs with good pay and benefits. The horror stories are rampant across the country.

Anonymous said...

I live in Tennessee. We've got lots of folks here -- I call them "hills & hollers folks," but others call them "hillbillies," who are completely off the grid. They birthed at home because they could not pay a hospital (and had no realiable way to get there), so their kids were not given birth certificates, registered for school, etc. They don't get food stamps. They go hungry sometimes, except that we have a few groups who don't ask for paycheck stubs, social security cards, or other stuff like that. They just give. (Most of them are religiously-based, and don't make you listen to a sermon -- but I won't go into that). Yes, there is hunger here at home. And no, it's not about either laziness or free choice. I also wore 2nd hand clothes and sometimes shoes with a hole in the bottom. But my mom was a young married woman in the depression, and so she made things stretch (and she also worked full time after my dad died) -- we always had food. But some don't.

I'm sorry you can't sell your meat. In Tennessee we can buy local, organic meat, but I don't know if the sellers have to jump through hoops to do so. It's more expensive, but worth it.

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