Hungry America by Rakesh Krishnan Simha

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50INDIAEMPIRE March 2009

USA Diaspora

HUNGRYA M E R I C A

The recession is taking a heavy toll on the US, with over 35 million

people finding it difficult to put food on the table. Even as the country

spends billions on the Pentagon’s silver bullets, the number of

Americans going hungry, sometimes for days, is rising

by Rakesh K. Simha



39INDIAEMPIRE March 2009

CASE STUDY Name: Gloria MunizState: New York

Dependents: 10

Can’t work becauseshe has to care for small children. Relieson social security andfood stamps. After allbills are paid, she has$20 left each month tospend on food andother essentials for her children.

herry Byrum, 48, works full time at a day care centre

in Spokane Valley, Washington, earning about $9 an

hour. She and her husband live in a 30-year old mobile

home and get groceries at a local food bank. Sometimes

the couple goes several days without eating. “We’ve got

to pay our bills,” Byrum says. “I can’t buy us the things

we should eat because of our diabetes. There are some

times I go to bed in tears thinking I just can’t do it all.”

Wyoming resident Mary sets out from her home

everyday to collect discarded wooden pallets. Despite

debilitating pain from spinal arthritis, she then uses an axe to chop them into firewood. Like many senior citi-

zens across the country, Mary’s social security payments

do not cover her medical expenses, or her household and

fuel expenses. She visits

the Salvation Army Food

Pantry in Casper for a

food box.

Gloria Muniz, 45,

from New York, is a sin-

gle mother struggling to

provide for her eight chil-

dren and two nephews, all under the age of 16. Unable to work, Muniz relies on

social security, public assistance and food stamps to get

by. After all the bills are paid, she has about $20 left

in her purse each month to spend on food and other

essentials such as school supplies for her children. “But

they don’t last me very long, says Muniz.” The upshot:

the family often goes hungry.

Like the unfortunate families mentioned

above, there are over 35 million Americans —

nearly as many as live in California — who

don’t know where their next meal will comefrom. Job losses, home foreclosures, and other

recent crises have been truly life altering for

Americans, with one in eight people struggling

with hunger.

These are official figures and experts say

the numbers could be higher. “The numbers

have been provided by the US Department of

Agriculture,” says Ross Fraser of Feeding

America, the nation's leading domestic hunger-

relief charity that provides food assistance to

more than 25 million low-income people fac-

ing hunger in the US.Over the years, the number of people

showing up hungry at food pantries and soup

kitchens in the US has surged, with more than

a thousand operating

in New York alone.

Requests are so high

that some food centres

nationwide are turning

away the hungry.

What makes the

demand so striking is

not only the sudden-ness but also the demographic that is seeking

help. For instance, most of the newcomers that

show up at Feeding America’s centres have

been employed and have managed to survive

dips in the job market. Many of them are cou-

ples and single parents who had managed with-

out handouts.

Hunger is a significant problem, according

to annual reports issued by the United States

Department of Agriculture. Around 11 per cent

of people live in households where they may

not have enough money to put adequate foodon the table – that’s 35.5 million Americans.

[ ]

WHO ARE THE HUNGRY?40% are white

38% are African American 17% are Hispanic

5% are American Indian, Alaskan

S



8INDIAEMPIRE October 2007

Among them are 11 million who say their sit-

uation is so grim they sometimes don’t eat for anentire day because they can’t afford to. Worse,

hunger is an everyday reality for 12 million

American children.

“We soon will have the most food stamps

recipients in the history of our country,” says Jim

Weill, president of the Food Research and Action

Center. All across the country, from LA to

Detroit to New York, it seems the soup kitchen

lines getting longer. "Right now they are really

fighting for their lives," says global economic ana-

lyst Alan Bragman.

A recent USDA report says more than a thirdof these households "had very low food securi-

ty—meaning that the

food intake of one or

more adults was reduced

and their eating patterns

were disrupted at times

during the year because

the household lacked

money and other

resources for food".

So why does a coun-

try that spends more on its military than the next11 nations combined, have so many people in

such dire straits? How can so many starve in a

country that spends $350 million each on 185 F-

22 stealth fighters?

According to a USDA official, hunger is very

much a hidden problem. "When you walk by peo-

ple who may be hungry, it's not necessarily evi-

dent they're hungry. "This is something that low-

income people don't talk about a great deal."

Worse, the US government does not want to

talk about this nagging problem. What most peo-

ple would describe as going hungry, the USDAcouches it in the euphemism “food insecure.”

Deaths caused by malnutrition and plain

hunger are passed off by hospitals and coronersas “natural causes” or “failure of bodily organs”.

Also, the US has been loath to admit to such

gaping holes in its socio-economic fabric. As

many 7.3 million Americans reportedly died of

starvation during the Great Depression, a fact

that lies buried in US census data, but which the

government has airbrushed out of official

records. Here is what a child wrote during those

years: “We changed our usual food for something

more available. We used to eat bush leaves instead

of cabbage. We ate frogs too. My mother and my

older sister died in a year.” Americans aren’t that desperate yet, but things

could worsen. The esti-

mates are for the period

before the recession

kicked in. With millions

more having lost their

livelihood since then, the

number of the hungry

and starving is likely to be

higher. The latest figures

do not include the esti-

mated 750,000 Americans who are homeless onany given day. That’s not counting people living

under bridges—in Miami, for instance, criminals

live under a highway with the state’s grudging

approval because an ordinance intended to keep

predators away makes it nearly impossible for

them to find housing.

The scary part is that as food prices spiral out

of control, Americans are not just competing

with each other for food and resources. In the

midst of an economic downturn, keeping in step

with a billion Indians and a billion Chinese in the

global marketplace is going to be an extremely tall order. Ë

CASE STUDY Name: MaryState: Wyoming

Dependents: None

Suffers from spinalarthritis and dia-betes. Social securitynot enough to payfor medical, house-hold and fuelexpenses. Salvation

Army gives her sta-ples like rice, beans,milk and flour.

[ ]QUICK FACTS

43,544,867,520 kilos of foodwasted annually in the US

$350mn is the price of one F-22 12 mn is the number of Americanchildren facing hunger every day

Documents

Hungry America by Rakesh Krishnan Simha