|
Breakout Session I—The Face of Hunger
in America
Part 2: Toward an End to Hunger in America
Moderator: Bill Shore
Speakers: Linda Stone,
Kay Bengston, Mark Winne, James Weill
Recorders: Carol
Olander, David Burr, Carolyn Foley
Purpose: This session
was intended to strengthen the political will to end hunger in America
by highlighting both the success of the anti-hunger network and
its future. How can the network be made more effective in the 21st
century? This session humanized the problem of hunger and concluded
by focusing on strategies to marshal the nation's resources and
commitment to eliminate hunger.
Goal: To describe the consequences of hunger
and poverty for a healthy, productive, and moral society and to
articulate a national strategy to end hunger and build community
food security.
- The Paradox of Hunger Amidst Abundance and Affluence
- Improving the Nutrition Assistance Safety Net
- Reaching the Root Causes of Food Insecurity: Reducing
Poverty and Strengthening Communities
Linda Stone, Children's Alliance
Food Policy Center
Hunger is off everyone's radar screen—only 2 percent of the
U.S. population identifies childhood hunger as a major issue. In
fact, the poor are getting poorer, and low-end wages are not enough.
Our safety net programs help but exclude some of the genuinely needy,
and the food benefits they provide are inadequate. Significant improvement
will require big steps:
- Expand successful economic supports such as Earned
Income Tax Credit (EITC).
- Insist on a realistic poverty measure that adjusts
for regional variation.
- Stop sending mixed messages about participation
in nutrition assistance programs. Participation should be considered
the first step toward personal improvement.
- Measure State performance by how well needy people
are served, not by the accuracy of administering complex program
rules.
- Simplify Food Stamp Program eligibility rules.
Use CHIP (Children's Health Insurance Program) as a model.
- Extend benefit eligibility for a reasonable amount
of time.
- Combine child nutrition programs and make assistance
and education universal.
- Make WIC an entitlement program.
- Develop a program similar to WIC for needy senior
citizens.
Back to Top
Kay Bengston, Lutheran Office
for Government Affairs
One knows there is a food security problem when housing costs consume
85 to 90 percent of income; when teachers report that parents are
working two and three jobs; and when church pastors find that their
emergency food service budgets are depleted. Hunger is a consequence
of poverty. If we address poverty, hunger goes away. Some concrete
steps to take are the following:
- Increase the minimum wage.
- Expand the EITC, especially for families with three
or more children.
- Increase low-income housing and subsidies.
- Redefine poverty in terms of what it takes to be
self-sufficient.
- Pass pending legislation—Fairness for Legal
Immigrants Act, the Hunger Relief Act, Food Stamp Outreach and
Research for Kids Act.
- Increase funding for the Child Care Block Grant.
- Increase food stamp benefits.
- Fund more outreach for the Food Stamp Program.
- Make the Food Stamp Program more user friendly.
- Simplify and develop new ways of determining and
maintaining eligibility.
- Increase the proportion of eligible persons participating
in the Food Stamp Program.
- Simplify paperwork.
As a general strategy, do not expect charitable organizations
to make up for inadequacies of the economic system. They should
not and they cannot. This is the responsibility of the whole community,
and not just those who choose to give.
- Structure the program so the people who participate
can maintain their personal dignity.
- Expand the hours when food stamp and WIC offices
are open.
- Maintain the entitlement status of the Food Stamp
Program.
Back to Top
Mark Winne, Hartford Food Systems
What does a food-secure community look like? Hartford is in the
process of becoming one so that we can share our lessons with others.
These are our goals:
- Create a clear vision and plan for what we want
to accomplish.
- Avoid fragmentation of work.
- Do not promote long-term reliance on helping services.
- Pay attention to issues in the general food system
(e.g., departure of large stores from urban areas).
- Make a living wage the standard for defining need.
- Secure farmland at the edge of urban areas and
set aside for urban gardens.
- Facilitate access to appealing locations for farmers'
markets.
- Reduce the need for emergency food systems and
reduce the incidence of diet-related diseases and the number of
unhealthy food outlets.
- Promote the link between food security, social
capital, and healthy food choices.
Back to Top
James Weill, Food Research
and Action Center
We have lost national focus on the problem of food insecurity and
hunger due, in part, to our partial success in tackling the problem.
To refocus and get the job done require pointing out the size of
the problem. As a nation, we've been tracking this problem since
1995 and know that there are 9 million persons living in households
with hunger, and one-third are children. In addition, 22 million
persons are food insecure.
But we also want to be clear about how successful
the food-security programs have been. Cash assistance to needy families
has declined. There is less hunger today than 31 years ago because
of USDA's nutrition-assistance programs. Although assistance to
needy families has declined, earnings for the bottom two-fifths
of Americans have fallen since the early 1970s. Despite this, hunger
has declined because of the Food Stamp Program and other nutrition-assistance
programs. Still, it is not enough to focus just on food programs.
Wages and cash supports need to be improved. Child nutrition-assistance
programs need to be improved as well. Here are some steps to improve
the Food Stamp Program:
- Eliminate time limits for the participation of
able-bodied 18- to 50-year-old adults without dependents.
- Restore immigrant eligibility.
- Raise benefit levels.
- Make benefits more readily available to eligible
applicants.
- Provide clearer messages about program rules.
- Bring in partners from the medical and educational
communities to reinforce the importance of the program to health,
development, and education.
- Keep the Food Stamp Program a strong national entitlement
program.
Back to Top
Audience Comments Following the Panel Presentations
- Do not leave farm issues out of the discussion.
There needs to be an understanding about the link between the
agricultural community and food security. A connection needs to
be made between food and farm policy (e.g., tax credits for using
state products).
- Use vacant land in urban areas for gardening.
- Create coalitions to promote farmers' markets.
- Eliminate the sales tax on food purchases.
- Apply the "14 Steps to a Hunger-Free Community"
from the Senate Select Committee.
Back to Top
Action Steps Toward Ending Hunger
At the conclusion of the panel discussions, session
attendees broke into work groups and brain stormed ideas to advance
the anti-hunger and nutrition assistance agenda. The following comments
are the product of that activity. The numbers following the comments
indicate the frequency of the statement or recommendation.
- Develop an intellectual basis for defining a "living
wage."
- Create a national farmland policy based on sustainable
local agriculture and the preservation of farmland.
- Expand supports for farmers' markets, and make
them easier for WIC recipients to access. EBT is too exclusionary.
- Assist local groups in gleaning and harvest efforts.
Transportation is key.
- Don't build programs around the few bad apples.
Trust clients and make programs simpler.
- Put a human face on food stamp and WIC recipients.
Emphasize that they are often underpaid parents with children
and responsible shoppers.
- Collect community nutrition statistics (e.g., extent
of problems, availability of interventions at local medical facilities).
- Create a food security system similar to Social
Security and Medicare.
- Make WIC an entitlement program. (7)
- Base food stamp benefits on the mid-level or upper-level
food plans. (2)
- Emphasize that food programs are national defense
programs. We should change our approach to the budget process
to access defense dollars.
- Allow the poor to have assets and develop wealth.
Kids are less likely to be poor when they become adults if their
parents have some net financial worth.
- Poverty rate measures need to be re-examined. Guidelines
need to be revised to reflect today's realities in terms of higher
housing costs, health care and child care costs for one- or two-parent
working families. The current measures are not realistic. (5)
- All immigrants should be covered.
- Improve the support of local farmers and farmland.
- Program paperwork needs to be simplified.
- Repackage the Food Stamp Program; rename and re-market.
- Establish a bipartisan Presidential commission
on food security that links it to all aspects of community life
(e.g., housing, child care, health care, education, transportation,
workforce, economic development, small business, farmers). (3)
- Establish a high-level commission to hold hearings
throughout the nation to investigate the relationship between
wages and benefits and between the existence and degree of hunger
and poverty in the United States. (4)
- Create community food systems headed by leaders
of food-insecure communities and local farmers. The Federal Government
should support local leaders and local initiatives that employ
people to provide nutrition education, develop markets, grow food,
etc. Successful models should be widely shared.
- Improve communication and cooperation to help bring
together Federal, State, and local governments with non-profits
and the private sector.
- Urge the government to offer incentives at all
levels to eradicate hunger.
- Teach non-profits how to improve the sharing of
resources.
- Individuals must become politically aware and willing
to exercise their own power.
- Simplify the Food Stamp Program at the Federal
level. (5)
- Create a non-governmental oversight board for the
nutrition-assistance programs.
- Use the self-sufficiency standard as the measure
of power.
- Improve gleaning, especially of unprocessed food.
- Eliminate the stigma associated with the Food Stamp
Program.
- WIC is a good program because it combines access
and nutrition education. However, it doesn't provide enough fruits
and vegetables as qualified foods. We need to work to add more
fruits and vegetables to WIC.
- Get rid of the HHS poverty guidelines so more people
have access to food. (2)
- Immigrants, legal and illegal, should have access
to food and nutrition programs. (2)
- Increase Food Stamp Program participation through
revision of the current quality-control procedures.
- The United States should adopt a comprehensive
Federal nutrition policy that includes
- Benefit levels matched to the Dietary Guidelines,
- Realistic eligibility requirements based on living
wages and self-sufficiency standards,
- Linkages to farm, education, work support, hunger,
and other issues,
- Access for everyone, and
- Access through normal channels of commerce.
- Food stamp benefits should be adequate to allow
participants to follow the Dietary Guidelines.
- We need to develop the public and political will
to support long-term solutions to hunger and poverty. We need
to engage the general public. Private food-assistance networks
need to create activists (volunteers, donors, employees, and recipients)
who support existing programs as well as new initiatives. (2)
- Evaluate and make changes to existing programs
like food stamps to increase their effectiveness, addressing issues
such as
- Re-branding available services,
- Increasing outreach,
- Ensuring access, and
- Adjusting benefit levels.
- Support economic policies that assist the working
poor in achieving a living wage.
- Eliminate duplicative efforts in direct service
and advocacy programs.
- We need to continue to work for bipartisan support
in Congress.
- We need crosscutting coalitions that support our
nutrition safety net. (2)
- We need higher food stamp benefits.
- We need to protect the entitlement status of the
Food Stamp Program.
- We need strong leadership from USDA to address
error rates and cumbersome application procedures in the Food
Stamp Program. Recommend to the plenary session that the National
Nutrition Summit calls for a plank to end hunger on all party
platforms, at all levels.
- Make child nutrition programs operate seamlessly.
Allow schools to use one program all year round, including before
and after school. (4)
- Revive the 1996 Action Plan from the Rome conference
on hunger.
- We need to plan better to achieve our community
food security goals, including
- Large-scale, cohesive planning,
- Better State/local/Federal partnerships, and
- Cross-agency planning and coordination for more
efficient resource allocation.
- We need to change the way we measure the effectiveness
of the Food Stamp Program. Move away from using quality control
alone and add other performance measures.
- Develop a program similar to WIC for senior citizens.
- Link medical and health benefits to food stamp
benefits. Stress the economic advantages of the Food Stamp Program,
for example, that it provides benefits both directly and indirectly.
- Lobby for new anti-hunger and food security grant
programs via the USDA Community Food Security Initiative. The
objective is to fight hunger and promote local food self-sufficiency
through competitive grant programs for non-profit and faith-based
organizations to help them assist small- and medium-sized producers
to sell food directly to local school districts and other large
institutions. Support community gardens, community kitchens, and
micro-enterprises. Increase gleaning and food recovery programs.
- The funding applications process needs to be streamlined.
If it is too difficult, it can be a disincentive.
- Allocations for programs, such as the community
food security initiative, must be sufficient to pay for the training,
outreach, technical assistance, printing and replication, and
evaluation costs required for effective implementation.
- Enact all congressional measures currently proposed
to strengthen the Food Stamp Program.
- Enact a living wage bill based on a scientifically
validated self-sufficiency standard.
- Provide health care benefits to all Americans.
- Expand and strengthen the link between the Community
Food Security Initiative and all other efforts.
- Create and maintain locally and regionally based
food systems.
- Connect farm policy and hunger policy to find solutions
for the hungry (Farm Bill 2002).
- Develop and execute a public education campaign
on hunger issues.
- Create one nutrition security program that incorporates
the best of WIC, food stamps, and child and elderly nutrition
programs—a seamless system for the entire family and life
cycle, with sufficient funding for program operations and outreach.
- Implement a major public awareness campaign addressing
the existence of hunger in America and the importance of food
security benefits to all of us.
- There should be free universal school lunch and
school breakfast.
- All sales taxes on food should be eliminated.
- Provide funds sufficient to operate nutrition outreach
projects in every State.
- Expand and fund the Community Food Security Program
so that every State can create active, ongoing links between agriculture
and nutrition programs and work toward local sustainability.
- Acknowledge and act upon the link between nutrition
issues and other poverty issues—the need for affordable housing,
affordable child care, and affordable health care.
- Establish a short-form application process for
individuals and families who do not own a home.
- Develop an incentive system to encourage food stamp
recipients to purchase fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and other
healthful foods.
- Make food stamps part of an automatic 1-year transitional
period from TANF.
- Permit fax, online, mail, and phone applications
and recertifications in the Food Stamp Program.
- Provide expedited food stamps for families enrolled
in school meals, WIC, senior meals, or Medicaid.
- Allow day care centers, home, and non-school sponsors
to also offer up to three meals and two snacks a day for the children
they serve. Define needy areas as those with 40 percent or more
of children receiving free or reduced price meals.
- Expand the definition of "child" in 7CFR 210.2
to read "a child, birth to 21, enrolled in any school, institution,
child care facility, day care home, or camp which regularly offers
scheduled food service eligible for reimbursement under the USDA
Child Nutrition Program regulations...."
- Create a single simplified reimbursement system,
to the extent possible, without jeopardizing the service of meals
to children in different settings. Explore the possibility of
incorporating administrative payments at a State-established rate
into a higher meal reimbursement for day care home and summer
food service program sponsors, eliminating budget requirements
to reduce excessive paperwork. Combine provider breakfast reimbursement
and special cash assistance for lunches into a higher meal rate
that will provide supplemental funds to programs serving a high
percentage of needy children.
- Create one comprehensive set of meal types that
meet nutritional requirements set by USDA. All meals would be
designed to provide the Recommended Daily Allowances for nutrients
and would follow the recommendations in the Dietary Guidelines
for Americans.
- Direct State agency staff to conduct one administrative
review based on continuous quality improvement of sponsors' programs
during each 5-year quality review cycle. The focus of the review
should be nutritional integrity and accountability.
- Conduct one management evaluation of the State
agency every 4 years.
- Require only one application per household to determine
student/child eligibility for free or reduced-price meals for
all programs (including after school programs and summer food
service).
- Address the distinction between administrative
and food dollars in the WIC program. Administrative dollars are
not really administrative since they support nutrition education.
Funding for nutrition education needs to be increased.
- Fully fund voter registration requirements for
WIC.
- Leverage Federal resources with private partnerships,
and eliminate some of the matching rules (e.g., change WIC rebate
formula funds from Federal to State funds).
- Increase funding for home-delivered meals.
- Increase EFNEP funding and scope.
Back to Top
|
