posted November 24, 2007 03:42 PM              

WASHINGTON, Nov 15 (IPS) - More than one in 10 people in the United States go hungry, according to new official figures that suggest government food programmes are falling short in the world's wealthiest country.

More than 35 million people in a country of some 294 million went hungry last year, 390,000 more than in 2005, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture's latest Household Food Security report.

Of the total, 12.63 million were children. Put another way, nearly one in five U.S. children either went without enough food during the course of the year or had food but could never take future meals for granted.

The report, released Wednesday, comes as Congress debates the 2007 Farm Bill, a five-year piece of legislation affecting everything from agricultural subsidies to nutritional programmes for the poor.

Anti-hunger activists lamented the findings.

"The U.S. is the only industrialised nation that still allows hunger within its borders," said David Beckmann, president of the advocacy group Bread for the World.

Jim Weill, president of the Food Research and Action Centre, warned the situation likely has worsened since the agriculture department surveyed the populace in December 2006.

"As costs for food, energy, and housing continue to rise and wages stagnate or decline, households are finding themselves increasingly strapped," Weill said. "This may mean even worse numbers in 2007. We need to do more to make sure that households have access to healthy food by improving and expanding proven programmes that help."

The advocates highlighted the federal government's Food Stamp Programme, which Beckmann called "the flagship nutrition safety net for Americans", as needed an upgrade.

The programme provides food stamps to more than 26 million people every month, enabling them to use the tokens in place of cash to purchase specified foodstuffs. According to Beckmann and Weill, the relief is insufficient.

"The average benefit of one dollar per meal per person is just not enough to buy adequate, nutritious food," said Beckmann, whose group plans to launch its own hunger report Nov. 19.

Added Weill: "Congress is considering the farm bill, which includes the food stamp programme. They have the chance to make it easier for households to access the programme, keep benefits growing with the cost of living rather than losing ground to inflation, and raise the allowable asset and minimum benefit levels for the first time in decades."

According to the food security report, the latest in a series begun in 1995, 10.4 percent of all U.S. adults and 17.2 percent of all children suffered food insecurity in 2006.

Of the 35.52 million food insecure U.S. residents, 11.1 million lived in households marked by "very low food security," a new term for what the government used to call "food insecurity with hunger". The figure rose from 10.8 million in 2005, consistent with other surveys showing worsening conditions among the poorest.

Black and Hispanic households suffered the most, with food insecurity rates of 21.8 percent and 19.5 percent respectively.

The latest findings chime with recent government reports showing poverty was largely unchanged five years after the U.S. economy began clawing its way back from recession.

Modest gains in household income have failed to lift significant numbers out of poverty, the U.S. Census Bureau reported in August.

The national poverty rate fell to 12.3 percent in 2006, down from 12.6 percent the year before, but remained well above the 11.3 percent mark recorded in 2000, the last year in which it dropped.

The census bureau said family earnings had risen modestly because more members were working and contributing to household income but that not everyone had benefited.

In the countryside, poverty had stagnated at 15.2 percent, three percentage points above the national average. In all, nearly 7.2 million inhabitants of rural areas fell below the poverty line last year despite rising agricultural prices.

The elderly accounted for much of last year's improvement and, as a group, were better off than they were in 2001. By contrast, poverty rates for children and for adults of working age remained statistically unchanged from 2005 and higher than in 2001, when the last recession bottomed out.

Overall, some 36.5 million people were deemed poor in 2006, about as many as in 2005, the census bureau said.

posted November 24, 2007 05:57 PM              

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_Not_Bombs

posted November 25, 2007 10:33 AM              

enough to feed the entire word.

why is the choice annhilation, rather than sustenance?

posted November 25, 2007 04:02 PM              

Freegans are people who employ alternative strategies for living based on limited participation in the conventional economy and minimal consumption of resources. Freegans embrace community, generosity, social concern, freedom, cooperation, and sharing in opposition to a society based on materialism, moral apathy, competition, conformity, and greed.

After years of trying to boycott products from unethical corporations responsible for human rights violations, environmental destruction, and animal abuse, many of us found that no matter what we bought we ended up supporting something deplorable. We came to realize that the problem isn't just a few bad corporations but the entire system itself.

Freeganism is a total boycott of an economic system where the profit motive has eclipsed ethical considerations and where massively complex systems of productions ensure that all the products we buy will have detrimental impacts most of which we may never even consider. Thus, instead of avoiding the purchase of products from one bad company only to support another, we avoid buying anything to the greatest degree we are able.

The word freegan is compounded from "free" and "vegan". Vegans are people who avoid products from animal sources or products tested on animals in an effort to avoid harming animals. Freegans take this a step further by recognizing that in a complex, industrial, mass-production economy driven by profit, abuses of humans, animals, and the earth abound at all levels of production (from acquisition to raw materials to production to transportation) and in just about every product we buy. Sweatshop labor, rainforest destruction, global warming, displacement of indigenous communities, air and water pollution, eradication of wildlife on farmland as "pests", the violent overthrow of popularly elected governments to maintain puppet dictators compliant to big business interests, open-pit strip mining, oil drilling in environmentally sensitive areas, union busting, child slavery, and payoffs to repressive regimes are just some of the many impacts of the seemingly innocuous consumer products we consume every day.

Freegans employ a range of strategies for practical living based on our principles:

Waste Reclamation
We live in an economic system where sellers only value land and commodities relative to their capacity to generate profit. Consumers are constantly being bombarded with advertising telling them to discard and replace the goods they already have because this increases sales. This practice of affluent societies produces an amount of waste so enormous that many people can be fed and supported simply on its trash. As freegans we forage instead of buying to avoid being wasteful consumers ourselves, to politically challenge the injustice of allowing vital resources to be wasted while multitudes lack basic necessities like food, clothing, and shelter, and to reduce the waste going to landfills and incinerators which are disproportionately situated within poor, non-white neighborhoods, where they cause elevated levels of cancer and asthma.

Perhaps the most notorious freegan strategy is what is commonly called "urban foraging" or "dumpster diving". This technique involves rummaging through the garbage of retailers, residences, offices, and other facilities for useful goods. Despite our society's sterotypes about garbage, the goods recovered by freegans are safe, useable, clean, and in perfect or near-perfect condition, a symptom of a throwaway culture that encourages us to constantly replace our older goods with newer ones, and where retailers plan high-volume product disposal as part of their economic model. Some urban foragers go at it alone, others dive in groups, but we always share the discoveries openly with one another and with anyone along the way who wants them. Groups like Food Not Bombs recover foods that would otherwise go to waste and use them to prepare meals to share in public places with anyone who wishes to partake.

By recovering the discards of retailers, offices, schools, homes, hotels, or anywhere by rummaging through their trash bins, dumpsters, and trash bags, freegans are able to obtain food, beverages, books, toiletries magazines, comic books, newspapers, videos, kitchenware, appliances, music (CDs, cassettes, records, etc.), carpets, musical instruments, clothing, rollerblades, scooters, furniture, vitamins, electronics, animal care products, games, toys, bicycles, artwork, and just about any other type of consumer good. Rather than contributing to further waste, freegans curtail garbage and pollution, reducing the over-all volume in the waste stream.

Lots of used items can also be found for free or shared with others on websites like Freecycle and in the free section of your local Craigslist. To dispose of useful materials check out the EPA's Materials and Waste Exchanges directory. In communities around the country, people are holding events like "Really, Really, Free Markets" and "Freemeets". These events are akin to flea markets with free items. People bring items to share with others. They give and take but not a dollar is exchanged. When freegans do need to buy, we buy second-hand goods which reduces production and supports reusing and reducing what would have been wasted without providing any additional funds for new production.

Waste Minimization
Because of our frequent sojourns into the discards our throwaway society, freegans are very aware of and disgusted by the enormous amounts of waste the average US consumer generates and thus choose not to be a part of the problem. So, freegans scrupulously recycle, compost organic matter into topsoil, and repair rather than replace items whenever possible. Anything unusable by us, we redistribute to our friends, at freemarkets, or using internet services like freecycle and craigslist.

Eco-Friendly Transportation
Freegans recognize the disastrous social and ecological impacts of the automobile. We all know that automobiles cause pollution created from the burning of petroleum but we usually don't think of the other destruction factors like forests being eliminated from road building in wilderness areas and collision deaths of humans and wildlife. As well, the massive oil use today creates the economic impetus for slaughter in Iraq and all over the world. Therefore, freegans choose not to use cars for the most part. Rather, we use other methods of transportation including trainhopping, hitchhiking, walking, skating, and biking. Hitchhiking fills up room in a car that would have been unused otherwise and therefore it does not add to the overall consumption of cars and gasoline.

Some freegans find at least some use of cars unavoidable so we try to eliminate our dependence on fossil fuels by using cars with desiel engines converted to run on “greisel” or "veggie-oil" literally fueling our cars with used fryer oil from restaurants - another example of diverting waste for practical use. Volunteer groups are forming everywhere to assist people in converting diesel engines to run on vegetable oil.

Rent-Free Housing
Freegans believe that housing is a RIGHT, not a privilege. Just as freegans consider it an atrocity for people to starve while food is thrown away, we are also outraged that people literally freeze to death on the streets while landlords and cities keep buildings boarded up and vacant because they can’t turn a profit on making them available as housing.

Squatters are people who occupy and rehabilitate abandoned, decrepit buildings. Squatters believe that real human needs are more important than abstract notions of private property, and that those who hold deed to buildings but won’t allow people to live in them, even in places where housing is vitally needed, don’t deserve to own those buildings. In addition to living areas, squatters often convert abandoned buildings into community centers with programs including art activities for children, environmental education, meetings of community organizations, and more.

Going Green
We live in a society where the foods that we eat are often grown a world away, over processed, and then transported long distances to be stored for too long, all at a high ecological cost. Because of this process, we've lost appreciation for the changes in season and the cycles of life but some of us are reconnecting to the Earth through gardening and wild foraging.

Many urban ecologists have been turning garbage-filled abandoned lots into verdant community garden plots. In neighborhoods where stores are more likely to carry junk food than fresh greens, community gardens provide a health food source. Where the air is choked with asthma inducing pollutants, the trees in community gardens produce oxygen. In landscapes dominated by brick, concrete, and asphalt, community gardens provide an oasis of plants, open spaces, and places for communities to come together, work together, share food, grow together, and break down the barriers that keep people apart in a society where we have all become too isolated from one another.

Wild foragers demonstrate that we can feed ourselves without supermarkets and treat our illnesses without pharmacies by familiarizing ourselves with the edible and medicinal plants growing all around us. Even city parks can yield useful foods and medicines, giving us a renewed appreciation of the reality that our sustenance comes ultimately not from corporate food producers, but from the Earth itself. Others take the foraging lifestyle even farther, removing themselves from urban and suburban concepts and attempting to "go feral" by building communities in the wilderness based on primitive survival skills.

Working Less / Voluntary Joblessness
How much of our lives do we sacrifice to pay bills and buy more stuff? For most of us, work means sacrificing our freedom to take orders from someone else, stress, boredom, monotony, and in many cases risks to our physical and psychological well-being.

Once we realize that it's not a few bad products or a few egregious companies responsible for the social and ecological abuses in our world but rather the entire system we are working in, we begin to realize that, as workers, we are cogs in a machine of violence, death, exploitation, and destruction. Is the retail clerk who rings up a cut of veal any less responsible for the cruelty of factory farming than the farm worker? What about the ad designer who finds ways to make the product palatable? How about the accountant who does the grocery’s books and allows it to stay in business? Or the worker in the factory that manufacturers refrigerator cases? And, of course, the high level managers of the corporations bear the greatest responsibility of all for they make the decisions which causes the destruction and waste. You don't have to own stock in a corporation or own a factory or chemical plant to be held to blame.

By accounting for the basic necessities of food, clothing, housing, furniture, and transportation without spending a dime, freegans are able to greatly reduce or altogether eliminate the need to constantly be employed. We can instead devote our time to caring for our families, volunteering in our communities, and joining activist groups to fight the practices of the corporations who would otherwise be bossing us around at work. For some, total unemployment isn’t an option — it’s far harder to find free dental surgery than a free bookcase on the curb — but by limiting our financial needs, even those of us who need to work can place conscious limits on how much we work, take control of our lives, and escape the constant pressure to make ends meet. But even if we must work, we need not cede total control to the bosses. The freegan spirit of cooperative empowerment can be extended into the workplace as part of worker-led unions like the Industrial Workers of the World.

posted November 25, 2007 04:28 PM            

I don't see myself putting those ideals into practice this lifetime....but it sounds nice.

posted November 27, 2007 01:12 PM              

i have a car to drive. i have shelter that accomodates my living needs -- heating and cooling, running water, a functional kitchen. i have decent clothing, an adequate coat. my child does not go hungry, and he has excellent educational opportunities.

posted November 27, 2007 01:53 PM              

quote:

---

In some circumstances you do not even need a car, coat or heating.

---

my point precisely. we live well above the means of most. esp as the weather is cold now, and we are not shivering in unheated rooms and without adequate clothing.

(we have lived in an unheated house, from the time my babe was 6 mo to almost 3yrs. i had to bundle him up in several layers of clothing, stuff the walls with tissue and paper for extra insulation, and cover his body with my own at night to keep him from being too cold, daily. at one point coats, hats, gloves and layers upon layers of sweaters weren't enough to keep us from freezing. so we had to find the cheapest motel we could to stay until the coldfront passed. nor did we have a stove. now we have adequately heated and cooking facilities and i am so grateful!)

posted November 27, 2007 03:57 PM              

even in the bathroom. regardless the hour...3am....2pm....if i bathe, someone from the apartment beside or behind me, (in their bathroom) as well....will run a bath or shower also. from the moment i enter the bathroom...someone is in the shower, or at the sink, right next to me. the water usually goes off when i leave.

posted November 29, 2007 01:10 PM              

Agriculture has been important to the United States since its earliest days. In 1785, Thomas Jefferson remarked, “Cultivators of the earth are the most valuable citizens.” He saw farmers as the foundational units of a democratic society; agrarian communities, Jefferson argued, promoted spirited individualism and dedicated resourcefulness necessary for the young nation. It is this idealized notion of the American farmer that has come to dominate much of our historical lore.

Through the early 20 th century, small family owned and operated farms dominated America 's agricultural economy. Until the 1930s, in fact, 25 percent of all Americans – nearly one in four – lived on family farms. However, industrialization and commercialization gradually changed the economic landscape as farm operation and ownership transitioned to larger corporations. Today, that number is closer to one in fifty. As the agricultural landscape changed, so did the beneficiaries of the subsidies. Large corporate farms now account for nearly 3/4 of all farm sales in the U.S.

Technological advances produced economies of scale while new farming equipment and innovative cultivation techniques allowed commercial farms to decrease their labor needs while increasing the overall productivity of the land. Specialization also meant that the larger farms with higher productive capacities, more access to capital, and better transportation networks could more effectively supply consumers in the expanding economy.

Just as American farms were beginning this transition, however, the Great Depression struck. Money and land were rapidly devalued, millions of people lost their jobs, and banks closed. At this time, farms across the nation struggled to break even, but many failed. In response, the Federal government passed the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1933, and the era of subsidies was born. Hoping to keep prices from plummeting and, in turn, keep farmers in business, the government purchased and subsequently destroyed millions of dollars worth of agricultural goods.

A variety of programs have since been developed and implemented, employing different management and planning strategies, with the goal of keeping existing farms in business. Subsidies and price supports were often used after World War I in order to keep prices stable, regardless of the level of production. Sometimes, farmers were paid to reduce their production in order to take excess supply from the market, also helping to control the price of goods. Incredibly, while farm subsidies were initially promoted only as a temporary relief measure from Depression Era woes, they have remained in place for over 70 years.

The basic definition of a subsidy is direct monetary aid issued by the government to individual businesses and industries. Governments use subsidies to insure profits among established producers who might otherwise face competition for their products. For example, if the market price for corn is $1.50 a bushel but the government decided that farmers needed $2.50 a bushel in order to remain profitable, it would issue a $1 subsidy per bushel of corn to each farmer.

Governments can also subsidize agricultural production in other ways. They might buy large quantities of a particular commodity—say, cotton—and either hold it in reserve or destroy it, effectively creating a shortage in order to drive up the market price artificially. Or, they might enact protective tariffs for a certain industry; for example, placing a tax on all imported cotton allows domestic producers to raise the price that they are able to charge.

Subsidies can affect economic decision making in a variety of ways. The most obvious effect is to raise the price consumers pay for the subsidized commodity. Subsidies also have an indirect effect by raising prices on goods produced from the subsidized commodities. For example, subsidized cotton is more expensive to buy, but so too are the t-shirts, beds, carpets, or any number of other products made – even in part – from cotton. So not only are direct consumers of agricultural products affected by subsidies, so too are fashion designers, clothing retailers, and furniture stores.

Other subsidy effects on consumers are less apparent, though no less severe. Not only do consumers pay a higher price for a subsidized commodity, they also tend to pay higher federal taxes which are used by the government to support its pricing system. In effect, consumers are taxed twice, once directly by the government and again at the stores, in the form of higher prices.

Environmental externalities can also occur with the use of subsidies. Since producers are insulated from competition when they are supported by subsidies, it could distort the mix of resources utilized leading to the use of excessive amounts of energy, land, fertilizer, and water – and, sometimes, the production of unsuitable crops entirely. Many times, the crops grown are simply destroyed by government officials in an effort to stabilize or prop up the price of the good. In addition, farmers often expand their operations to marginal lands which would otherwise be unsustainable simply in the hope of attracting more government support. But, because the government guarantees a certain price, farmers need not properly take land use into consideration.

Yet, the most controversial impact of agricultural subsidies is related to international trade. For many countries, agriculture is a main source of national income – accounting for nearly 20 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) in both India and Indonesia. In the U.S., it makes up less than one percent of GDP, but continues to be a driving force of our economy. And, while land use for agriculture is at its lowest level since 1945 at 46 percent of total land, crop production continues to rise. An additional indicator of its importance to our country and our economy is that – over the past decade – an average of $16 billion annually has gone to subsidize the agricultural sector.

Part of a government's system of subsidies may include barriers to trade like import tariffs and quota limits. Tariffs are a direct tax on imported goods; quotas limit the amount of a particular commodity that can be imported. Both function to raise the price of imported goods while protecting domestic producers from competition, albeit still with an increase in the overall domestic price of the commodity for consumers.

Subsidies are used most often by developed countries since they are expensive to maintain. Many European Union countries, for example, subsidize up to 1/3 of a farmer's income, whereas nearly 2/3 of a farmer's income is subsidized in Japan . These subsidies are thought to have disastrous effects on citizens and economies of developing countries that depend on trade in agricultural goods because the farmers simply cannot compete on the world market with more established and heavily subsidized domestic industries. Attempts to level the global playing field oftentimes mean that many developing countries must focus on using trade barriers, such as tariffs and quotas. South Asian countries, for example, have an average tariff of over 100 percent on agricultural goods.

It is becoming more and more difficult to have a free flow of goods between nations as the majority of countries now utilize systems of subsidies, tariffs and quotas. There is great debate over the use of these tools, and complaints to the World Trade Organization (WTO) are on the rise. The WTO is becoming increasingly important in helping countries deal with the global rules of trade between nations as they attempt to negotiate reductions in the various barriers to trade. It is challenging to find a solution that can be beneficial for all, especially without cooperation and, while countries may indicate a willingness to reform their agricultural programs, firm action – if any at all – is often slow to occur. However, a change in policies to eliminate international trade barriers, together with the reduction of domestic subsidies, would go a long way toward allowing international trade in agriculture to provide more efficient food production and improved global societal welfare.

Updated by Dawn Anderson, Charles Fritschner, and Erica Brehmer

http://www.enviroliteracy.org/article.php/1371.html

often dairy and farm animals are killed to control prices. milk is dumped in the sewer when production is too high, for price manipulation. government pays corporate agri-business not to grow crops in order to control the economy.

posted November 29, 2007 09:08 PM              

"As costs for food, energy, and housing continue to rise and wages stagnate or decline, households are finding themselves increasingly strapped," Weill said. "This may mean even worse numbers in 2007. We need to do more to make sure that households have access to healthy food by improving and expanding proven programmes that help."

The advocates highlighted the federal government's Food Stamp Programme, which Beckmann called "the flagship nutrition safety net for Americans", as needed an upgrade.

The programme provides food stamps to more than 26 million people every month, enabling them to use the tokens in place of cash to purchase specified foodstuffs. According to Beckmann and Weill, the relief is insufficient.

"The average benefit of one dollar per meal per person is just not enough to buy adequate, nutritious food," said Beckmann, whose group plans to launch its own hunger report Nov. 19.

Added Weill: "Congress is considering the farm bill, which includes the food stamp programme. They have the chance to make it easier for households to access the programme, keep benefits growing with the cost of living rather than losing ground to inflation, and raise the allowable asset and minimum benefit levels for the first time in decades."

According to the food security report, the latest in a series begun in 1995, 10.4 percent of all U.S. adults and 17.2 percent of all children suffered food insecurity in 2006.

posted November 30, 2007 01:35 PM            

People who sit around "dreaming up their facts" need to get a life.

posted November 30, 2007 02:14 PM              

"Throughout the years that I have worked with FRAC, I have found the organization a reliable source of timely information and research. Most importantly, FRAC believes that everyone, whether Democrat or Republican, liberal or conservative, has a role to play in ending hunger and malnutrition in this country." — Senator Bob Dole (R-Kan.)

“The Food Research and Action Center has done the very best work in this area.” — Senator Paul Wellstone (D-Minn.)

The Food Research and Action Center (FRAC) is the leading national nonprofit organization working to improve public policies and public-private partnerships to eradicate hunger and undernutrition in the United States. FRAC works with hundreds of national, state and local nonprofit organizations, public agencies, and corporations to address hunger and its root cause, poverty.

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, 38 million people in our nation – 13.9 million of them children – live in households that suffer from hunger or live on the edge of hunger. This hunger and “food insecurity” are far too widespread in our wealthy society. Hunger in the United States is a problem that can be cured.

FRAC harnesses the nation's resources on behalf of those who need help to stave off hunger – poor children and their families, the elderly, the unemployed, low-income workers, the ill, and the homeless. Hunger reduces a child's ability to learn, decreases a worker's productive energy, and weakens an elderly person's resistance to disease. It weakens families, and prevents our nation from reaching its full potential.

In 2002 FRAC launched D.C. Hunger Solutions (www.dchungersolutions.org) to combat hunger and improve nutrition in the District of Columbia. D.C. Hunger Solutions’ multi-faceted work has had a real impact on the reach and quality of the federal nutrition programs, and the health and well-being of beneficiaries in the District.

To achieve its goals of ending hunger and expanding access to the federal nutrition programs, FRAC pursues a comprehensive national, state and local strategy. FRAC:

Conducts research to document the extent of hunger, its impact, and effective solutions;

Seeks improved public policies that will reduce hunger and undernutrition;

Monitors the implementation of these laws and serves as a watchdog of regulations and policies affecting the poor.

Provides coordination, training and support on nutrition and anti-poverty issues to a nationwide network of advocates, food banks, program administrators and participants, and policymakers; and

Conducts public information campaigns to help promote changes in attitudes and policies.

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