Today, Marianne will pack her life into her purse and visit the food pantry. Like many working folks – even those who get food stamps – she needs more food than she can afford for her and her son.
On World Food Day and most every day of the month around 10,000 people on the west side of the Mississippi River receive food from pantries. Across the State of Missouri better than 30,000 citizens ask for food.
The good news? In the St. Louis area most of the time there is close to enough food for every hungry person. (Alas, hunger wins more often outside of the metro regions.)
The bad news? Hunger will increase dramatically around St. Louis, in Missouri, and, across the nation very soon.
This year Missouri ranks 15th out of the 50 states and the District of Columbia in what USDA calls Very Low Food Security, more popularly known as Hunger – as in missed meals. Per Household Food Security in the United States in 2016 ERR-237, 6.2% of all Missouri residents have experienced Very Low Food Security. That’s an improvement over recent years but considerably worse than the national average (5.2%) and six of the eight states bordering Missouri (Arkansas and Kentucky have more hunger). And, let’s be honest, the gap between state #10, Ohio, and Missouri at #15 is one more hungry person per 1,000 citizens.
When it comes to Food Insecurity – meaning a family struggles to get enough food and frequently depends on pantries – Missouri ranks a hair better, #17. In this state 14.2% of the population (one person in seven) lives with Food Insecurity. [The data us summarized in the pdf file attached to this e-mail.]
Yet, as I mentioned, things will get worse. Congress and the bureaucracy answering to the Trump Administration are already trimming food stamp funds. The Secretary of Agriculture, normally a proponent of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) recently called for serious restrictions on food stamps use and eligibility. [ https://www.wsj.com/articles/agriculture-secretary-perdue-favors-food-stamp-restrictions-1507677514 ] To partially offset revenue lost to proposed tax cuts, some Republicans have called for deep cuts to SNAP and requiring states to co-pay 10% to 25% of the benefit costs. Those proposals could give Missouri a $22 million a month food stamp bill out and result in benefits levels declining to less than families received in 2007.
That’s the start of the unravelling. Here go some more threads…
Also targeted for cuts in the 2018 budget are summer meals for kids and the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC) [ https://www.usda.gov/sites/default/files/documents/USDA-Budget-Summary-2018.pdf ]. Relaxing nutrition requirements – and trimming payments to schools – in the school meal program are expected to come up soon in Congress. While that means that Marianne’s son will again be able to get pizza every day for lunch, it means mom will be responsible for a greater portion of the boy’s nutrition “cost.”
And, keep in mind that most other federal anti-poverty programs are scheduled for cuts too. Heating assistance has been targeted for elimination, support for Section 8 and public housing is to be reduced by almost a third, employment training money gets rarer and public transportation subsidies are to shrink.
Never before has a presidential administration proposed slashing so many safety net programs all at one time!
Oh yes, Donald Trump is sticking to his ‘America First’ philosophy: per Oxfam, in the 2018 budget the administration takes international food aid programs “and collectively trims them by 44 percent.” [ https://politicsofpoverty.oxfamamerica.org/2017/09/a-wake-up-call-on-hunger-and-malnutrition/ ]
Now, inevitably, those eviscerating hunger programs claim that ‘charities will pick-up the slack.’ No one will go hungry in America – or Missouri.
As any one at a pantry can explain, the system is already strained and too often food supplies are sketchy. When things go right that local pantry can give Marianne three days to a week’s worth of many food items. No, probably not everything needed for good nutrition but enough calories to starve-off a significant food debt. That’s here in the metro area.
In outstate Missouri it’s not uncommon for pantries to have waiting lists. Before a new family can get help, one already being served must “graduate.” While statewide the rate of hunger may be 6.2% of the population, I’d bet lunch money in parts of the central Ozarks at least 10% of the citizens miss meals due to a lack of food.
In other words, even with the established web of anti-hunger programs there is considerable hunger (and a lot of food debt). Unravel those programs and charities will not be able to fill the gap. They’ll try but they will fail.
To put reality into the picture, my old pantry [Circle Of Concern in Valley Park] now gives just under 2,000 people about a week’s worth of food each month. To offset just the enacted bureaucratic trim to food stamps and the proposed 2018 cuts my old pantry would have to increase the amount of food they share each month by about 25%! To replace food lost with the proposed deep cuts and the state co-pay plan the pantry would have to more than double the amount of food collected, bought and shared every month.
On World Food Day 2018 will a working mom like Marianne still be able to get the food she and her son need? Stay tuned.
Submitted by Glenn Koenen, WCD Member