David Beckmann
Congress is starting work on a new farm bill at a time of increased hunger. One in five U.S. children now lives in a household that runs out of food sometimes. The number of hungry people in the world declined gradually for several decades, but has now surged to nearly one billion. This is also a moment of intense political pressure to reduce U.S. federal spending. Congress and the president have bound themselves by law to make deep cuts in the federal budget deficit.
A relatively small group of farmers, mostly large landowners, have long dominated U.S. farm policy. But budget pressures may finally help to achieve long-overdue reforms that would make our nation’s farm policies work better for farmers and, at the same time, save money for taxpayers. Bread for the World and Bread for the World Institute are focused on hunger and poverty, so we want farm policies that will help farm and rural families who really need help, protect the environment, and contribute to a nutritious food supply. We also want farm policies that will promote the expansion of food production globally, especially in low-income developing countries, in order to help reduce world hunger.
The farm bill includes SNAP (formerly called food stamps) and other food programs that help hungry people in this country. It’s important to protect SNAP, which has been a lifeline for millions of struggling families, and the new farm bill could help to get more nutritious food into the school meals of low-income children. The farm bill also includes international food aid, which is a matter of life and death in famine situations such as the Horn of Africa today. This report explains how to use food aid dollars more efficiently and provide more nutritious food to hungry people around the world.
During the current battles over the federal budget, Bread for the World is working to form a Circle of Protection around funding for hungry and poor people. All the programs focused on poor people in the United States amount to 19 percent of federal spending. All the U.S. programs focused on reducing poverty in developing countries amount to an additional 0.6 percent of federal spending. Yet when the House of Representatives first formally proposed deep cuts in government spending in April 2011, it voted to take two-thirds of the cuts from SNAP and other programs for hungry and poor people. In the House’s agricultural appropriations bill for 2012, it voted to take away nutrition assistance from 600,000 young children and their mothers who now participate in the WIC program and to eliminate food aid rations for 14 million of the most desperate people in the world.
It is possible to reduce the federal deficit without making poor people hungrier. Bread for the World members are campaigning to protect funding for hungry and poor people. The farm bill debate will present a clear choice between wasteful payments to large landowners and desperately needed help for hungry people.
The 2012 Hunger Report explores opportunities to rebalance U.S. farm policies. It stresses the need for a healthier diet—for all of us and, especially, for people who sometimes have to go without food. It recommends replacing the current patchwork of farm policies with a new system that would cost less, provide better help to U.S. farmers, and be better in other respects as well. It explores the continuing plight of U.S. farm workers and suggests a way forward that would be good for farm workers and their employers. It also documents the importance of food assistance in this country and food aid internationally and proposes reforms to make both more nutritious.
The government publishes annual statistics on hunger and food insecurity in the United States, and the data for 2009 and 2010 tell an encouraging story. Hunger surged during the financial crisis of 2008, but did not increase in 2009 and 2010, even though unemployment and poverty continued to rise.
The U.S. poverty measure does not include the income that poor people receive from government programs, while the hunger measure focuses simply on whether people are eating. So the hunger statistics for 2009 and 2010 show that anti-poverty programs are working. Notably, SNAP and the other national nutrition programs are now reaching 60 percent of food-insecure households.
SNAP and several other federal anti-poverty programs expand automatically when need increases and then shrink when the economy picks up. Congress and the president strengthened SNAP and other anti-poverty programs in 2009 and 2010. Groups like Bread for the World played a crucial advocacy role. Our grassroots efforts have helped to keep hunger at bay in a time of severe need.
There are lots of reasons to feel discouraged nowadays. The economy remains dour, and our nation is deeply divided by partisan differences. At times like this, we need to reach more deeply within ourselves for inspiration. I have been struck by reports showing that people who experience God as a loving presence in their lives are more likely to support government programs that help hungry and poor people.
I’m a Christian preacher, so it’s my job to remind people that God loves you and me and everybody, including single moms who have trouble feeding their kids—and Somali moms who have trouble keeping their kids from dying of hunger.
Rev. David Beckmann
President
Bread for the World and Bread for the World Institute
