Arkansans: Hunger on rise

4 offer advice to Congress; state ranked 3rd in such woe

— One day after a federal report listed Arkansas as having the third-highest level of hunger in the nation, the Senate agriculture committee on Tuesday heard from four Arkansans who say hunger is a growing problem in their state and across the country.

Democratic Sen. Blanche Lincoln - a Helena native who recently took over as chairman of the Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry - also spoke out, saying Monday’s reporton “food insecurity” underscored the need for programs that combat hunger and improve health care for children.

“We undertake this task at a difficult time,” Lincoln said at the outset of a hearing on government child-nutrition programs that featured Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack and a panel of four Arkansas experts. “Just one week before Thanksgiving, we are reminded of the tremendous need across our country.”

Lincoln and other speakers repeatedly cited the U.S.Department of Agriculture’s annual report on Household Food Security, which revealed that in 2008, 17 million U.S. households, or 14.6 percent, were “food insecure” - meaning that at some time during the year, they had difficulty putting enough food on the table because of a lack of resources.

Put in the context of individual Americans, the report found 16.4 percent - just over 49 million people - experienced hunger or were at risk of running out of food at some point last year.

The 2008 figures represent the highest level of Americans who lack dependable access to food since the national food-security surveys were initiated by the USDA in 1995.

“The technical terms that USDA uses in this report are ‘low food security’ or ‘very low food security,’” Lincoln said.

“But let’s be honest about what this really means: These are families that are either hungry or a meal or two away from being hungry.”

For Arkansas, the survey showed the number in that category has been steadily increasing, based on multi-year averages. Using 1996-98 data, 13.7 percent of Arkansans were “food insecure,” a tie for seventh-highest with the District of Columbia.

From 2003-05, the number climbed to 14.7 percent, moving Arkansas to the fifth-highest level. The most recent study found the level at 15.9 percent - behind only Mississippi and Texas - for the 2006-08 period.

“I am also sad to report that my home state of Arkansas now has the third-highest rate of hunger in the country,” Lincoln said.

Lincoln and other agriculture committee members used the hunger statistics to underscore the need to reauthorize the federal child-nutrition programs, which includes much more than school lunch and breakfast programs.

It also encompasses the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), commonly known as food stamps, as well as the Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC).

“The scale of these programs means that reforms can have a major impact on tens of millions of schoolchildren,” Vilsack told the committee.

Those classified as “food insecure” said they ran out of food during the previous year or worried that they would run out of food. As their money or food stamps dwindled, they may have shrunk the size of their meals or relied on food staples that were cheap but not nutritious.

The report is available at www.ers.usda.gov/publications/err83/.

The Arkansans who testified after the agriculture secretary at the hearing said many of the state’s children face hunger, and offered advice for improving federal programs.

Rich Huddleston, executive director of Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families, pointed to two administrative changes he said could help more students receive meals while reducing cumbersome paperwork - allowing schools in highpoverty areas to provide government-funded free meals to all students and automatically enrolling Medicaid recipients in free-lunch programs.

The five-year reauthorization process gives Congress the chance to streamline school feeding programs, Huddleston said, making them more accessible to the neediest students.

Margaret Bogle, executive director of USDA’s Lower Mississippi Delta Obesity Prevention Research Unit in Little Rock, underscored why these programs are critical, especially in the midst of a recession.

“For many children in the Delta,” Bogle said, “the food eaten at school equals 75 percent or more of their total daily intake.”

Other suggestions came from Jennifer Smith, director of regulatory compliance for Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the nation’s largest grocery retailer. She advocated continuing to shift food-stamp and WIC transactions from paper coupons to electronic cards.

Rhonda Sanders, executive director of the Arkansas Hunger Relief Alliance, said she sees the reality of hunger daily. The alliance has 100 members and works with more than 900 organizations throughout the state to distribute food.

About half of Arkansas’ 464,000 schoolchildren receive free or reduced-price meals, Sanders said. And about 40 percent of the 300,000 people served by the alliance’s food banks are children.

“We are currently ranked third in the nation in the incidence of hunger,” she said. “It’s a reality for many of the people in our state that they live with daily - wondering where their next meal will come from.”

Front Section, Pages 1 on 11/18/2009

Upcoming Events