The Huffington Post December 8, 2009
Turning Food Deserts Into Jobs Oases, by Joel Berg
This holiday season we note the sobering reality that more than 49 million Americans live in households that can’t afford enough food. Locally, according to a new study by the organization that I manage, New York City Coalition Against Hunger, there was a 21% jump this year in people forced to use food pantries and soup kitchens. Soaring unemployment and underemployment are exacerbating the problem.
Even worse, many New Yorkers also live in “food deserts” - neighborhoods in which, even if they could afford them, the healthiest foods are scarce or non-existent. These areas also tend to lack living-wage jobs.
For instance, in the 16th Congressional District in the South Bronx, from 2005 through 2007, the official unemployment rate was 13.9 percent, and 35 percent of able-bodied adults remained outside of the workforce. Bronx Community Board District One had a poverty rate of 45 percent - and did not contain a single supermarket of 2,500 square feet or more. Yet convenience stores, bodegas, and fast food restaurants were plentiful. In the 10451 zip code there were three McDonald’s. It’s no wonder that hunger and obesity are flip sides of the same malnutrition coin.
To tackle our interconnected food, nutrition, and poverty crises, the federal government should launch a “Good Food, Good Jobs” initiative.
Modeled after the “green jobs” concept, “Good Food, Good Jobs” would create jobs through projects and businesses that bring healthier food to low-income areas. Food and job deserts could become new oases of economic recovery and healthy living. I detail my proposal in a new paper published today by the Progressive Policy Institute:
This effort should build upon the burgeoning community food security movement, which is strengthening regional food connections with projects that are effective, but are currently too far small-scale to feed the masses. My home borough of Brooklyn, New York is a hotbed of such activism, with numerous food-related businesses and projects - ranging from fish farm experiments in a basement of Brooklyn College to a company trying to entice landowners to allow others to garden on their land in exchange for a cut of the produce grown and cash collected.
Citywide in New York, the Speaker of the City Council, Christine Quinn, has just launched a visionary Food Works plan to help further build upon such efforts (click here).
The federal initiative I am proposing should begin by increasing funding for food systems projects of proven effectiveness, such as community and rooftop gardens, urban farms, food co-ops, farm stands, community supported agriculture (CSA) projects, and farmers’ markets. Other important policies should include: expanding community kitchens that combine rescuing excess food with training people food-service jobs; helping new supermarkets locate in low-income areas and existing supermarkets thrive; and hiring unemployed youth to grow, market, sell, and deliver nutritious foods, while teaching them entrepreneurship skills.
The initiative should also take bold new steps. It should provide wage and even commuting subsidies to help current U.S. residents find living-wage work at regional and local farms, reducing the impetus for growers to exploit immigrant farm laborers. Since there is far more profit in processing food than in growing it, the initiative should focus on supporting food businesses that add value year-round, such as neighborhood food processing plants; businesses that turn produce into ready-to-eat salads and sandwiches; healthy vending-machine companies; and affordable and nutritious restaurants and caterers.
In contrast to making inconvenience a virtue in food preparation, this initiative should help working families by creating new types of ready-to-eat or easy-to-prepare foods that are nutritious, sustainable, and convenient. It should also support the construction and maintenance of community exercise and nutrition education centers, which would provide free or low-cost services to low-income community members, and subsidize those activities by charging more for higher-income families. And given the growing concerns over the world’s fisheries, it should also provide a significant investment into the research and development of environmentally sustainable urban fish-production facilities.
The Obama Administration should forge a partnership with state, local, and tribal governments, nonprofits, and the private sector to scale up such projects. Just as the federal recovery bill invested in the idea of “green jobs,” a new “food jobs” agenda could spur not just economic stimulus but fight hunger, cut obesity, improve nutrition, and help reduce health costs.
The President, the First Lady, and Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack have pledged to end U.S. child hunger by 2015 while also tackling obesity. Those objectives, combined with the need to jump start the still sluggish jobs market, make a “Good Food, Good Jobs” initiative a promising idea. In the best-case scenario, it could create large numbers of living-wage jobs in self-sustaining businesses even as it addresses our food, health, and nutrition problems. But even in the worst case, it would create short-term subsidized jobs that would provide an economic stimulus, and at least give low-income consumers the choice to obtain more nutritious foods - a choice so often denied to them.
Posted on 2 March '10 by Joel, under Blog. No Comments.
Mr. Berg has longstanding ties to the Delta, having conducted important anti-poverty and hunger activities in the Mississippi Delta region during the Clinton administration, and in recent years he has been generous with his time in providing advice and data about hunger and poverty to the Delta Grassroots Caucus. I worked with Mr. Berg in the Clinton administration and can attest to his impressive record on issues of great concern to the Delta Caucus.
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I have read All You Can Eat and in my view it is one of the most important and insightful books on poverty and hunger in America since Michael Harrington’s landmark work, The Other America, which was published in 1962 and often credited with helping to provide part of the intellectual underpinnings for Medicaid, Medicare, and expanded federal nutrition programs. Joel Berg’s book reviews the recent history of hunger in America–with several important passages dealing with hunger in the Mississippi Delta region in the 1960s, when Martin Luther King, Jr., Robert Kennedy and other leaders dramatized the plight of the hungry in our region. The book combines a superb intellect, political experience at a national level in the Clinton administration, leadership of a major nonprofit in New York, and a deep commitment to helping the neediest of the needy.
Joel Berg presents a series of ideas on how to eradicate the shame of hunger in our wealthy country. He is admirably objective, criticizing or commending the contributions of politicians of both parties based on the merits. While obviously a Democrat who gives credit where it is due to the likes of George McGovern, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, he also praises the anti-hunger work of Republican leaders such as Bob Dole and even Richard Nixon (GASP!!!). Contrary to cynical views of politics that it makes no difference which party or which leader is in power, Mr. Berg skillfully demonstrates that there indeed have been profound differences in leadership, policies, and their impact upon poverty and hunger in America.
Joel Berg does not shy away from facing the most controversial issues facing our society today, so you may not agree with all of his conclusions, but his ideas are always thought-provoking and creative.
In the Delta, we are all too familiar with the dilemma that in many areas, the most accessible food is a convenience store or a similar place where lower-income people buy fattening, artery-clogging fast food. So many of our problems in the Delta are related to poor nutrition and illnesses that are related to bad nutrition, such as diabetes, obesity and heart disease. We are also all too familiar with the unpleasant reality that the media and many politicians “discover” about once a year around Thanksgiving that we still have many people who do not have access to an affordable, nutritious diet. Our levels of food insecurity in the Delta are among the highest in the country, and Joel does a great job of challenging the public and the powers that be to make hunger eradication a top national priority and not just a once-a-year photo op.
We have many nonprofit organizations in our grassroots coalition, and I can assure you that Joel’s practical advice on how to be an effective advocate in the trenches of anti-poverty work is highly valuable. Based on his many years of experience, he provides wise counsel on how to be an effective nonprofit advocate. I know I have profited from his advice on that score, as well as from his many insightful ideas about hunger in America. If you buy a copy of his book on the website you will also be contributing to a worthy cause, because part of the proceeds go to the New York City Coalition Against Hunger, a coalition of anti-hunger organizations in the New York City area.
– Lee Powell, Executive Director, October 9, 2009
Posted on 2 March '10 by Joel, under Blog. No Comments.
Nov. 24-25: KCRW (NPR affiliate, Los Angeles) To the Point and Which Way LA?, “Helping the Hungry Beyond Thanksgiving Day”
Nov. 20: The New York Times, “A Would-Be Volunteer’s Good Intentions Meet Cold Reality,” by Ariel Kaminer
Nov. 3: NPR The Takeaway, “Americans Using Food Stamps More Than Ever Before”
Oct. 28: The Pocono Record (Stroudsburg, PA), “Political, Economic Choices Lead to Hunger,” by Dan Berrett
Oct. 21: The Pocono Record (Stroudsburg, PA), “Challenge of Subsisting on Food Stamps Opens Eyes at NCC,” by Dan Berrett
Oct. 21: The Aquinian (St. Thomas University, New Brunswick, Canada), “Activist Says If You Want Change, Know the System,” editorial by Steve Graham
Oct. 8: Valley Advocate (Northampton, MA), “Hunger Summit at Mass Mutual: An Author, a Mayor, and a Plan,” by Mary Nelen
Sept. 24 and 25: The Springfield Republican (MA), “Springfield Food Policy Council Being Formed to Combat Hunger in Western Mass, Largest City,” by Peter Goonan
Sept. 22: Valley Free Radio (Springfield, MA) Farm2Fork with Mary Nelen, “Interview with Author, Joel Berg”
Sept. 15: Working-Class Perspectives (blog, Youngstown State University, PA), “Growing Food, Growing a Movement,” by Sherry Linkon
Sept. 14: Postbourgie (blog), “Book of the Month Discussion: Interview with Joel Berg,” by Shani-O
Sept. 13: The Springfield Republican (MA), “Author to Headline Hunger Summit,” by Kathryn Roy
July/Aug: Rockland Jewish Reporter (Rockland County, NY), “Hunger Still Prevalent in US, Expert Says,” by Dylan Skriloff
July 5: The Oregonian (Portland), “Eating Healthy: Fresh Vegetables and New Skills,” by David Sarasohn
June 4: Maine Public Broadcasting Network on Speaking in Maine, “Joel Berg, How Hungry is America?” (speech at Muskie School of Public Service at the University of Southern Maine, Portland) (podcast can be downloaded here)
May 26: Maine Center for Economic Policy’s State of the State (Time Warner Cable, talk show), “Hunger on the Rise in Maine and America”
May 21: WCSH-6 (NBC affiliate, Portland, ME) 207 (evening news magazine), “Hunger in America” (show no longer available online)
May 17: The Press-Herald (Portland, ME), “Food for Thought: Joel Berg is in town this week to talk about his book, All You Can Eat,” by Ray Routhier (no link available)
May 1: Streetroots (Portland, OR), “Talking Food in the New World,” by Mara Grunbaum
Apr. 29: KPBS (San Diego) Envision San Diego, “Poverty and Recession in San Diego,” by Joanne Faryon
Apr. 22: Real Change News (Seattle, WA), “The Locavores Dilemma,” by Rosette Royale
Apr. 21: KUOW (NPR affiliate, Seattle) Weekday with Steve Scher, “Can We End Hunger in America?”
Apr. 13: The Oregonian (Portland), “On the Front Lines of Student Hunger,” by David Sarasohn
Apr. 7: KERA (NPR affiliate, Dallas) Think with Krys Boyd, “How Hungry is America?”(podcast here)
Posted on 1 March '10 by Joel, under Blog. No Comments.
As found on the web site of Seattle’s local NPR affiliate, KUOW and aired August 20, 2009:
Speakers Forum
Joel Berg: ‘All You Can Eat’
08/20/2009 at 8:00 p.m.
In his 1964 State of the Union address to Congress, President Lyndon Johnson declared “unconditional war on poverty in America.” Johnson’s call led to the passage of the Economic Opportunity Act and billions in government antipoverty spending. Joel Berg is head of the New York City Coalition Against Hunger, advocating for more than one million low–income New Yorkers who rely on the city’s food banks and soup kitchens. He says America ultimately lost the war on poverty — not because the programs didn’t work, but because the country surrendered the fight. Joel Berg’s book on how the government can get back to the business of moving millions out of poverty and into the middle class is “All You Can Eat: How Hungry is America?” He spoke at Seattle’s Elliott Bay Books on March 22, 2009.
Listen here or click on the following link:
http://www.kuow.org/program.php?id=18227
Posted on 31 August '09 by Joel, under Blog. No Comments.
March 10: WLRN (NPR affiliate, Miami) Topical Currents with Joseph Cooper, “The Myths and Realities of Hunger”
March 12: WEOS (NPR affiliate, Geneva, NY), Out of Bounds with Tish Pearlman, “Joel Berg, Author and Executive Director of NYC Coalition Against Hunger”
March 16: KGO-TV 7 (ABC affiliate, San Francisco), “Stimulus Plan Brings Aid to Local Food Banks”
March 17: KPFA (Pacifica affiliate, Berkeley, CA), Letters from Washington: The First 100 Days, “Democrats vs. Democrats”
March 18: KPBS (NPR/PBS affiliate, San Diego), “Author Blames County for Low Participation in Food Stamp Program”
March 19: Beverly Press (West Hollywood, CA), “Expert on Hunger Speaks in West Hollywood,” by Amy Lyons
March 20: KPFK (Pacifica affiliate, LA) Uprising with Sonali Kolhatkar, “How Hungry is America?”
March 23: Willamette Week (Portland, OR), “The War on Hunger: This Man Thinks Its a War We Can Win” by Ryan Fleming
March 27: NPR Religion and Ethics Newsweekly, “Food Banks and the Recession”
March 28: Washington Post, Op-Ed, “A Tax Plan Charities Should Back”
Posted on 8 April '09 by Joel, under Blog. No Comments.
Government able to end hunger in U.S., activist says
Tuesday, April 07, 2009
By China Millman, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
“President Obama has promised to end child hunger in the United States by 2015. But you haven’t heard about it. The media is writing about what Michelle Obama is wearing. Or what kind of dog they’re going to get,” Joel Berg almost shouted.
Fifty people showed up to hear Mr. Berg, executive director of the New York City Coalition Against Hunger, talk about his new book, “All You Can Eat: How Hungry is America?” at WPXI last night.
While the subject was grim — more than 36 million Americans currently live in a state of food insecurity — the mood was surprisingly optimistic.
Mr. Berg marshaled plenty of statistics, but he also spoke about the progress that has been made and would continue to be made as long as people commit to ending hunger, rather than just mitigating its effects.
“Hunger is a problem that needs to be solved by the government, not by food banks or soup kitchens,” Mr. Berg explained in an earlier interview. “If you doubled all the private food banks, it would knock a few million people out of hunger, [but] you could entirely end the problem almost overnight by just increasing funding and increasing eligibility to existing programs,” such as food stamp programs, WIC and school meal programs.
In 2007 more than 10 percent of households in Pennsylvania experienced hunger at some point. In 2009 those numbers are undoubtably worse. Just Harvest and the Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank, which co-hosted the talk, have firsthand knowledge of how much worse. The latter organization, a nonprofit that distributes food through outlets such as soup kitchens, Meals on Wheels and after-school programs, has been serving an average of 2,000 new households each month since August 2008.
But these circumstances have also created an unusual moment of opportunity for advocates such as Mr. Berg and other anti-hunger organizations to press for dramatic, substantial change, some of which has already started.
The federal government is about to release food-related stimulus funds that include money to help Americans who don’t have enough money for basic necessities. According to Just Harvest and the Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank, Pennsylvania alone could receive an estimated $754 million in additional food stamps funding over two years.
On a smaller scale, Michael Peck, food services director for Pittsburgh Public Schools, expanded the free meal program so that 66 schools and 18 early-childhood centers offer free breakfasts to all students and 41 schools and centers with the highest poverty rates offer free lunches to all students. He was able to get increased federal subsidies to support these expansions.
But Mr. Berg wants more than just increased funding. “As of two years ago, it would take about $24 billion to end hunger,” Mr. Berg explained, pointing out that was only 2 percent of the bailout funds. “But unless you significantly reduce poverty, you’re going to have to keep pumping money into [federal programs] every year.”
Follow China on Twitter at http://twitter.com/chinamillman. China Millman can be reached at 412-263-1198 or cmillman@post-gazette.com.
First published on April 7, 2009 at 12:00 am
You can read this article on the Post-Gazette website here.
Posted on 8 April '09 by Joel, under Blog. No Comments.
January 1: Next American City, “Cities break out the piggy bank,” by Ariella Cohen.
January 8: Huffington Post, Joel Berg blog, “Dr. King’s Other Dream: Ending Poverty”
January 16: WNYC (NPR affiliate, NYC), Leonard Lopate Show, “Hunger in the Land of Plenty”
January 16: Huffington Post, Joel Berg blog, “Progressives Should Stop Carping and Start Fighting.”
January 26: Metro NY, “Feeding the hungry halfway,” by Neil deMause.
January 27: Grit TV/The Nation Presents, “The Politics of Hunger,” with Laura Flanders.
February 3: The Brooklyn Rail, “How Hungry is America? VERY.,” by Eleanor Bader.
February 3: Philadelphia City Paper, “Just Do It: All You Can Eat: How Hungry is America?” by Natalie Hope McDonald.
February 4: Alternet.com, excerpt, “Hunger in the U.S.: A problem as American as apple pie.”
February 6: Center for American Progress, “All You Can Eat? How Hungry is America in Good Times versus Recession?”
February 9: Philadelphia Inquirer, “Hunger expert says government must lead the fight,” by Alfred Lubrano.
February 11: WHYY (NPR affiliate, Philadelphia), Radio Times with Marty Moss-Coane, “Food Insecurity” episode.
February 11: Daily Pennsylvanian, “Berg discusses ‘food insecurity’ in America,” by Matt Grady.
February 12: Philadelphia Inquirer, “Nutter backs anti-hunger efforts,” by Alfred Lubrano.
February 13: WILL (NPR affiliate, Urbana, IL), Focus 580 with David Inge, “All You Can Eat: How Hungry is America?”
February 18: NY Times, “Despite U.S. offer, city stands firm on food stamps,” by Julie Bosman.
February 18: KTBC-7 (Fox affiliate, Austin, TX), Good Day Austin, “Solving the U.S. hunger problem.”
Posted on 18 February '09 by Joel, under Blog. No Comments.
February 18, 2009
Despite U.S. Offer, City Stands Firm on Food Stamps
By JULIE BOSMAN
The New York Times
A provision in President Obama’s stimulus package, extending food stamp benefits for able-bodied adults, has revived a dispute in New York City between Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and advocates for the poor.
The provision overturns a 1996 rule limiting able-bodied adults who have no dependents to three months of food stamps in a three-year period. But the Bloomberg administration said on Tuesday that nothing had changed and that it was not obligated to extend benefits to anyone not enrolled in the Work Experience Program, a workfare program that provides temporary jobs, usually in city agencies.
While cities and states are allowed under the stimulus provision to require participation in such workfare programs, advocates for the poor decried the policy as unwise and counterproductive, particularly as the recession swells the ranks of the jobless who need help buying groceries.
“They are wasting city funds to force people to do sometimes ‘make-work’ jobs in order to get fully funded federal benefits,” said Joel Berg, the executive director of the New York City Coalition Against Hunger.
“Saying that in order to get a measly portion of food you have to work extra hours just doesn’t seem like a way to promote economic growth and promote self-sufficiency,” he added.
City Councilman Bill de Blasio, a Brooklyn Democrat and chairman of the General Welfare Committee, said in a statement on Tuesday, “Instead of putting hungry New Yorkers on a path out of poverty, the city is placing them in unpaid jobs before they can receive federal food aid they would be entitled to anyway.”
But Robert Doar, commissioner of the city’s Human Resources Administration, which oversees food stamps and workfare, said the city was ready to expand the Work Experience Program rather than allow people to collect food stamps without working or looking for work.
The program, which currently has about 12,000 participants, teaches job skills, like résumé preparation, and places people in jobs — or, sometimes, internships — with government agencies or the private sector.
The mayor “believes in sending a message that work is the best way to escape poverty,” Mr. Doar said. “It’s a strong principled message that he wants to reaffirm.”
In 2006, Mr. Bloomberg overruled a decision by two of his top aides to seek a federal waiver that would have allowed New Yorkers, along with others in areas with high unemployment, to receive food stamps beyond the time limit.
The provision in the federal stimulus package essentially nationalizes that waiver until October 2010, to encourage spending during the recession.
Ellen Vollinger, the legal director for the Food Research and Action Center, an anti-hunger policy organization in Washington, said that each dollar in federal food stamp benefits generates nearly double that in economic activity.
Individuals qualify for $176 in food stamps each month if their gross monthly income does not exceed $1,127, according to a city Web site.
It is not clear how many people would have benefited from the extension. According to the Human Resources Administration, there were 1.3 million food stamp recipients in New York City in December, a 19.4 percent increase over the year before. About 47,000 of them are able-bodied adults without dependents. In 2006, when there were about 43,000 able-bodied adults receiving food stamps, city officials estimated that if the three-month limit were waived, at least 13,900 more people would become eligible.
At the time, Mr. Bloomberg said he had quashed the city’s waiver application because he was “a believer that people should have to work for a living.”
“You have to have a penalty if there’s a requirement to work, and this penalty is one that’s appropriate,” he said. “The city has a whole host of programs to make sure that nobody goes without food.”
Mr. Berg, in his 2008 book, “All You Can Eat,” compared the mayor’s position to the standpoint of Charles Trevelyan, the British officer in charge of famine relief during the Irish potato famine of the 1840s; he blamed the poor and their “selfish, perverse and turbulent character” for their own plight.
Mr. de Blasio called the mayor’s approach an “ideological hang-up” that “felt to some extent like a carryover from the Giuliani administration.”
Ms. Vollinger of the Food Research and Action Center questioned why New York would not take full advantage of food stamps, which are paid for by the federal Agriculture Department, and instead expand the workfare program, which is partly funded by the city. (Mr. Doar could not say on Tuesday how much the city spent on it.)
“If they were really interested in maximizing federal resources and minimizing the cost of handling this, then eliminating the time limit would be the cost-effective approach,” Ms. Vollinger said.
To see the actual article, click here.
Posted on 18 February '09 by Joel, under Blog. No Comments.
Hunger expert says government must lead the fight
by Alfred Lubrano
Inquirer Staff Writer
Fighting hunger without the weapon of big federal dollars is like fighting drought without water. That’s nationally known hunger expert Joel Berg talking, championing change in how America helps the poor. “The belief that charity does it better than government only ensures hunger will persist,” Berg says. “When people get food from a pantry, that’s not a success. It’s a failure of American policy.”
Berg, 44, is the executive director of the New York City Coalition Against Hunger and a Clinton administration antihunger official who’s written a new book, All You Can Eat: How Hungry Is America?
He’ll be all around town tomorrow and Wednesday, visiting a West Philadelphia food cupboard, speaking at the University of Pennsylvania, and participating in a hunger and homelessness discussion at the Central Library of the Free Library of Philadelphia, among other events.
Berg is prone to saying things like, “We are a country that’s giving nearly a trillion dollars to Wall Street. How about a few bucks to keep people from being hungry?”
It’s pure Berg: pointed and up-to-the-moment, with a hint of lefty anger that makes him the darling of hunger fighters everywhere.
Berg makes it clear that he wants one thing: to end hunger in America. Really.
He says it can be done with an approximate 41 percent increase in federal nutrition-assistance programs (about $24 billion) - mostly in food stamps.
“It’s a big deal that he’s visiting,” said Rachel Meeks, director of the food-stamp enrollment campaign at the Greater Philadelphia Coalition Against Hunger. “In a way, he’s a catalyst for all the work we’ve been doing lately.”
“His coming to town is a spark, and it’s getting hunger awareness going,” said Bill Clark, executive director of Philabundance, the largest hunger-relief agency in the area.
Berg is seizing on the change in administrations to make his push. President Obama, who has used food stamps, is already on record pledging to end child hunger by 2015.
“You can’t misunderestimate having a president who cares about this,” Berg said in his mischievous fashion during a phone interview last week, using an old George W. Bush malaprop to illustrate the difference in Oval Office occupiers.
All kidding aside, that difference is real, Berg insists. He cites Bush’s much-quoted preference for using charities, not government, to help the poor. Obama, on the other hand, has said he’s open to using more government monies to battle poverty.
In granular detail, Berg’s book shows that even if all charities in the United States could double food distribution, the number of food-insecure Americans (a new way of saying hungry) would diminish only from the current 35.5 million to 32 million.
Yet, reliance on religious and social-service agencies such as food pantries and food kitchens is growing, Berg said.
This is akin to using bucket brigades of private citizens to put out fires, while eschewing government-bought fire trucks, he added.
Instead, Berg said, if the federal government boosted its nutrition safety net - more money for school breakfasts and lunches, women and infants, and the most important antihunger tool of all, food stamps - then “we would entirely eliminate food insecurity.”
That wonkish term, by the way, is meant to help people understand what hunger really means.
Many Americans hear the word hunger and flash on Biafran babies with bloated bellies and flies in their eyes.
That’s starvation, and it rarely happens here. But that doesn’t mean we’re not in trouble, advocates say.
Food insecurity is the lack of access to enough nutritious food for an active, healthy life. In any given year, a food-insecure person has had to skip meals because the food wasn’t there.
Even the mildest forms of food insecurity are associated with poor child development and health, higher child-hospitalization rates, and maternal depression, according to Mariana Chilton, a professor at Drexel University’s School of Public Health, and principal investigator for the Philadelphia GROW Project, which deals with nutrition among poor children.
In Philadelphia, 145,000 people are considered food insecure, according to 2006 estimates, Meeks said. Newer figures will only be higher, she added.
“Expanding food stamps is the single best way to fight hunger,” Berg said. “And it’s better for people to receive $239 a month in food stamps than getting $50 in groceries from a pantry in a month.”
Besides, he said, food cupboards are meant to be for emergencies, not frequent use, as has lately been the case.
Clark can testify that supplies are dwindling while demand skyrockets in the dismal economy. “This economic meltdown has us pushed against the wall,” he said.
Currently, 24 percent of Philadelphians - nearly 352,000 people - are on food stamps, Meeks said, but an additional 100,000 are eligible and not getting them - in part because the application process is complex.
“Americans believe government can’t do big things,” Berg said. “But between 1960 and 1973, the poverty rate was cut in half. You need money to do it. Our best solution is for the government to ensure that people never go hungry.”
Contact staff writer Alfred Lubrano at 215-854-4969 or alubrano@phillynews.com.
See the original article here.
Posted on 9 February '09 by Joel, under Blog. No Comments.
Posted on 4 February '09 by Joel, under Blog. No Comments.
