110 Worth County Children are Food Insecure

Feeding America, the nation’s largest hunger relief organization released their study that reveals children in every county and congressional district are in the fight against hunger.

The study “Map the Meal Gap: Child Food Insecurity 2011” shows that in our service area figures range from 20-31 percent of children who are food insecure. The lowest county is Leavenworth coming in at 20.4 percent of children with food insecurity while Livingston comes in at 31.2 percent insecure rate.

One out of every four children in Second Harvest Community Food Bank service area is considered food insecure.

There are approximately 80,200 members of the population that fall under 18 years old and 19,700 or 25 percent are considered food insecure. In Worth County, MO, 428 members of the population fall under 18 years old and 24.5 percent or 110 children are considered to be food insecure.
In the “There can be no greater cause than to ensure children have enough food to be healthy, grow and learn. Second Harvest stands ready to strategically address this complex issue.” David Davenport, executive director, Second Harvest Community Food Bank. “We ask only that our community embrace the belief that hunger in the life of a child is unacceptable and act on that belief as an advocate, donor or volunteer.”

Being food insecure is defined as the lack of access at times to enough food for an active and healthy life; limited or uncertain unavailability of nutritionally adequate food. The term hunger means the uneasy or painful sensation caused by a lack of food. According to this study, millions of people in the United States are going without food.

Second Harvest is helping to end hunger in children via our Backpack Buddies program. Children who are eligible will receive a backpack on the weekends that contain nutritious food to help get through the weekend. This school year, over 2,000 children will receive assistance in 14 counties.

More information about the study can be found at http://feedingamerica.org/hunger-in-america/hunger-studies/map-the-meal-gap.aspx

Second Harvest Says Recent Legislation Would Gut Aid Programs

by Second Harvest

After nearly 20 years of bipartisan commitment to ensure funding for critical nutrition assistance to our country's most vulnerable, the House of Representatives voted last week to gut funding for the Women, Infants and Children (WIC) program in a move that seeks to deny nutrition assistance to as many as 350,000 newborns, very young children and mothers in HB 2112.

WIC provides funding for supplemental foods, health care referrals, and nutrition education for low-income pregnant, breastfeeding, and non-breastfeeding postpartum women, and to infants and children up to age five who are found to be at nutritional risk.

Additionally, the same piece of legislation dramatically cut funding to the Emergency Food Assistance Program (TEFAP) and the Commodity Food Supplemental Program (CSFP). CSFP is a Federally funded program, which has had success improving the health of low-income pregnant and breastfeeding women, other new mothers up to one year postpartum, infants, children up to age six, and elderly people at least 60 years of age by supplementing their diets with nutritious USDA commodity foods. TEFAP supplements the diets of low-income needy persons, including elderly people, by providing them with emergency food and nutrition assistance.

TEFAP and CSFP programs provide more than half of the food distributed by Second Harvest Community Food Bank across our 19 county service territory. Second Harvest will be re-evaluating how to feed the local needy due to these cuts.

Recently Second Harvest joined food banks from around the country in releasing the results of a nationwide study of food access. That study concluded that low income residents of Northwest Missouri and Northeast Kansas are missing 8.7 million meals annually. If enacted as written, this bill would remove access to an estimated 500,000 additional meals exploding our local meal gap to 9.2 million.

“To put that number in perspective, imagine your child or your parent ending a day having missed a meal because their house or apartment was completely devoid of food. Then consider that single occurrence happening 9.2 million times a year mostly in the lives of young children and the elderly,” says Second Harvest Executive Director David Davenport. “This is the worst kind of public policy - it's ideology over common sense, it's poor bashing to satisfy the worst kind of political behavior. Low income Americans don't have much of a political voice, they cannot hire lobbyists and they do not make contributions to political campaigns. The poor just try to survive.”

Summer 2011 has Second Harvest partnering with Brittany Village Apartments in a pilot program to provide supplemental food boxes for 150 low income families. They can expect 25 pounds of dry and canned goods and additional produce to be delivered in June, July and August. According to program director Linda Laderoute, “We hope that this will enable us to support hungry families this summer and expand to meet the greater need next summer.”

Summer is rough on many of our children. Often times, hungry kids can't wait to get back to school so they can have at least two balanced meals a day. They exist on minimal resources during the summer and research indicates that even mild under-nutrition during critical periods of growth impacts the behavior of our kids, their school performance, and their overall cognitive development. For more on Summer Hunger visit the Harvest Blog: http://www.ourcommunityfoodbank.org/blog_site

With the measures taken this month to cut critical nutrition assistance to families with children, summertime for our nation's children will likely continue to be a time of great need in this country. To see how your State Representative voted and voice your concern regarding HB 2112, see the following links: http://politics.nytimes.com/congress/bills/112/hr2112
http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2011/roll459.xml)

Editor's note -- Congressman Sam Graves voted for this legislation.

To make a donation to Second Harvest follow this link: http://www.ourcommunityfoodbank.org/give_money

52,000 plus residents in Northeast Kansas and Northwest Missouri identified as food insecure

Second Harvest Community Food Bank and Feeding America, the nation’s largest domestic hunger-relief organization, today released a landmark study, “Map the Meal Gap,” providing the first detailed look at the food budget needed by families struggling with hunger here in Northwest Missouri and Northeast Kansas each year – an estimated $21.1 million.

The study takes a look at ‘meals’ in a whole new way, using county-level data on food costs from the Nielsen Company to break down the food budget shortfall of our residents into an approximation of the meals missing from the tables of people at risk of hunger in Second Harvest ‘s service area each year.

According to the Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey data analyzed as part of “Map the Meal Gap,” people struggling with hunger estimate they would need about $56 more each month on average during the months that they are food insecure to address the shortages in their food budget. On a county by county level, “Map the Meal Gap” shows that this shortfall locally represents an estimated 8.7 million meals on an annual basis.

“Map the Meal Gap” also provides critical information that has never been previously available -- food insecurity rates for Congressional District. Previously, food insecurity data was only available at the state level in the USDA’s annual report. The study further analyzes each district’s food insecure population to determine their income eligibility for federal nutrition assistance. This data has the potential to redefine the way service providers and policy makers address areas of need.

“This report confirms the scope and magnitude of the challenge faced by the many communities served by Second Harvest Community Food Bank,” said David Davenport, Executive Director, Second Harvest Community Food Bank. “Collectively, we must embrace the core belief that hunger, especially in the life of a child, is socially, economically and morally unacceptable and act on the belief as an advocate, donor and volunteer. In doing so, we take the first step towards closing the meal gap and improving the quality of life of all our neighbors, especially those most in need.”

‘“Map the Meal Gap” was also able to compare food costs across counties, showing for example Mercer County, MO to have among the highest food costs in Northwest Missouri and Northeast Kansas.

Although “Map the Meal Gap” showed that Livingston County, MO has some of the lowest food costs in the region, food insecurity was still among the highest.

Map the Meal Gap provides the following data for Northwest Missouri and Northeast Kansas in an interactive map format:

• The percentage of our local population who is food insecure.

• The percentage of the food insecure population in our area who qualify based on income for SNAP (Foods Stamps) and other federal nutrition programs.

• The percentage of the food insecure population in who do NOT qualify for federal nutrition programs and often must rely on charitable food assistance programs and who also need better wages and employment opportunities to help them meet their basic needs.

• The average price per meal in our area based on new research by the Nielsen Company.

The findings of “Map the Meal Gap” are based on statistics collected by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, U.S. Census Bureau, and food price data from the Nielsen Company. The study was supported by the Howard G. Buffett Foundation and Nielsen.

A summary of the findings, an interactive map of the United States, and the full report are available on Second Harvest's NEW blog site: http://www.ourcommunityfoodbank.org/blog_site. Statewide data can also be found at feedingmissouri.org.