by Nicholas Freudenberg

 

In the last month, three new reports on hunger and poverty in New York City have been released. Food Bank for New York City produced The Hunger Cliff One Year Later: 56 million meals lost and the need for emergency food remains high. The New York City Coalition Against Hunger (NYCCAH) produced The Unkindest Cuts, its 2014 Hunger Report, and the Women's Center for Education and Career Advancement released Overlooked and Undercounted The Struggle to Make Ends Meet in New York City. Together the reports paint a devastating and depressing portrait of the life circumstances of our city's low income populations and the painful consequences of city, state and federal policies that continue to widen the city's inequality gap.

 

A few numbers tell the story:

• Food Bank estimates that the 1.4 million food-insecure New York City residents face a meal gap of 250 million meals a year-of which at least 56 million meals can be attributed to the 2013 cut in SNAP benefits. The gap represents 178 meals per food-insecure person per year -about 60 days of 3 meals a day.
• A majority of New York City's food pantries and soup kitchens experienced increases in visits in 2014, ran out of food, or reduced the number of meals in their pantry bags.

Hot Bread Kitchen is a non-profit social enterprise that builds lasting economic security for foreign-born, minority and low-income individuals by increasing access to professional opportunities in the culinary industry.

  

Tell us about your work

Our organization currently operates two programs in our East Harlem space: the flagship on-the-job bakery training serves low-income, immigrant, and minority women by providing a year of intensive bakery training and professional development. Graduates of the program move on to positions at top bakeries and restaurants across New York City.

 

 

HBK Incubates supports food entrepreneurs ready to grow out of their home kitchens by providing rentable commercial kitchen space, business-focused workshops, and advising. Graduate businesses move on to their own space or co-packing facilities; a number of our graduates are now selling nationally.

 

Meet Nancy, resident of East Harlem for more than twenty years. In this interview we talk about food choices in East Harlem, the cost of living, and the pros and cons of living in this dynamic neighborhood. 

 

On December 8-9, 2014, the University of Pennsylvania's School of Veterinary Medicine convened a group of agronomists, lawyers, academics, farmers, economists, gleaners, psychologists, entrepreneurs, gardeners, scientists, composters, restaurateurs, chefs, grocery retailers, food industry representatives, faith-based organizations and anti-hunger advocates to discuss the growing issue of lost or wasted food, a $161 billion burden on the United States and an even greater problem on a global scale.

 

Two Food Policy Center staff members, Ashley Rafalow and Jan Poppendieck, attend and here they highlight some of the key themes, trends and ideas to emerge from this two-day conference. The goal to spur discussion on how New York City can build upon its efforts to feed the hungry, minimize food waste and divert solid waste from landfills. The presentations and resources from this conference will be posted on our website as they become available.

 

Size of the food waste phenomenon:

Globally: The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) reports that 1.3 billion tons of food are lost or wasted each year.  At the same time, we are far from reaching the goal of the 1996 World Food Summit to reduce the number of people suffering from malnutrition, and that is without an anticipated population bump to 9.2 billion people by 2050.

 

Nationally: The estimated total value of food loss in the United States is approximately $161.6 billion.  In 2010, 31% of the available food supply was lost- 10% at the retail level, 21% at the consumer level.

 

Where does the waste come from?: In higher income countries, it's often easier to throw food away than to eat, reuse or recycle it. In lower income countries issues including storage, transportation, infrastructure are sources of food waste. USDA data suggests that a majority of food loss in the U.S. occurs at the consumer level, with vegetables comprising the highest percentage of food lost.