May 2014

News

Stories from the Hotline:

Retiring in Rural America

A woman called the Hotline from Boone County, in rural northwestern Arkansas. She explained that she and her husband currently receive SNAP, and "I'm grateful, but it's just not enough." She had tried to obtain more fresh produce through the Senior Farmers Market Nutrition Program, but the program only exists in a few counties in their state. The local food bank doesn't have a website, so the advocate gave her the main number. The advocate also referred the caller to the National Council on Aging's website for their Benefits CheckUp® screener, in case there is money that her household would qualify for. "We don't have a lot of options here," the caller reflected, "but if you like quiet... that's the tradeoff."

Beyond Bread: Healthy Food Sourcing in Emergency Food Programs

WhyHunger is excited to release a new publication on healthy food sourcing in emergency food programs. Featuring program profiles and resources, the guide features strategies employed by food banks and agencies, including building relationships with farmers, creating voucher programs, teaching people how to grow their own food, and supporting an organizational culture that prioritizes nutrition. Download the report here.

WhyHunger Launches New Online Resource

We're excited to announce the launch of our new online resource, Building Community Power: A Grassroots Approach to Building Regional Networks for Food Justice, and invite you to explore this hub for the stories, resources and impact from WhyHunger's five-year collaboration with grassroots networks.

Stories. Through photo essays and videos, the stories illustrate how combined individual efforts can create powerful collective impact.

Resources. Examples of facilitation plans, community mapping reports, strategic planning documents, ideas for communication and outreach and other tools used in these collaborations are ready to be downloaded and reinvented for use in other communities.

Impact. Evaluation reports and impact narratives offer insight into the knowledge gained from the initiative, such as the importance of community ownership and multisectoral networks in building sustained, healthy and just food systems.

In the spirit of collective impact, the resources in Building Community Power are meant to be shared, explored, and adapted. We invite you to discover these stories and tools on the web.

Thanks to the W.K. Kellogg Foundation and Kresge Foundation for their support of this project.

Where Do SNAP Dollars Go?

The USDA may soon be required to release information about how much money SNAP pays to specific retailers. "Are Stores Making Bank Off Food Stamps?" is FERN's latest report for

Mother Jones by Tracie McMillan, bestselling author of The American Way of Eating. "The Argus Leader, a Sioux Falls, South Dakota newspaper, brought suit against the USDA in 2011 after the agency denied a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request seeking data on USDA's annual payments to grocers, gas stations, and other retailers in the SNAP program," writes McMillan, explaining why the case is now in court. Releasing this data would be unprecedented for the USDA, which contends that the information is private, and could lead to the disclosure of other closely held information. McMillan obtained an email from Greg Ferrara, a vice-president of the National Grocers Association, voicing the organization's opposition to such requirements: "We DO NOT want a freaking vote on it," Ferrara wrote in the email, adding that Marino's amendment would "expose [grocers] to significant new attacks from the left and right if this becomes law." Read the full article here.

Resources

Map the Meal Gap

Feeding America released its annual Map the Meal Gap report with state, county, and congressional district data on overall and child food insecurity rates. The report also includes data on food cost variation by county and the percent of food insecure populations likely eligible for federal nutrition programs. Key findings include:

Food insecurity exists among families living substantially above the poverty line. Twenty-seven percent of those who are food insecure have too much in income to meet eligibility rules for federal nutrition assistance programs but still struggle to put food on the table. This finding underscores the importance of protecting and strengthening eligibility and benefit levels in our federal nutrition programs as well as supporting the charitable feeding programs that help fill in the gaps.

In every state, children are at a higher risk of food insecurity compared to the overall population. County-level child food insecurity rates range from a low of 6 percent in Bowman County, North Dakota to a high of 41 percent in Zavala County, Texas. Sixteen counties in the U.S. each have more than 100,000 food-insecure children.

Of the counties with food insecurity rates in the highest 10 percent, 51.5 percent were rural, even though rural counties represent only 42.5 percent of all counties in the United States.

Ninety-three percent of the majority African-American population counties fell into the top 10 percent of counties with highest food insecurity.

In This Issue

Stories from the Hotline: Retiring in Rural America

WhyHunger Launches Beyond Bread

WhyHunger Launches New Online Resource

Where Do SNAP Dollars Go?

Map the Meal Gap

Please verify that your organization's profile is accurate in the database. To update your record, email nhc@whyhunger.org. If your organization is not in the database, please join us here.

The Clearinghouse Connection is meant to encourage conversation and dialogue about transforming communities, community food security and the emergency food system. We want to hear from you! Email us at nhc@whyhunger.org.

National Hunger Clearinghouse

WhyHunger

505 Eighth Avenue, Suite 2100

New York, New York 10018

nhc@whyhunger.org

212-629-8850

Contributors: Katrina Moore and Jessica Powers