The Food Assistance Landscape, recently released by the USDA, covers recent trends from the Food and Nutrition Service. It reports that the 11% increase in expenditures for food assistance programs in fiscal year 2008 was the largest percentage increase in 16 years. While SNAP accounts for 62% of spending, WIC was the fastest growing food assistance…
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Author: Emily Zimmerman
The USDA’s Economic Research Service has recently released an illustrated guide to research findings on nutrition assistance programs, food insecurity, food prices, food spending, global food security, healthy eating, agriculture, and more. Some of the graphs from the report are excerpted below.
This BBC report describes the experiences of the increasing number of homeless families in the US, including 15,000 homeless children in New York alone.
The number of homeless families in the Washington metropolitan area increased 15 percent in the past year, while the number of homeless individuals declined.
A recent report by the National Center on Family Homelessness provides estimates of homelessness among children, estimating that more than 1.5 million children are homeless each year (one in every 50 American children).
This link opens a New York Times article on the rising number of homeless encampments in cities across the country. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/26/us/26tents.html
This link opens a New York Times article on the effects of drought in California’s Central Valley.
This link opens a New York Times article on the rising demand for food bank assistance across the United States.
The Food Research and Action Center released a report on the national School Breakfast Program for the school year 2007-2008.
Although the growing number of children receiving free and reduced price lunches at school signals increasing levels of need as the nation faces an extended economic crisis, it also indicates that millions of children who may face food insecurity at home have access to meals at school.