Solano county hunger
Have you ever thought about what it's like not have food? I am sure that most people don't have to worry about being hungry everyday, but there are people out there who do. There are over one in four people hungry or at serious risk of being hunger—significantly worse than the nation as a whole. It hurts to think about people who don't make it through the night because of not having any food. According to the Oxford English Dictionary hunger is “the uneasy or painful sensation caused by the want of food; craving appetite. There are so many ways that Solano county hunger can be eliminated. Together, we could raise money, start food drives, and even teach those counties who are in need of food, how to grow different food.There are many people who are dying every minute from starvation, but by raising awareness,
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showing the statistics, and giving ideas, we can end poverty and help those in need of food. The cause of hunger and poverty is that some people can't afford food for themselves and their ones. This makes them seem weak and less able to earn the money that would help them escape poverty and hunger. This is not just an everyday problem: when children are thin , or ‘stunted’, it can affect their future income, condemning them to a life of poverty and hunger. In some places , farmers often can’t afford seeds, so they can't plant the crops that would give for their families. They may have to dig crops without the tools and fertilizers they need. Others have no land, water or education. In short, the poor are hungry and them being traps them in poverty. Another reason for poverty is the climate.Natural disasters such as floods, tropical storms and long periods of drought are on the increase -- with calamitous consequences for the hungry poor in developing countries.Droughts are the number one most common causes of food shortages in the world. In 2011, the drought caused crop failures and heavy livestock losses in parts of Ethiopia, Somalia and Kenya.In many places, climate change is worsening already adverse natural conditions. Increasingly, the world's fertile farmland is under threat from erosion, salinization and desertification. Deforestation by human hands accelerates the erosion of land which could be used for growing food. Also, another cause of poverty is that, in recent years, the price of food products has been very unstable. Roller-coaster food prices make it difficult for the poor people to get access to nutritious food consistently. The poor need access to adequate food all year round. Price spikes may put food out of reach, which can have lasting consequences for small children.When prices rises, consumers often shift to cheaper, less-nutritious foods, heightening the risks of micronutrients deficiencies and other forms of malnutrition. One third of all food produced (1.3 billion tons) is never consumed. This food wastage shows a missed opportunity to work on global food security in a world where one in eight are hungry.Producing this food also uses up precious natural resources that we need to feed the planet. Each year, food that is produced but not eaten takes up a volume of water equal to the annual flow of Russia's River. Producing this food also adds 3.3 billion tons of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere, with consequences for the climate and food production. To help fight hunger in Solano county we as a community can support state legislation to end barriers in the Food Stamp Program, Urge school officials to make sure that every school in Solano County provides breakfast, Contact school and community leaders in your county about expanding the Summer Food Program so that needy children don’t go hungry when school is out, Work with childcare centers and homes to make sure that children get nutritious meals through the federally funded Child & Adult Care Food Program. Another way we could help is Food Donations, Transitioning,Urban Farming Access to Education, Social Change, and Government Intervention etc. These small little things can help families out of poverty and decrease hunger. Hunger is a symptom of poverty; far too many families experience devastating health consequences when their low wages or modest public benefits can’t cover the cost of housing, utilities and food.With the help of the community we could help the lower class or low-income families out of poverty.In Solano County, nearly one in four, or 22.4 percent, of the county's children under 18 struggle with hunger.However, the rate among the county's general population is 15.9 percent.
What is somewhat alarming is that about half the hungry children in Solano County are in families who are 185 percent of the poverty line.This means that parents of these children earn too much money to qualify for most federal nutrition programs, including the school lunch program.Even as the demand for charitable food help increases, federal food programs are failing to serve eligible, hungry families. Bureaucratic hassles and the stigma of receiving assistance prevent people from getting the help they need. Federal food programs—if fully utilized—are essential for fighting hunger in Solano
County In conclusion, to help prevent hunger in Solano County we could raise money, start food drives, and even teach others who are in need of food, how to grow different food. And also we could decrease the amount of food wastage and unstable markets to decrease the amount of people in poverty. If just one person got out there and helped feed the hungry, just imagine the lives that could be saved. It's amazing how much just one person can do and by doing this we could help someone in need and decrease poverty.
There are many policy issues that affect families in today’s society. Hunger is a hidden epidemic and one major issue that American’s still face. It is hard to believe that in this vast, ever growing country, families are still starving. As stated in the book Growing Up Empty, hunger is running wild through urban, rural, and even suburban communities. This paper will explore the differing perspectives of the concerned camp, sanguine camp, and impatient camp. In addition, each camps view, policy agenda, and values that underlie their argument on hunger will be discussed.
According to Dolgoff and Feldstein (2003), “the needs and goals of the Food Stamp Program are to alleviate hunger and malnutrition by enabling low-income households to buy a nutritious adequate diet” (p. 132). The program also improved the market for local merchants to produce food for eligible low-income households and other agencies such as the School Lunch Program which safeguard the health and wel...
Food insecurity is one of the major social problems that we have in our world today. The concern about this problem is the increasing number of people that are beginning to experience hunger more often. “While hunger has long been a public health concern in developing countries, it has received varying degrees of attention in the United States, most notable during the 1930s and 1960s” (Poppendieck 1992). In addition to lack of food, there are consequences that follow. People, especially children, who suffer from food deprivation also undergo some health issues such as malnutrition and obesity, which leads to more health care and hospitalizations. “In the early 1980s, most reports of hunger involved families with children, the elderly, the unskilled and unemployed youth, the mentally ill, the homeless and minorities” (Brown 1992; Nestle and Guttmacher 1992). However, a particular ethnic group that is greatly affected by food insecurities are the Hispanic...
According to the “Hunger and Poverty Fact Sheet” on Feeding America’s website, in 2014 there were over 48 million Americans living in food insecure households, which included 15 million children. During the school year, these children rely on free or reduce breakfast and lunch. When the summer vacation months arrive, these children loose the security of these meals. Feeding America, working alongside the United States Department of Agriculture, provide free summer meals to these children. Unfortunately, not all children and families are aware that these programs are taking place; therefore missing out on a vital resource to help stretch their food dollars throughout the summer
The federal Food Stamp Program is an assisted nutrition program that helps millions of eligible, low-income individuals and families (United States Department of Agriculture). This program gives its recipients extra money each month to try to help them have better food security. The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program is also the largest program in the federal safety net (United States Department of Agriculture). In Ohio’s Appalachian counties, there are 515,300 recipients which is 25.4% of the population (Job and Family Services). The Supplemental Nutrition Program is a good program except for one problem that can be fixed relatively fast and one problem that it will take a little time to solve. The problem that can be fixed right away is that the Supplemental Nutrition Program can be abused by the recipients buying junk food instead of healthy food. The problem that will take some time to fix is that some recipients make unhealthy food choices because they do not have access to a local supermarket. In order to fix these two problems the Food Stamp Program needs to better regulate what can be bought with the Food Stamp card and items in convenient stores need to be better stocked in order to keep accepting Food Stamp cards.
It is important to remember that all this is happening in one of the most endowed nations ever and where tons of food are wasted and thrown away daily. Forty percent of food is thrown out in the US every year. This amount of food worth about $165 billion and is prove that it could feed approximately 25 million Americans. Clearly, United States hunger problems are not caused by a lack of food, they are rooted in poverty and like many aspect in life we cannot address one without also trying to solve the other.
Food insecurity does not discriminate; it reaches many segments of society (Whitney, DeBruyne, Pinna, & Rolfes, 2007). Even through closely related to poverty, not all that have food insecurities are in poverty. Often it is the working poor that are hit the hardest. The working poor are a group that despite having a job, there income is too low to meet their need or that of their family. Most of the working poor (56%) live in families with children, so that the poverty of these workers affects many others as well (Problems Facing the Working Poor, Kim 1999). Many lower to middle class families will temporarily struggle with food insecurity at various times during the year. For these families government assistance may not immediately available. Appling for Supplemental Nutrition Assistanc...
Food insecurity is an issue faced by millions of Americans every day, and the biggest group affected by this is working families with children. Food insecurity is so big that the United States government has now recognized it and provided a definition for it. The United States government has defined food insecurity as “a household level economic and social condition of limited or uncertain access to adequate food” (USDA.gov). Food banks and anti-hunger advocates agree that some of the causes of food insecurity are stagnant wages, increase in housing costs, unemployment, and inflation of the cost of food. These factors have caused food banks to see a change in the groups of people needing assistance. Doug O’Brien, director of public policy and research at Chicago-based Second Harvest says “’we’ve seen a real shift in who we serve. A decade ago, it was almost always homeless, single men and chronic substance abusers. Now we have children and working families at soup kitchens’” (Koch). These families that are feeling the effects of food insecurity will not be only ones affected by it, but all of America. Studies have shown that there is a link between food security, performance in the classroom, and obesity. If this issue is not faced head on, America will have a generation of children not fully prepared for the workforce and high health insurance rates due to obesity health issues.
Child hunger has been prevalent in the United States for many years. As of 2012, over fifteen millions children live in food insecure households. For my paper I will examine Child Hunger as a social problem, the effects of the problem, solutions, and barriers that have hindered the solutions used for this problem.
The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program has been very beneficial to many households that do not know where their next meal is coming from by providing them with resources to acquire food. Many of those food insecure households, however, are faced with high rates of obesity that leads to a variety of other health issues. Research has shown that increasing nutritional education through programs that teach people to read labels and balance their diet works and can decrease obesity rates. Low income and minority households, the populations most affected by the issues of food insecurity and obesity, are especially in need of nutritional education. By expanding nutritional education for those households most at risk of obesity, a public health initiative could decrease the obesity levels in SNAP participants.
Poverty is regarded as the major cause of food insecurity. A household food security depends on access to food. America has access to good healthy food. However, a family too poor to buy them do not enjoy food security. Rosenbaum and Neuberger (2005) report that each year the number of people using government food assistance programs grows. “Food stamps are targeted to those with the greatest need for help in purchasing food… [and] helps to lessen the extent and severity of poverty (Rosenbaum and Neuberger 2005)”.
In the year 2015, around 40 million U.S. citizens were food insecure (Randall para. 3). Food insecurity can be defined in paragraph 3 by “[having] difficulty at some time during the year providing enough food for all their members due to a lack of resources. This 12.7% of American citizens also contains another group - children. Aged 10-17, 6.8 million adolescents struggle with a food insecurity. There have been several years of cuts to the social programs designed to help these people, along with the Great Recession continuing to leave an impact on the U.S. economy (para. 6). Under the Obama administration, $8.6 billion was cut from the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP), formerly known as Food Stamps. From 1993-2001 under the Clinton administration, former President Bill Clinton’s administration “gutted the welfare system” (para. 15). Because of these budget cuts, the families who rely on food assistance from the government have been allotted less throughout the years. From a sociological perspective, the concepts of sociological imagination, class stratification, and social location are in effect when it comes to child hunger in the United States. Being hungry is an issue larger than any one individual can control.
Does anyone ever think about the effect going hungry has on a person’s overall health? Yes, they may not be obese as the rest of the country, but there are other health effects that directly affect a person when it comes to being food insecure. Food insecurity is defined as the state of being without reliable access to a sufficient quantity of affordable, nutritious food. Hunger in the United States affects so many people, more than one realizes for a country that is so well established. Huger affects children, seniors, different cultures, people that live in the rural areas of the country, and even the working class Americans in your surrounding communities, essentially your neighbors! Our government has established a few programs to help
In this world there are many different types of challenges faced but individuals in different countries, as people work together to find a way to stop or solve these challenges there are also some challenges or situations that individuals, even as a group, cannot eliminate. The race to reach conclusions of situations is very desirable and is being worked on very efficiently, but one issue that people have mistaken into accomplishing is hunger. Hungry is present everywhere and not a lot of people can satisfy or fulfil that need. Lack of sanitation, unemployment, and unhealthy diet choices these are involved in an imaginary line called the poverty line. The idea of food banks is a good start into eliminating hungry but the process still has a
In the United States of America, the richest nation of the world, one in six Americans do not have enough food to eat. Have you ever wonder why there are so many food banks and food pantries throughout the country? They are not simply, as you thought, existent to offer emergency food assistance. Indeed, they are the main sources of food to millions of food-insecure Americans. Food insecurity, the state of not having sufficient quantity of affordable and nutritious food, has been very widespread and common in America. It affected millions of Americans and has been increasing dramatically in recent years; in 2012, more than 48 millions of food-insecure Americans rely on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) (McMillan). The depth