There is a running motif in Jose Andres’ illuminating book, We Fed an Island, in which Andres and his crew enter through the backdoor of the Puerto Rico Convention Center so they can take part in official meetings about restoring order after Hurricane Maria. Andres has no invitation nor security…
Food Bank News
Anyone who’s ever contemplated an all-you-can-eat buffet can easily imagine the epic amounts of food that get wasted every day at every level of the food system — at restaurants, grocery stores, schools, cafeterias, and homes. And that’s not counting the food wasted by farms, manufacturers, and distributors before it…
Have you ever been hungry? Of course you have! While we all share the physical sensation of being hungry, not everyone suffers from an inability to satisfy it because of a lack of funds or access. Being hungry without having the resources to quell it is the definition of food…
To the people who work or volunteer at the nation’s food banks, the premise of Andrew Fisher’s book, Big Hunger, smarts. He means Big Hunger in the same sense as Big Data, Big Ag, or Big Tech — a powerful, behind-the-scenes force adept at manipulating the market, often to benefit…
Nearly ten years ago, on July 24, 2009, the federal government raised the minimum wage from $6.55 to $7.25. Since then, there has been no increase, though other entities have picked up where the federal government has left off. Many states and municipalities have moved on their own to raise…
Poverty has proven hard to beat in America, declining slightly in the most recent estimates, but still barreling along at between 11% and 15% of the total population, as it has for decades. The official poverty rate of 12.3% in 2017 inched down from 12.7% in 2016 and 13.5% in…
If you’re looking for a nice round number to describe the amount of money the federal government spends to help people get food, then $100 billion would do the trick. The USDA spent more than $98 billion in 2017 on 15 domestic food and nutrition assistance programs, down from nearly…
As the smallest of the major federal food assistance programs, the Commodity Supplemental Food Program, with $236 million of funding in 2017, barely registers on the scale when compared to SNAP ($68 billion). But it stands out for being the only program to focus on the needs of seniors. Under…
Funding for The Emergency Food Assistance Program ($374 million in 2017) may be small potatoes compared to SNAP ($68 billion), but TEFAP holds the distinction of being the largest source of federal aid aimed directly at the nation’s food banks. Nearly 20% of the food that gets distributed by America’s…