One in Three Hispanic Children at Risk for Hunger in the United States

Bread For The World released a new report yesterday on hunger within the Latino population of the United States. The report shows that one in three Hispanic children are at risk for hunger within our borders.

Bread for the World has made the entire report available on their website; "Hunger and Poverty in the Hispanic Community." From Bread for The World's press release we find more figures from the report.

Thirty-four percent of Latino households with children struggle to put food on the table, according to “Hunger and Poverty in the Hispanic Community,” compared to about 22 percent of U.S. households with children overall.  And a shocking 36 percent of all Hispanic children live in poverty, compared to 25 percent of U.S. children overall. 

These figures could be much worse if it were not for government safety net programs. Federal nutrition programs like SNAP (the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly food stamps), WIC (the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children), and school meal programs have helped keep more people from going hungry, despite the nation's soaring poverty and unemployment rates. Thirty-five percent of Latinos are eligible for SNAP benefits, but only 21.4 percent actually participate in the program.

“Congress has a responsibility to communities with the greatest need, and we are urging policy makers to create a circle of protection around funding for programs that are vital to hungry and poor people,” added Moreno.

Audio: Interview with World Food Prize winner David Beckmann

From NPR, an interview with David Beckmann co-winner of the World Food Prize and founder of Bread For the World.

2010 World Food Prize winners on aiding small farmers

The World Food Prize was awarded today to Heifer International president Jo Luck and Bread for the World president David Beckmann. The prize usually goes to scientists who invent ways to increase food production in the under-developed world. This year, the granters of the prize decided to recognize the contributions of the non-profit community.

One of the major criticisms of the non-profits is that they just give food away, but that is not so of Heifer and Bread for the World. Instead, both organizations give resources and materials that the poor can use to produce more food so they can gain more money from it.

From the Des Moines Register, newspaper for the host city of the World Food Prize, writer Philip Brasher interviews both Luck and Beckmann.

Q: Brazil dramatically increased its agricultural output through large-scale farms, and the Economist magazine recently said that model could likely be repeated in Africa. Why focus on small-scale farmers?

Beckmann: In Africa, poor people are on the small farms and it is feasible to improve their productivity. If you do that, you get more food into the local markets, so that brings down the price of food. Heifer has long demonstrated that you can increase the productivity of these small farmers.

There are situations where large-scale agriculture could do some good. I'm not ideological about this. But most of the poor people in the world are smallholder farmers, so the most direct route to reducing poverty is in increasing their productivity.

Q: So aid to farmers is important not only to increase food production but lift people out of poverty?

Luck: Absolutely. You just give them the animals. They have better nutrition for their children. They use the manure to plant their crops. They're usually relegated to the worst land in the world, slash-and-burn hillsides. I've gone in where the entire place looked like it was painted with tan paint. There was nothing colorful about any of it. I went back just two years later in Honduras and they had terraced those slash-and-burn hillsides. They had planted nitrogen-fixing trees. They had crops going. They had ribbons around the necks of the goats. They had built pens for them to keep them healthy and safe. Children were exercising them. Big companies can't do that.

Q: But doesn't humanitarian aid often foster dependency?

Luck: It does, if they don't help people become self-reliant. Don't just hand it out and deliver it and leave. That is not sustainable. That's why I believe so much in the work we do and others with this kind of approach working beyond the disaster assistance or emergency assistance. Give them a few resources, give them a few animals and some training and you can't hold them back. They may not all be a millionaire, but they're going to be successful. They're going to be proud and making decisions and they're going to be influencing the government.

Beckmann: The U.S. government's world hunger initiative is focused on countries that have good policies in place and are investing their own money in agriculture.

Luck: So it's more sustainable.

Beckmann: Where you have dubious results is where local people aren't doing what they should be doing. In poor countries that have their act together and are using their own money, well, there are lots of opportunities.

2010 winners of World Food Prize come from NGOs

The winners of this year's World Food Prize were announced yesterday in Washington. The winners are two people who work in non-governmental organizations. One winner knew the founder of the Prize the late great Dr Norman Bourlag, and established Bread for the World. The other winner helped to build the organization Heifer International.

From the Des Moines Register, writer Philip Brasher tells us more about the winners.

David Beckmann, an ordained Lutheran minister as well as a trained economist, left a job at the World Bank to take the helm of Bread for the World 19 years ago. He has led the group in a series of campaigns to change U.S. policy on issues from debt relief for developing countries, overseas agricultural aid and reforming farm subsidies.

Jo Luck served in Bill Clinton's cabinet when he was governor of Arkansas. She later expanded Little Rock, Ark.-based Heifer's donor base from 20,000 people in 1992 to more than 500,000 by 2009.

She built the group, which teaches poor people self-reliance through livestock husbandry, into one of the "premier hunger-fighting nonprofit organizations anywhere in the world," according to the Des Moines-based World Food Prize Foundation, which selects the laureates.

The World Food Prize carries a $250,000 award and is given each year to recognize advancements in increasing or improving global food supplies and expanding access to food.

The laureate is often a scientist, like the award's late founder, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Norman Borlaug. Two years ago, the award was split by two former senators, George McGovern and Robert Dole, who got Congress to create a program for providing school meals to children in the poorest countries.

The origin of Bread for the World

The Rev. Arthur Simon began the organization Bread for the World when he saw something over and over again at his church, people going hungry. Rev. Simon is traveling to promote a new book on the formation of Bread for the World. His stop over the weekend in Allentown, Pennsylvania caught the attention of the local paper the Morning Call. Writer Christopher Baxter asked Rev. Simon about the organization's origin.

'People were running out of food, that was the most common,'' Simon told a crowd gathered Sunday for church service at Luther Crest, an Allentown retirement community. ''But I found the harder we worked at it, the further behind we got.''

Out of the pain and suffering came Bread for the World, which 35 years later has become one of the country's leading citizens advocacy groups, boasting more than 60,000 members nationally united by a common mission to prevent people from going hungry.

Simon's message, delivered as a call-to-action sermon to lobby Congress for better hunger and poverty prevention, comes as more Americans struggle amid the economic downturn to put food on the table.

According to U.S. Department of Agriculture statistics released this month, about 49 million people, or 14.6 percent of U.S. households, were ''food insecure'' at some time during the past year, the most since tracking began in 1995.

The department defines ''food insecure'' as those without access to enough food for an active, healthy lifestyle.

''I hope it's a short-term crisis, and we've got to deal with that,'' said Simon, 79, brother of the late Sen. Paul Simon of Illinois. ''I think it will improve with the economy, but meanwhile we have to take some meaningful action.''