New York Times: The Other Way Covid Will Kill: Hunger. “Long before the pandemic swept into her village in the rugged southeast of Afghanistan, Halima Bibi knew the gnawing fear of hunger. It was an omnipresent force, an unrelenting source of anxiety as she struggled to nourish her four children. Her husband earned about $5 a day, hauling produce by wheelbarrow from a local market to surrounding homes. Most days, he brought home a loaf of bread, potatoes and beans for an evening meal. But when the coronavirus arrived in March, taking the lives of her neighbors and shutting down the market, her husband’s earnings plunged to about $1 a day. Most evenings, he brought home only bread. Some nights, he returned with nothing.”
food scarcity
Debt, eviction and hunger: Millions fall back into crisis as stimulus and safety nets vanish (Washington Post)
Washington Post: Debt, eviction and hunger: Millions fall back into crisis as stimulus and safety nets vanish. “Major recessions are especially fraught for low-income earners, whose finances can veer from tenuous to dire with one missed paycheck. But as the economy cratered this spring, economists and poverty experts were mildly surprised to discover that the torrent of government support that followed — particularly the $600 a week in expanded unemployment benefits and one-time $1,200 stimulus checks — likely lowered the overall poverty rate. In fact, 17 million people would have dropped below the poverty line without the $500 billion in direct intervention for American families, said Zach Parolin, a researcher at Columbia University. Now, data show, those gains are eroding as federal inaction deprives Americans on the financial margins of additional support.”
HuffPost: Coronavirus-Linked Hunger Tied To 10,000 Child Deaths Each Month
HuffPost: Coronavirus-Linked Hunger Tied To 10,000 Child Deaths Each Month. “All around the world, the coronavirus and its restrictions are pushing already hungry communities over the edge, cutting off meager farms from markets and isolating villages from food and medical aid. Virus-linked hunger is leading to the deaths of 10,000 more children a month over the first year of the pandemic, according to an urgent call to action from the United Nations shared with The Associated Press ahead of its publication in the Lancet medical journal.”
Bloomberg: Almost 30 Million in U.S. Didn’t Have Enough to Eat Last Week
Bloomberg: Almost 30 Million in U.S. Didn’t Have Enough to Eat Last Week. “Food insecurity for U.S. households last week reached its highest reported level since the Census Bureau started tracking the data in May, with almost 30 million Americans reporting that they’d not had enough to eat at some point in the seven days through July 21. In the bureau’s weekly Household Pulse Survey, roughly 23.9 million of 249 million respondents indicated they had ‘sometimes not enough to eat’ for the week ended July 21, while about 5.42 million indicated they had ‘often not enough to eat.’ The survey, which began with the week ended May 5, was published Wednesday.”
New York Times: Are You Eligible for Food Stamps Now? Maybe, but It’s Complex
New York Times: Are You Eligible for Food Stamps Now? Maybe, but It’s Complex. “SNAP is overseen by the Department of Agriculture, which lays out the rules. States handle applications and administration, and they have some leeway with the federal regulations. (And with the terms: Missouri still uses the older ‘food stamp’ phrasing.) As a result, it’s possible to offer some general guidelines for understanding how the program works, but your state has the final word. The rules are numerous and complicated, but there are exceptions and waivers that might apply to you — so don’t be deterred.”
Abe Foxman’s next act: Raising $28 million to feed thousands of struggling Holocaust survivors (Jewish Telegraphic Agency)
Jewish Telegraphic Agency: Abe Foxman’s next act: Raising $28 million to feed thousands of struggling Holocaust survivors. “Since retiring from his post as national director of the Anti-Defamation League in 2015, Abraham Foxman has had plenty of opportunities to take on other projects in the Jewish world. Until now, he’s almost always said no. But now the 80-year-old is coming out of retirement with an ambitious goal: to raise $28 million to feed Holocaust survivors during the pandemic.”
Honolulu Civil Beat: The Pandemic Is Changing How Hawaii Gets Its Food
Honolulu Civil Beat: The Pandemic Is Changing How Hawaii Gets Its Food. “As Hawaii residents scramble to ride out the financial storm of COVID-19, a staggering number of people now find themselves facing food insecurity. As a result, many residents are acquiring food differently — trading and bartering for groceries, fishing or hunting more, planting gardens, scoring food giveaways from farms and buying produce from roadside tents or on Instagram and Facebook Marketplace.”
New York Times: European Workers Draw Paychecks. American Workers Scrounge for Food.
New York Times: European Workers Draw Paychecks. American Workers Scrounge for Food.. “The pandemic has ravaged Europeans and Americans alike, but the economic pain has played out in starkly different fashion. The United States has relied on a significant expansion of unemployment insurance, cushioning the blow for tens of millions of people who have lost their jobs, with the assumption that they will be swiftly rehired once normality returns. European countries — among them Denmark, Ireland, Britain, France, the Netherlands, Spain and Austria — have prevented joblessness by effectively nationalizing payrolls, heavily subsidizing wages and enabling paychecks to continue uninterrupted.”
Study: Crowdsourced data could help map urban food deserts (EurekAlert)
EurekAlert: Study: Crowdsourced data could help map urban food deserts. “In a feasibility study published in the journal Frontiers in Public Health, scholars found that the methods used by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to identify areas with low access to healthy food are often outdated and narrow in scope. Their findings indicate that crowdsourced information gathered from mobile apps such as Yelp could help provide more accurate real-time representation of food deserts in impoverished communities.”
Phys .org: COVID-19 leaving some Americans sick and hungry
Phys .org: COVID-19 leaving some Americans sick and hungry. “The COVID-19 pandemic is not just making Americans sick, it’s leaving many hungry as well, and experts who gathered for a Harvard Chan School forum on the problem said that legislation to relieve the pandemic’s economic burden may be able to help.”
BNN Bloomberg: The Pandemic Is Exacerbating America’s Systemic Food Inequality
BNN Bloomberg: The Pandemic Is Exacerbating America’s Systemic Food Inequality. ” Access to food has been unequal in America long before the onset of the coronavirus. But the pandemic has deepened the problem, with images of snaking lines at food banks bringing the harsh reality to light. Even in the U.S., one of the most food-secure nations in the world, millions face difficulty in accessing nutritious meals. Food inequality disproportionately impacts Americans of color, who’ve already been among the hardest hit by Covid-19 and its economic fallout.”
FEATURE-As lockdown fuels food shortages, Africa goes online for groceries (Reuters)
Reuters: FEATURE-As lockdown fuels food shortages, Africa goes online for groceries. “In many African countries, measures put in place to slow the spread of COVID-19 have made it harder for people to access affordable, nutritious foods, sparking warnings from aid groups that the pandemic will worsen malnutrition rates. An estimated 73 million people in Africa are already acutely food insecure, noted Matshidiso Moeti, the World Health Organization’s Regional Director for Africa in a press release last month.”
ProPublica: Contractors for Trump’s Controversial $3 Billion Food Aid Program Have Hired a Longtime Lobbyist to Tout Their Work
ProPublica: Contractors for Trump’s Controversial $3 Billion Food Aid Program Have Hired a Longtime Lobbyist to Tout Their Work. “Companies receiving taxpayer dollars as part of President Donald Trump’s signature food aid program hired a longtime lobbyist to push back on criticism that the government is relying on unqualified contractors, such as an event planner.”
Federal Times: Federal food drive goes virtual to tackle hunger during the pandemic
Federal Times: Federal food drive goes virtual to tackle hunger during the pandemic. “The annual federal campaign to stock food banks and pantries during lean summer months has turned to more virtual avenues in 2020, as the COVID-19 pandemic has kept many employees out of the office. The Feds Feed Families campaign, run by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and held in June and July when donations to food banks are traditionally at their lowest, launched June 1. This year, the agency also released a new website with virtual tools that allow federal employees to continue to contribute to hunger relief while ensuring pandemic safety.”
USDA: Another Look at Availability and Prices of Food Amid the COVID-19 Pandemic
USDA Blog: Another Look at Availability and Prices of Food Amid the COVID-19 Pandemic. “Last month I discussed the impact of COVID-19 on availability and prices of food based on data and information we had available at the time. Since then, USDA released its first assessment of U.S. and world crop supply and demand prospects and U.S. prices for 2020/21, and more data on market prices, production, and trade flows during the crisis became available. Of particular note, temporary closures of some meat packing plants have affected meat supply and prices seen by consumers and farmers. Hence, I want to take another look at food availability and prices in light of the new data and information we have and share with you some insights on market conditions.”
