The idea is straightforward: an expanded CTC would put more money in the pockets of working parents who are struggling to put food on the table.  

We have solid evidence that a permanent expansion of the CTC could significantly reduce the rate of childhood hunger in the United States. This evidence can be summed up as the results of a similar but temporary CTC expansion just three years ago. The American Rescue Plan of 2021 increased the amount of the CTC and made payments monthly rather than structuring the benefit as a lump sum paid as a federal tax refund. For six months, from July 2021 through December 2021, millions of additional families with children received monthly benefits of $250 for each of their children ages 6 to 17 and $300 for each child under 6. 

For our country’s lowest-income families, an even more important provision of the CTC expansion was that all families with children, including households whose taxable incomes had previously been too low to be eligible, could now qualify for the full CTC amounts. As recently as 2018 (latest data available), an estimated 27 million children lived in these households. 

The impact was immediate: a steep decline in parents reporting that their families did not have enough food. On August 16, 2021, 25 percent fewer parents reported food insecurity than on July 5, 2021. 

In addition to its essential role of enabling more families to meet their immediate needs, an expanded CTC has a second important long-term benefit: contributing to racial, gender, and class equity in our country. As Bread has discussed, equity requires making conditions fair for all. Policies that promote equity help to move everyone closer to a “starting point,” whether they started out or continued being “left behind” because of disability, poverty, racial or gender discrimination, or a combination of these and other factors. 

Most people realize that raising children is expensive. As a group, families with children are more likely to be food insecure than families without children. But the risks are even higher for some demographic groups and family structures, including Black families, Latino/a families, Native American families, and families with single mothers, among others. (Other families with higher rates of food insecurity include, for example, families with single fathers and families with parents living with a disability).  

When all families with children are eligible for the same CTC amounts, there is a greater benefit for families at higher risk of hunger, because these dollars make up a larger part of their total income. This is even more likely to be the case for families who belong to more than one marginalized group—perhaps a family whose single mother is Black or Native American or biracial. 

Researchers projected that children from groups with disproportionately high poverty rates would benefit most from the 2021 expansion. Poverty rates would be cut by 62 percent, 52 percent, and 45 percent among Native American children, Latino children, and Black children, respectively. The children of single mothers have very high poverty rates. At the height of the pandemic in 2021, for example, the national poverty rate for households with single mothers was 31.3 percent. Mothers of color and their children had even higher poverty rates: 37.4 percent of Black families, 35.9 percent of Hispanic/Latina families, and 42.6 percent of Native American families with single mothers.

We sometimes think or talk about the CTC as a program for low-income people, but this is not the case. Almost all families with children except the very poorest are eligible. The gap between the lowest-income families with children and other families with children will widen if all families except the poorest receive the CTC benefit. 

The CTC’s restrictions on high-income families–$200,000 for individuals and $400,000 for married couples—exclude just a small percentage of families. A single parent with an income of $200,000 is at the 95th percentile of individual income earners, so only the 5 percent whose incomes are higher than hers would be ineligible for the benefit. 

Bread is deeply disappointed that a bipartisan version of the CTC expansion stalled in the U.S. Senate. Passage of this expansion would make more grocery money available to millions of parents whose jobs do not pay enough to make ends meet. Even when Congress does not act, children still need to eat.

Yet, that proposed expansion would include not all low-income families with children, but, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, only those with incomes of about $16,000 or more per year. Such a policy excludes millions of families who work full-time but are paid less. For example, a family might be composed of a woman who lives with her two children in Georgia, Wyoming, or Tennessee. She works 40 hours a week, 52 weeks a year, at the federal minimum wage. Her annual income is $15,080 before taxes. 

Georgia, Wyoming, and Tennessee are three of the seven states whose minimum wage is the same as the federal minimum wage. The federal minimum wage is $7.25 an hour. It has been $7.25 an hour, with no adjustments for inflation, for 15 years now – since 2009. A CTC that does not exclude the lowest-wage workers would make a big difference in the lives of children whose parents belong to a group often referred to as “the working poor.”

Michele Learner is managing editor, Policy and Research Institute, with Bread for the World.

The post Child Tax Credit Expansion: A Matter of Equity  appeared first on Bread for the World.

As we address the spread of hunger in our nation and our world, we must all leverage our power and resources to make hunger a thing of the past – and that starts with understanding the scope of the problem.

In this article, we will discuss:

• What is food insecurity?
• Does inflation impact food insecurity?
• What is the difference between food insecurity and very low food security?
• What does food insecurity look like in the U.S.?
• Which states are most impacted by food insecurity?
• Which demographics are most impacted by food insecurity?
• How can we help address food insecurity?

What is food insecurity?

Food insecurity is a limited ability to acquire adequate food due to a lack of money and other resources. Households experiencing food insecurity don’t have consistent access to enough nutritious food to live a healthy, active lifestyle. This can result in malnutrition and other health issues with lasting consequences.

Food insecurity is caused by a host of factors including the economy, household circumstances, and government policies. 

Does inflation impact food insecurity?

Inflation – an increase in prices and a corresponding decrease in the dollar’s purchasing power – is a major driver of food insecurity. The Consumer Price Index for food, which measures the average price of foodstuffs for consumers, increased 0.1 percent from July 2024 to August 2024 and remains 2.1 percent higher than in August 2023. It is expected to rise another 1.6 percent in 2025. 

Inflation boosts prices for consumers, making it harder to afford nutritious food. Even the cost of basic products, such as cereals and bakery products, has risen 0.4 percent. Further, inflation drives up almost all expenses, making money tighter than ever. For families already struggling to make ends meet, these increases can push them over the edge into food insecure situations.

What is the difference between food insecurity and very low food security?

While food insecurity limits the quality and variety of a diet, very low food security impacts households’ ability to eat any food regularly – or at all. 

Very low food security is defined as a reduction of food intake and disruption of normal eating patterns due to a lack of money or other resources. In 2023, 97 percent of households with very low food security reported not having money to buy food after their groceries ran out, 68 percent reported that they were hungry but didn’t eat because they couldn’t afford to, and 30 percent reported that an adult in the household didn’t eat for an entire day because there wasn’t enough money for food.

Very low food security can have an extremely damaging effect on physical and mental well-being. Children are especially susceptible to lasting developmental problems from not getting enough nutritious food or skipping meals entirely at an early age.

What does food insecurity look like in the U.S.?

Food insecurity continues to plague households across the country, threatening their physical and emotional well-being. Food insecurity in 2023 was statistically higher than in past years, indicating a concerning trend that must be addressed before more households are left to struggle with inadequate amounts of nutritious food.

Last year, 13.5 percent of American households – 18 million families – were food insecure. That means nearly 50 million Americans lived in a household without consistent access to food capable of supporting a healthy lifestyle. Moreover, food insecurity has grown every year since 2020, when there were less than 14 million households struggling with food insecurity. 

6.8 million of those families – more than 5 percent of all U.S. households – faced very low food security in 2023. These numbers are consistent with the last four years, indicating a lack of progress in helping millions of Americans consistently have food on their tables.

More than six million households with children faced food insecurity in 2023. While many of the adults in households with children bear the brunt of restricted access to food, such as choosing to eat less so that the children can experience mild or no effects, many children still do not have enough food. This can be especially damaging to young bodies that are rapidly growing and still developing. 

In 2023, nearly 10 percent of children lived in households where at least one child was food insecure and almost 850,000 children lived in households with very low food security among the children. 

Food insecurity in the U.S. is a rampant problem that impacts millions of households. It creates higher risks for many negative impacts, such as chronic health conditions, reduced performance, and greater mental health challenges. 

For instance, adults facing very low food insecurity are more than 10 percent more likely to suffer from hypertension or arthritis. In addition, the average predicted prevalence of cancer in food-insecure households is more than three times the average for highly food-secure households. Similarly, food-insecure adults are six times as likely to suffer a stroke. Food insecurity can also cause psychological stress and contribute to mental health issues. In particular, food insecurity was linked to a roughly 250 percent higher risk of anxiety and depression during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Food insecurity, which affects millions of households, has a far wider impact than simply what is in the pantry or on the table.

Which states are most impacted by food insecurity?

The rate of food insecurity varies by state. A state’s average wages, cost of housing, unemployment, and more all play a role in the prevalence of food insecurity and the number of residents impacted. Similarly, policies such as unemployment insurance and nutrition assistance programs impact the number of households experiencing food insecurity. 

As of 2023, the national average for food insecurity is 13.5 percent. However, seven states have significantly higher rates of food insecurity: 

• Arkansas: 18.9 percent
• Texas: 16.9 percent
• Louisiana: 16.2 percent
• Mississippi 16.2 percent
• Oklahoma: 15.4 percent
• Kentucky: 14.5 percent
• South Carolina: 14.4 percent 

Due to a combination of household- and state-level characteristics, residents of these seven states are more likely to experience restricted access to food. 

Factors such as unemployment and geography play a significant role in the prevalence of food insecurity. States with higher unemployment rates often experience greater food insecurity. Unemployment is linked to a 30 percent greater likelihood of food insecurity. Food deserts, defined as areas where it is difficult to buy affordable, nutritious food, also increase the risk of food insecurity. Southern states have a high concentration of food deserts which, coupled with weak safety nets, leave their residents especially vulnerable to food insecurity or very low food security.

Which demographics are most impacted by food insecurity?

Food insecurity can compound existing inequalities by disproportionately affecting already vulnerable populations. Additionally, in an economy still struggling to recover from ongoing inflation, rural and low-income residents are more likely to face food insecurity due to high prices and limited resources.

Children are especially vulnerable to the impacts of food insecurity or very low food security. Among all households with children, 17.9 percent face food insecurity. Moreover, nearly 35 percent of children with a single mom and 23 percent of children with a single dad face food insecurity. The rates are also high for very low food security: 11.8 percent and 8.6 percent, respectively. 

Food insecurity has an especially damaging impact on already marginalized communities. The food insecurity rate for Black and Hispanic households is 1.7 times higher than the national average, at nearly 23 percent and 22 percent, respectively; very low food security was around 9 percent and 8 percent, respectively. Additionally, people experiencing poverty or living in rural areas have higher rates of food insecurity and very low food security.

Inadequate access to food is affecting households throughout our nation. While some demographics have especially high food insecurity rates, the truth is that few groups are completely exempt from the threat of food insecurity in our current economy.

How can we help address food insecurity?

Food insecurity is a wide-ranging issue that touches millions of lives. Yet every year, there is enough food produced to feed everyone in the world. Ending hunger is about making sure that food goes to the people who need it most. Hunger is a huge problem, yet even a single individual can make a difference.

Simple but impactful steps that you can take today include:

• Writing a letter to your local representative about issues currently moving in Congress.
• Speaking up on social media and tagging your senator or local representative.
• Organizing community letter-writing efforts to Congress within your church or community.
• Praying for the end of hunger.
• Giving to organizations that are dedicated to ending hunger.

The Farm Bill

Federal nutrition programs are essential to addressing hunger. These programs give about 10 times as much food assistance as private churches and charities combined. Legislation such as the farm bill has a significant impact on any American who purchases and consumes food.

The farm bill is an expansive set of policies that includes programs such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), which alone serves more than 41 million people and is shown to be an incredibly effective method of reducing food insecurity and stopping hunger. Other programs addressing domestic food insecurity that have been a part of the farm bill include:

• The Emergency Food Assistance Program;
• Food Distribution Program on Indian Reservations;
• Commodity Supplemental Food Program;
• Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Program;
• Seniors Farmers’ Market Nutrition Program;
• Healthy Food Financing Initiative;
• Community Food Projects; and
• The Gus Schumacher Nutrition Incentive Program.

The farm bill must be reauthorized by Congress every five years. While this gives Congress a chance to improve its food and nutrition security efforts, it also creates the potential for gridlock and devastating cuts to programs that address food insecurity. Failing to reauthorize the farm bill or pass an extension (which occurred in 2023) would shut down some programs while reverting key pieces of legislation that farmers rely on back to outdated laws from nearly seven decades ago. America needs politicians who will prioritize passing a farm bill with strong nutrition assistance programs. 

Passing the farm bill is vital to putting food on the table in millions of homes – and you can help. Experience has shown us that congressional leaders really do listen to their constituents, so adding your voice to those in favor of reauthorizing the farm bill can help move it up the priority list for your members of Congress. Simple efforts such as writing letters or speaking up on social media can help to turn the tide and ensure the farm bill is passed.

The post Rising Expenses and Food Insecurity: An American Reality appeared first on Bread for the World.

“Bread for the World congratulates President-elect Donald J. Trump, Vice-President-elect J.D. Vance, and all of the 2024 congressional election winners. We will keep President-elect Trump, Vice-President-elect Vance, and the new Congress in prayer as they guide our nation through this next chapter. We also pray for the peaceful transition of power.

“When Congress returns from recess next week, we urge lawmakers to ensure programs that address hunger and malnutrition, including the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC), and global nutrition programs such as Food for Peace, are fully funded through fiscal year 2025.

“We also urge Congress to pass a farm bill during the lame duck session that protects and strengthens all domestic and global nutrition programs included in the legislation.

“Next year, Bread will launch its Nourish Our Future campaign, which will focus on child hunger. Nearly 14 million children in the U.S. are experiencing food insecurity and 45 million children globally suffer from wasting, the most devastating form of malnutrition. 

“Bread looks forward to working with the new Administration and Congress to ensure all children, both in the United States and around the world, have access to the nutrition they need to flourish.

“God calls on us to care for our neighbors. We pray, in a spirit of unity, that we follow in the footsteps of Jesus to bring hope and practical solutions to help people experiencing hunger.”

The post Bread Congratulates Election Winners, Urges Immediate Action to Address Rising Hunger appeared first on Bread for the World.

We Ought to Care About Each Other

As people of faith, we are meant to be engaged citizens. One of the ways we do that is to exercise the right and privilege to vote. 

I say this gently and pastorally: it’s a dangerous, idolatrous, false-binary perspective to say that any political party is God’s party. No one party (or political leader) monopolizes the kingdom of God. I don’t know how more clearly I can say that. 

I do think we can use our prayerful discernment, theology, and our convictions in the divinity and humanity of Jesus Christ to inform our views. 

Nearly 14 million children in the U.S. are experiencing hunger. Approximately 1 in 11 people around the world are food insecure, including 45 million children who suffer from wasting, the most devastating form of malnutrition. 

Our elected leaders can make decisions that will have an incredible impact on the lives of these people and children who are vulnerable.  

This is not a left-wing issue.

This is not a right-wing issue. 

It’s a human dignity issue. 

It’s a human flourishing issue.

As Christians, we ought to care about the politics that inform the policies that are not sufficiently addressing these children who are experiencing hunger. 

Three Things Everyone Can Do

I understand that it is difficult to engage in politics when everything is so divisive. It can feel like we are being yelled at all the time by supporters of one party or the other. Be honest, who else is exhausted of receiving political donation text messages?!?

The problem with polarization is that we have reserved questions of importance until election season. We should be engaging and talking with our neighbors all the time – and not just about political issues. 

The command to love your neighbor is an incredibly important part of our identity as followers of Jesus. We ought to look around and notice who we are regarding as our neighbors. Are we only connecting with people who look like us, think like us, feel like us, worship like us, and vote like us?” 

It’s all too easy to end up in an echo chamber where everyone we talk to affirms everything we already think. I’ve spoken before about Make America Dinner Again (MADA), an initiative started by two people after the last election who realized that they didn’t know a single person who voted differently than they did. They decided to host a dinner where they began with: “We don’t want to blame. We don’t want to point fingers. We do want to have a conversation.” 

Dinners like this may not change our views, but they can make us more human, more civil, more empathetic. I know because I joined my local MADA dinner.

It can be satisfying to scream and shout our convictions at the other side. But the opposite, to listen well – not just share our views well – is something we should learn, too. And it can be just as fulfilling. 

So that’s the first thing everyone can do:  

1. Be in conversation with your neighbors and the people around you.

When we enter into regular conversation with our neighbors, we learn about what they care about and what issues impact them. We begin to see how policies affect them, maybe differently from how they affect us.

It can be eye-opening. And it can make you see your community differently.

I encourage you to get involved locally. Whether that’s your congregation, or your neighborhood, or your city…. you don’t have to be an elected official to make change in your community. And you don’t have to do everything.

Just do something. Be an active participant in the place you live. Get involved with the PTA, join a public gardening project, volunteer at your area foodbank, advocate for better disability access in your county building. Just do something.

If we reduce our civic engagement to one vote every four years, we might be part of the problem. In the same way that Christianity can’t be reduced to 2 hours on a Sunday morning, citizenship cannot be reduced to 1 vote every few years.

That’s the second thing everyone can do:

2. Vote, but don’t only vote. Get involved in your community. 

As Christians, we know the importance of speaking truth to power. But we can’t forget the importance of working toward peace at the same time. 

In the last few election seasons, we have seen political strife. Assassination attempts. A march on Capitol Hill where citizens assaulted elected officials. We need to pray and work toward a peaceful transition of power.

Prayer is a powerful act that binds us closer to God and to each other. It empowers us to support those in authority with a spirit of both truth and love. We can be pastoral and prophetic. Ask God to grant our leaders the integrity and wisdom to focus on matters that protect the most vulnerable among us. 

That’s the third, and maybe the most important thing everyone can do:

3. Pray and work toward peacemaking and pray that our leaders lead with compassion. 

What the Future Holds

In the U.S., our elections can have a tremendous impact on hunger here in the U.S. and around the world. We can elect and hold accountable leaders – of any political party – who care about hunger and justice. 

Whatever the election result, Bread for the World will work with both political parties to advocate, speak up, and represent, as humbly, faithfully, and passionately as we can, God’s commandment to feed our neighbors – whether they live in the next house or the next continent. 

Thank you for your prayers as we continue that work. Thank you for your generosity that allows us to continue that work. Thank you for being part of Bread for the World. Thank you for your voice and advocacy that amplifies this choir. Together, we can continue to be present and persistent in the work of addressing hunger that we are called to.

If you haven’t yet, sign the pledge to Vote to End Hunger. You can also click here to sign up for Prayers to End Hunger.

If you’ve never given a donation to support Bread’s work, please consider doing so now.

The post Why Christians Should Vote appeared first on Bread for the World.

“It is dismaying that food insecurity in the U.S. has continued to rise over the past two years considering we have the tools and know-how to end it,” said Rev. Eugene Cho, president and CEO of Bread for the World. “We must elect candidates in November who will champion policies and programs that will end hunger.”

Bread’s Vote to End Hunger campaign encourages people to vote for candidates in the upcoming election who will make ending hunger a priority.

The report also found that certain households had higher rates of food insecurity than the national average, including:

• Households with children – 17.9 percent
• Households with children headed by a single woman – 34.7 percent
• Households with reported incomes below 185 percent of the poverty threshold – 33.5 percent  
• Black households – 23.3 percent, and Hispanic households – 21.9 percent, experienced food insecurity rates that are more than twice the rate of White households – 9.9 percent.

“As Jesus reminds us, whatever we do for the least of our brothers and sisters, we do as unto him (Matthew 25:40). The fact that so many children are experiencing food insecurity points to the need for lawmakers to pass effective policies such as another expanded Child Tax Credit that is distributed monthly and fully refundable and can put a dent in child hunger and poverty.  Likewise, we must further strengthen and fund critical programs such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) to ensure families struggling with food insecurity can put good, nutritious food on the table,” added Cho.  

The post Bread “Dismayed” by Rise in US Food Insecurity appeared first on Bread for the World.

Bread’s faith-based, anti-hunger grassroots network shines all year, but especially in August. It’s one prong of our time-tested advocacy strategy: in-district relationship building + in-DC advocacy + smart policy analysis + media and community/coalition engagement = political will that leads to policy change. 

Our impact against hunger simply would not be possible without grassroots activism across the country. Today, I want to tell you about Bread advocate Makensie L. Brown.

Makensie, from Jasper, Alabama, came to Bread’s June Advocacy Summit for the first time this year. She deeply connected with the issues, Bread’s theory of change, and the experience of meeting with her representative – and it inspired her to the point of action. When she sought a second meeting with her Congressman Robert Aderholt in August, this time in Alabama while he is in-district, she shared with him how much an expanded, permanent Child Tax Credit would change the conversations she has every day with families trying to stretch tight budgets at the Jasper Family Resource Center. Because of Makensie Brown, Representative Aderholt heard firsthand about the lived experience of people in his district and how the programs that Bread advocates for can help.

We have more than 75 in-district meetings planned for the end of summer.  

They aren’t just with members of Congress, like Makensie’s; some of the meetings are listening sessions, where Bread is seeking input into the Nourish Our Future campaign. 

Deeply understanding the needs, challenges, and aspirations of people across the United States who want to help end childhood hunger is the foundation for all our work next year. 

I’m grateful to Makensie and thousands of anti-hunger advocates and faith leaders like her across the United States who are moved by God’s grace to work for an end to hunger. 

Seven hundred and thirty-three million people experienced hunger last year, according to the just released State of Food Security and Nutrition report. That’s 1 in 11 people around the world, and 1 in 5 in Africa.

I don’t want to mislead you. Pursuing a world without hunger is not easy. It might seem unlikely that we might have the power to feed so many. But there is enough food, enough money, and the right experience-based know-how to get it done. We just need faith, courage to act, and the political will. 

If you haven’t yet, I encourage you to get involved in in-district advocacy today. In fact, I need you to get involved. Our elected officials make decisions that have a tremendous impact on people experiencing hunger – both in our country and around the world. Write your organizer or visit www.bread.org/vote to learn more. 

In the Bible, Old Testament law established a structure for society with deep, divine concern for people who experience poverty and disapproval of systems that do not dignify God’s people and places them in conditions of hunger and poverty. As Paul exercised his power as a Roman citizen, so too can Christians advocate for government to protect and provide for all its people (Acts 21-26).

I hope you will find a way to use your voice this fall to accept God’s invitation to gather and share the blessings of God’s table with all of God’s children. 

The post August Recess Is Not a Time to Rest for Bread appeared first on Bread for the World.

On average, children are in school about 180 days a year, roughly half the year. This means that kids and teens whose families struggle to put food on the table may spend many days—weekends, summer vacations, and other breaks—without enough nutritious food. 

Bread for the World and other anti-hunger advocacy groups continue to emphasize that the United States can afford to feed all its children. Ideally, every family would earn enough to meet its basic needs or, where adults are living with disabilities or of retirement age, have access to sufficient grocery money through programs such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). Bread advocates for wider policies to resolve the root causes of U.S. hunger—whether race and gender pay inequities, jobs that pay too little to cover household bills, or other problems.

Until such policies are a reality for all families, parents and the wider community face a dilemma. In 2022, 22 million children ate breakfast and lunch at school through federal nutrition programs. But in July of that year, budgetary constraints meant that fewer than 3 million children had lunch provided by summer nutrition programs. 

In 2023, Congress took a big step forward by permanently authorizing the Summer Electronic Benefit Transfer Program for Children (Summer EBT). The law is going into effect this year, summer 2024.

The U.S has made progress previously toward ensuring that children have sufficient food every day. For example, expansion of the School Breakfast Program meant that many more children who eat lunch at school are also offered breakfast. The hard work of members of the community helped meet other needs—after-school programs with snacks or supper, backpack programs for weekends, and more.  

But Summer EBT, introduced to help fill the wide gap between the number of children served during the school year and those served over the summer, offers a simpler and more flexible approach. Launched in 2011 as a limited demonstration project, it mirrors the structure of SNAP, providing families with an electronic benefits card to use at the supermarket. Children who participate in free or reduced-price school meal programs are automatically enrolled, but other families can also apply for the program. In most states, the benefit is in the range of $40 per month per child. 

While Summer EBT continued to operate as a demonstration project until Congress made it permanent in 2023, children also received EBT benefits during the COVID-19 pandemic, when many states and territories offered a similar benefit as part of their pandemic response. Now that Summer EBT is a permanent federal program, low-income families should have access to the grocery money they need to feed kids who usually eat at school. In this first year, 35 states, the District of Columbia, all five U.S. territories, and four Indian Tribal Organizations have adopted Summer EBT. Additional states and territories are planning to participate in the future. 

However, there are a number of states whose leaders have indicated that they do not intend to take advantage of the program, despite the millions of food insecure children they represent. They have cited a variety of reasons for not participating, including lack of funding to administer the program, lack of infrastructure, and disagreements over eligibility criteria. Some states seem to believe incorrectly that Summer EBT is a pandemic program that is no longer needed. 

Most disappointing of all, several states are refusing to opt into the program for ideological reasons. One governor told the media, “I don’t believe in welfare.” 

This is reminiscent of what happened back in 2010, when the Affordable Care Act became law. Many of the same states that have not signed up for Summer EBT refused to expand Medicaid—even though the expansion is federally funded. Voters in some of these states forced the expansion by passing ballot initiatives. In at least one such state, Medicaid expansion went into effect more than a decade later.  And as of 2023, 10 states still haven’t implemented Medicaid expansion. 

It is possible that advocates who want to see Summer EBT put in place in their states could learn from earlier efforts to ensure that states expanded Medicaid—particularly if those expansions brought better results than governors had argued they would. 

Eric Mitchell, president of Bread’s sister organization the Alliance to End Hunger, said that for children who are food insecure, “access to Summer EBT can be the difference between getting the meals they need to stay healthy and thrive, or going hungry. That is why Congress recently made the program permanent, and why every state should participate.” 

Andre Gobbo is a domestic policy analyst with Bread for the World. 

The post Summer EBT Is Now Permanent appeared first on Bread for the World.

Bread for the World has been a consistent advocate for the Food Date and Labeling Act, which was introduced in May 2023 by Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) Rep. Dan Newhouse (R-WA) and Rep. Chellie Pingree (D-ME). They were joined by six cosponsors.  

The goal of this bill is to standardize U.S. food date labels. If it becomes law as part of the U.S. farm bill, which was scheduled for reauthorization in 2023 but has not yet been enacted, the Food Date and Labeling Act will help the United States make progress toward minimizing food waste.

It might seem that food labels would have a minimal impact on hunger in the U.S., but improving labels is important to Bread’s three main tenets of farm bill advocacy: nutrition, equity, and sustainability. Food labels contain information that can enable consumers to make informed decisions about how cost effective, nutritious, and sustainable their grocery options are. 

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), an estimated 30 to 40 percent of the food produced in the United States is not consumed. The resources required to grow, harvest, package, and distribute it are wasted. According to ReFED, one of the leading organizations working to end food waste, the annual cost of food waste to the U.S. food system is $428 billion, distributed among stakeholders such as farmers, businesses, and households. For example, 22 percent of freshwater and 16 percent of cropland in the United States is used to produce food that is then wasted. 

In 2018, the Environmental Protection Agency found that food waste is the largest category of material sent to landfills. Moreover, food waste takes a heavy toll on Earth’s climate, even in addition to the 372 million metric tons of carbon emissions created by producing wasted food. As it breaks down in landfills, food releases methane, a greenhouse gas far more potent than carbon dioxide. 

Bread, as an anti-hunger organization, continues to emphasize that it is unnecessary for anyone in the U.S. to go hungry. In one study from back in 2010, food that went to waste was found to be worth an estimated $161 billion. Studies like these that reveal the enormous sums of money spent on wasted food confirm that the country does not have to allow hunger to persist. This is something American voters can change. 

There is significant food waste at the household level. It is not clear precisely what share of household food waste is due to confusion over date labels, since shopping and cooking habits vary, but in a 2022 article advocating for passage of the Food Date and Labeling Act, Food Safety News reported that consumer food waste was estimated at 20 percent. In a 2022 study published in the Journal of Agriculture and Food Research, 75 percent of those surveyed said that they found food labels confusing and feel unsafe to consume food after the date on its label. 

Food companies do not focus particularly on making the meaning of the labels clear to consumers. According to ReFED, labels are “generally not intended to communicate safety information.” The federal government does not set uniform standards for date labels, except infant formula. Therefore, standards vary widely according to state laws. As the researchers in the 2022 study of the role of food label confusion in food waste point out, the labels are not only highly inconsistent, but they are also not science-based.

The Food Date Labeling Act of 2023 would limit dates on labels to two main choices: “best by” and “use by.” There is also an option to add “or freeze by” to either when applicable. States would be required to repeal any laws against selling or donating food past the “best by” date, but not the “use by” or discard date.

An essential provision of the legislation instructs the USDA and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to work together to educate consumers and food companies about the meaning of the new labels and enable them to make good decisions.

As the evidence for the true cost of food waste grows increasingly definitive, and the 2023 farm bill remains under discussion in Congress, it is more important than ever to urge our elected representatives to pass the Food Date and Labeling Act and take other actions to reduce food waste. 

Looking ahead, the enactment of the Food Date and Labeling Act could spur further opportunities to pass legislation that prioritizes consumer health and knowledge. This might include, for example, front-of-package nutrition data or information on sustainability. 

Additionally, these efforts could contribute to reducing emissions from food waste and bring the U.S. closer to achieving the National Strategy for Reducing Food Loss and Waste by 2030. For these reasons, Bread for the World continues to mobilize advocacy efforts in favor of better food labeling policies.  

Isabel Vander Molen is a Climate Hunger Fellow with Bread for the World 

The post The Impact of Food Labeling: More Than Just Words appeared first on Bread for the World.

The following statement can be attributed to Rev. Eugene Cho, president and CEO of Bread for the World: 

“Bread for the World is dismayed that the Senate did not move forward the expanded CTC, which was passed with overwhelming bipartisan support in the House earlier this year.  

“This legislation would have benefited millions of children, and it was projected to lift 400,000 children out of poverty in the first year. By not moving forward the CTC expansion, the Senate is failing the 1 in 5 children under 17 who would have benefited from it in the first year. 

“We urge the Senate to avert political brinkmanship and act quickly to serve the children and their families who would benefit from an expanded CTC. 

“Bread for the World members and supporters have consistently advocated for the expanded Child Tax Credit throughout this year, and we will continue to lift our voices in advocacy and our hearts in prayer for children and their families who have difficulty making ends meet.” 

The post Bread Deeply Disappointed by Senate’s Failure to Move the Child Tax Credit Expansion to a Vote appeared first on Bread for the World.

For the past 30 years, evidence of Food for Peace’s impact has been a frequent sight to me in my travels around the world.

The genesis of Food for Peace was with President Dwight Eisenhower in the years after World War II, to make use of vast American agricultural food surpluses, create new markets for agricultural products, and provide countries with starving populations with humanitarian aid. In the 1960s the program’s focus shifted to use food to foster economic development and U.S. foreign policy in the face of world hunger.

In 2024, U.S. agricultural products are still shipped around the world to address hunger emergencies. For example, when widespread drought develops, it can be hard to find food across whole regions – and America sends food. USAID reports that last year, they purchased 1.1 million metric tons of food from U.S. farmers and ranchers to help more than 45 million people with emergency aid and acute nutrition assistance in 35 countries. Over the past decade, these commodities have come from American farmers in more than 21 U.S. states.

What a partnership between American farmers and people around the world, to connect across thousands of miles and vast oceans to provide one of the most fundamental needs.

I am proud that Bread for the World has been a supporter of Food for Peace for decades.

I hope that you are, too.

Ten years ago, Bread and its members, in coalition and partnership with other organizations, helped update Food for Peace to make it more flexible and more nutritious. The Food for Peace Act authorizes food aid as both disaster response and longer-term development assistance. In a humanitarian response, improved nutrition in food assistance products that are either sent from the United States or purchased locally can save more lives and prevent more cases of severe malnutrition. Most of those who benefit from this intervention are young children.

With flexibility, food aid can be provided via vouchers, which helps meet basic needs of refugees and displaced people by allowing them to buy food from farmers and vendors within temporary settings. Food for Peace also works through humanitarian agencies in areas where farming, local markets, or infrastructure like roads have been disrupted—perhaps by conflict or natural disaster—and these agencies can purchase food in the same region, which allows the food to reach people living with hunger relatively quickly and build up local economies sustaining temporary populations.

These updates to food aid were broadly supported by both political parties, led in Congress by House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Ed Royce (R-CA), Ranking Member Eliot Engel (D-NY) and Rep. Karen Bass (D-CA). In the Wall Street Journal, White House Chief of Staff to President George W. Bush Josh Bolten and White House Chief of Staff to President Bill Clinton John Podesta together said, “If ever there was an issue on which big-hearted humanitarians and tightfisted fiscal hawks should find common purpose, food-aid reform is it. Millions around the world are counting on us.” The National Farmers Union said, “At a time of such urgent human need and budget constraint, reforms that enable us to reach more hungry people while saving taxpayer dollars … are the right choice.”

But in the last couple of years, that widespread bipartisan support for Food for Peace, and how it works, has faltered in Congress.

Last year, Bread and our partners mobilized advocacy to prevent more than $1.2 billion in proposed cuts to Food for Peace. This July, the House of Representatives Committee on Appropriations passed a Fiscal Year 2025 Agriculture Appropriations Act that would make devastating cuts to U.S. humanitarian and development assistance programs and agencies, including cuts to Food for Peace by $619 million from FY24.

Food for Peace supports U.S. farmers and people experiencing hunger around the world. It fosters economic development in countries and regions who will benefit from that investment, and it augments U.S. foreign policy and diplomacy with countries in crisis and their neighbors.

As Congress considers appropriations levels and takes up the reauthorization of the Farm Bill this year, they must support Food for Peace once again. It is important to remind Congress of the critical soft power that Food for Peace can deliver, in addition to what the program does to provide life-saving aid and increase development.

Representatives Jim Costa (D-CA) and Dusty Johnson (R-SD), along with 34 additional bipartisan members of Congress, introduced a resolution supporting the renewal of Food for Peace in the upcoming Farm Bill. Bread for the World activists are encouraged to reach out to their members of Congress to ask them to support this resolution and accompanying authorization and appropriations language.

Bread members and anti-hunger advocates around the country have been urging their members of Congress to maintain support for Food for Peace over the last two years. At our June Advocacy Summit, USAID Administrator Samatha Power and Assistant Administrator Dina Esposito reiterated the impact of Bread for the World’s continued advocacy in making a difference to ensure USAID reaches as many hungry people as possible. Your voice matters in this aim.

I want to tell you how Food for Peace works at the individual level: A few years ago, Jennetie Asheber Ali, a widow in Dendegura village in Ethiopia. Jennetie struggled to provide for herself and her three children prior to the program due to ongoing civil unrest. She supported her family with a small plot of land, an ox, and six goats. But when drought hit, she and her village were devastated. Jennetie was on the verge of selling her land to provide food for the family, when she secured food assistance from USAID’s Food for Peace program through partner Catholic Relief Services – and she was able to keep her land, keep her son in school, and save money for the future.

Another: Yemen had one of the highest rates of malnutrition in the world even before the current war began. Yet Ahmed Ali, an out of work taxi driver in Yemen’s Hodeida city, was dismayed when his two-year old daughter Lila was diagnosed with moderate acute malnutrition. Because of Food for Peace through partner the UN World Food Program, Ahmed began treating his daughter’s malnutrition right away with ready to use supplementary food. His wife noticed a difference quickly — Lila responded well to the additional nutrition, showing more energy and wanting to play like a healthy toddler.

These are two stories out of hundreds of millions.

733 million people are struggling with chronic hunger right now. Food for Peace can help.

This is not the time to cut funds for Food for Peace or impose new requirements that prevent food aid from being distributed efficiently and with the best use of taxpayer dollars. Bread for the World recognizes the tough fiscal environment that appropriators and authorizers face in the FY25 appropriations cycle, and we raise Food for Peace as a program that provides the U.S. economy increased return-on-investment while meeting urgent food security needs and building international good will, all while stabilizing nations susceptible to alternative foreign powers.

I encourage all Bread members and anti-hunger advocates to contact your member of Congress today and ask them to support Food for Peace.

Blessings,

Rev. Eugene Cho

References and further reading:

• Congressional Resolution text, July 2024, H.R. ____ Supporting Food for Peace
• USAID press release, July 2024, Recognizing 70 Years of the Food for Peace Program
• Bread for the World press release, June 28, 2024, Bread Deeply Concerned by House Humanitarian Aid Cuts
• Bread for the World article, February 2024, Food Aid Reform Saves Lives
• Bipartisan statements on food aid reform collected by the House Foreign Affairs Committee, June 2013, What They are Saying about Food Aid Reform
• About Food for Peace at the University of Kansas’ Robert J. Dole Institute of Politics, Food for Peace
• New York Times, April 22, 2007, Bush Administration Gains Support for New Approach on Food Aid
• USAID Report, Food for Peace Year in Review
• USAID website, Office of Food for Peace

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Because of its economic and political power, the United States has had the responsibility and honor of leading the world in ending hunger. Churches and food banks are invaluable in feeding our neighbors here at home in immediate need, but federal nutrition programs provide roughly 10 times as much food assistance as private churches and charities. Feeding our neighbors longer-term, both in the U.S. and on the other side of the world, requires faith-driven advocacy.

It’s easier to understand how we can support those who are vulnerable and marginalized through our congregations, on social media, and by using our resources. But there’s another way to impact hunger that’s often overlooked: how you vote. 

While nearly everyone agrees that hunger is a problem, not all politicians see it as a priority. In November, Americans will vote for the next president of the United States, 33 Senate seats and all 435 House seats. Your vote will decide whether or not the world moves closer to the end of hunger. Every person who votes plays a part in this future.

The problem of hunger.

Approximately 735 million people around the world suffer from chronic hunger. In the United States, one in eight households struggles to put food on the table. 

Hunger doesn’t always look the same. Some people are hungry because food is in short supply in their area, or due to weather events, conflict, or economic factors. Others can’t afford to buy enough food. Some have a “hunger season” every year, when the previous harvest is gone and the next harvest is not yet ready. 

In the United States, many people who look healthy are hungry because they do not get enough nutrients. This is called hidden hunger. People who suffer from “hidden hunger” often have access to enough calories, but they chronically struggle to access food with sufficient vitamins and minerals. This prevents them from living a healthy, active life. Children who suffer from hidden hunger are not able to learn and focus as well in school, and adults who suffer from hidden hunger can struggle to lead productive lives.

God has ordained the government to play a significant role in the protection and development of people.

Romans 13 emphasizes the role and responsibility of leaders, noting that “governing agencies” are “God’s agent for your good” (NRSV). For the one in authority is God’s servant for your good” (NRSV). Voting has biblical precedence as well; Acts 14:23 describes that the early Christians elected elders by voting.

God tasks leaders with serving and protecting their people, whether or not they acknowledge that their authority comes from God. And Jesus warns that people will be held accountable and judged for the ways they have treated the least among them (Matthew 25:31-46).  

We love God by loving our neighbors. The Scriptures speak to the role and responsibility of leaders in caring for the poor. Proverbs 31:8-9 says, “Speak out for those who cannot speak, for the rights of all the destitute” (NRSV). In the Gospels, Jesus displays a particular heart for those who experience poverty, hunger, and vulnerability in our nation and in our world. 

There are some issues that are not “right and left” issues – they are right and wrong issues. Hunger is one of them. Hunger is an issue that is important to God, and therefore, it should be important to us and to our leaders. 

How can the U.S. government address hunger? 

According to the United Nations, the world produces enough food annually to feed 10 billion people, in a current population of just over 7 billion people. The problem is that as much as 44 percent of agricultural production is never consumed.

What’s needed is the collective will and action to get the right food to those who need it and address the factors that cause hunger to exist in the first place. This means enacting policies and programs that create jobs, strengthen safety nets, invest in human capital development, support community-initiated public-private partnerships, and support international efforts to end hunger and poverty.

Here are some ways the U.S. government prevents and addresses hunger in the U.S. and abroad: 

1. Foreign aid:
   There are several types of foreign aid: When a crisis or disaster strikes, people overseas receive emergency humanitarian assistance from the United States. Our federal government also provides ongoing food aid to address the “silent disaster” of hunger and malnutrition around the world. In addition, the United States provides development assistance to help countries and communities globally meet their own needs and prevent humanitarian food crises. 
2. Domestic nutrition assistance: 
   The U.S. invests in programs such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), which helps struggling families put food on the table. Today, about 42.1 million Americans per month are directly impacted by the increases in access, eligibility, and benefits that SNAP provides.
3. Climate change: 
   Climate change brings shifting weather patterns that destroy crops, homes, livestock, and possessions. While no country can solve the climate crisis alone, through actions at home and our leadership abroad, the United States can reduce emissions and help vulnerable countries adapt to  climate impacts. 
4. Conflict: 
   About 70 percent of people experiencing hunger around the world live in countries affected by conflict. It’s a vicious cycle: conflict fuels hunger, and hunger and food insecurity trigger violence. The U.S. has the power to respond to conflict through economic pressure and advance stability in areas vulnerable to conflict.
5. Low-wage incomes and unemployment:
   The people who make the least have to spend most of their income on food in order to survive. U.S. economic policies can address inflation, create good-paying jobs, and reduce unemployment. 
6. Racial and gender inequity: 
   Around the world, women are more likely to experience hunger than men and earn less than men for doing the same job. This is also true of people within a community who are marginalized because of their race or ethnicity. The U.S. can combat inequality through education, assistance for gender programs, addressing sexual violence and hate crimes, and more.  

United States politicians have made a historic impact on hunger.

The United States has long been a leader in addressing hunger. In just two generations, for example, the world made amazing progress against hunger. In 1960, one in three people was hungry. Today, chronic hunger affects one in every eight or nine people. Much of this progress is due to the passion and commitment of U.S. leaders who gave their voices, their platforms, and their votes to key policies. 

2020 marked a spike in world hunger because of the pandemic. This next election is critical to recovering the ground we lost, and more. 

Many notable politicians have tirelessly pushed for programs and policies to reduce hunger. For example:

• In the first-ever televised presidential address, President Truman talked about fighting hunger in countries still recovering from World War II.

• In the 1950s, Congresswoman Leonor K. Sullivan pushed Congress to pass food stamp legislation – which eventually became SNAP. 

• In 1960, President Eisenhower implored the United Nations to create a program that would provide food assistance to countries in need. South Dakota Senator George McGovern played an instrumental role in the establishment of the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP).

• In 2002, former Kansas Senator, Senate Majority Leader, and long-time member of Bread’s board of directors Bob Dole joined Senator McGovern to launch America’s first global initiative to feed school-aged children: the McGovern-Dole International Food for Education and Child Nutrition Program. The McGovern-Dole program has provided meals to more than 40 million children in 41 countries.

• In 2016, the bipartisan Global Food Security Act (GFSA), was signed into law. The GFSA, introduced by Representatives Chris Smith and Betty McCollum and Senators Jim Risch and Bob Casey, focuses on the nutrition of women and children and expanded farmers’ access to local and international markets.

• The policies and programs Bread advocates for – and the many political leaders who have prioritized these policies – have impacted 320 million Americans and more than 7 billion people around the world.

How do you know which candidates support policies that will end hunger? 

We must elect leaders who are committed to ending hunger. This doesn’t necessarily mean determining a candidate’s position on ending hunger – no candidate is going to be openly “against” ending hunger. It means identifying the candidates who prioritize hunger in their platform and in their actions. 

Here are some steps you can take: 

*Note: The content in any external resources and websites may not reflect the views or public policies endorsed by Bread for the World.

1. Use Vote.gov to register to vote. You can also visit USA.gov to find your polling place.  

2. See who is on your ballot. You can use resources like Vote.org to see which candidates will be on your ballot. 

3. MyFaithVotes and Vote.org can help you identify who your local candidates are and their positions on different topics. 

4. Review the candidates’ websites or follow their social media accounts to see if they have a position on ending hunger. If they don’t, write to them and ask. If they are sitting members of Congress, check how they voted in the past on bills related to hunger, such as the Farm Bill, SNAP, and the Child Tax Credit.  

5. Attend local town hall meetings to talk to congressional candidates in person. 
   • If elected, what will you do to end hunger, alleviate poverty, and create opportunity in the United States and worldwide?
   • Will you publicize your position on hunger, poverty, and opportunity on your website and on social media?

6. Pledge to vote for candidates who will make ending hunger a priority and encourage others to do the same. Bread for the World has a team of organizers ready to help you vote your values. Click here to reach out to the organizer assigned to your state. 

7. Visit bread.org/vote for more ideas and resources you can use to engage in the 2024 election.

Pray for our leaders – present and future. 

God listens to our prayers, and our prayers have the power to fuel the mission to end hunger. 1 Timothy 2 tells us to pray for “all who are in high positions, so that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life” (NRSV).  

Ask God to grant our leaders the integrity and wisdom to focus on matters that protect the most vulnerable among us. Prayer empowers us to support those in authority with a spirit of love and advocacy. 

Pray for God to guide you in your decisions this election season, and pray for our future leaders – whatever the outcome of the election – to be inspired to prioritize the issue of hunger during their time of service. 

When you talk about politics, talk about hunger. 

Do not be discouraged by political dissension or media coverage.  Your vote matters more than ever. Victory for one candidate may be determined by just a few votes more than the other. Not voting is just as much a form of voting, because it can have an impact on the outcome.

Congress and the president will make decisions that will determine whether hunger will continue to exist. We can’t end hunger in the United States or globally unless we elect leaders – including the president, Congress, and state and local lawmakers – who will make it a priority.

As we approach the coming elections, politics will increasingly be the topic of dinner discussions, social media posts, and events. Don’t stay silent; share any information you learn about wise and just candidates with your friends, neighbors, or online. Write op-eds or letters to the editor for your local newspapers. Volunteer for candidates who have a position you support. Go to bread.org/vote for more ways to engage with candidates and share information you learn with others.

In the midst of political division and standstill, we as believers need to be guided by our values. Most importantly, do not sit out this election. We are fortunate to live in a country where our leaders have the power to make a significant, world-changing impact on hunger.

Voting is not just a part of civic engagement. It is a privilege not to be taken for granted, and it is an opportunity to use your voice as an influence for good and for God – to determine a future that will impact us, our children, and future generations. 

Pledge to Vote to End Hunger

Voting is one of the most important actions we can take to help alleviate hunger. The leaders we elect in the United States make decisions that will have a tremendous impact on people experiencing hunger – both in our country and globally. 

Pledge today to vote for candidates who will make ending hunger a priority.

The post What Does Voting Have to Do with Ending Hunger? appeared first on Bread for the World.

Rev. Eugene Cho, president and CEO of Bread for the World, issued the following statement:

“We are all deeply shaken. May we be in prayer for former President Donald Trump, his recovery, and his family. Additionally, please keep the victim, Corey Comperatore, his family, and all those injured or traumatized by these events in your prayers. Regardless of one’s political affiliation or lack thereof, there is no room for political violence in our democracy, and we must reject and condemn it in all forms.”

He continued, “We are living in one of the most polarized times in our nation. In the coming days, weeks, and months ahead, we can either escalate or strive to embody a better way. We must choose the latter. May we recommit ourselves to defending and strengthening our democracy.”

Bread, a non-partisan Christian advocacy organization, remains steadfast in its mission to advocate for policies and programs that will bring about the end of hunger. Grounded in our faith in Christ, we believe in the inherent dignity of every individual and strive to create systems that affirm equality and advance equity among all human beings. Our collaborative efforts with diverse communities and leaders are a testament to our commitment to fostering a world where everyone can flourish.

Our faith is at the core of who we are, and it is grounded in love – love of God, and love of our neighbors as ourselves. We choose to be guided by love not only as we show up in our congregations, on social media, and in supporting vulnerable people in our communities, but also in how we show up in public spaces – whether that is in the way we engage presidential or congressional candidates, the way we vote, the way we participate in political discourse, and our advocacy actions. Violent rhetoric is inseparable from violent actions, so we must call on each other, our society, and our elected leaders to model a better path of civility and respect for the dignity of one another – including those with whom we disagree. As the Bible admonishes us, we must “seek peace and pursue it”. -Psalm 34:14.

Cho emphasized the importance of unity and prayer: “May we be in prayer for America. May we also be in prayer for our world – and for so many who are ensnared in conflict and violence. Lord, in your mercy….”

In closing, Bread offers this prayer:

God of Love and Peace,

We come to you shaken by the violence that has unfolded in our political process. 
We hold in prayer the former President, the person who lost his life, the people who were injured, and all who are impacted by this shooting. We pray for elected officials who daily live with threats of violence.

We pray especially for our nation this day. 
We pray that a spirit of unity might prevail. 
May we come together to love one another,
to show compassion for one another,
and to be agents of peace among one another. 

We pray for our democracy, that even as we struggle to find a unified way forward our union will be made more perfect in our faithfulness to this our system of self-governance with checks and balances on power. 

God of grace, be our guide and our protection as we discern our way forward as a nation. 

In Jesus’ precious name we pray,

Amen 

For more on Bread’s faith-based approach to engaging the 2024 election visit: bread.org/vote-to-end-hunger

The post Bread for the World Condemns Political Violence and Calls for Prayer, Peace, and Civility appeared first on Bread for the World.

An important aspect of this federal holiday history is the contribution of People of African Descent from within the U.S. and Ayiti (Haiti), previously called Saint-Domingue, which became an independent country in 1804. Despite the enslavement of People of African Descent from Ayiti and their own fight for independence from enslavement from France and the fight of enslaved and freed People of African descent in the U.S. to be free within the U.S., both contributed to the revolutionary war of the U.S. from 1775-1783. It was not until 1782 when the British government would formally acknowledge American independence and call for the end of hostilities.

One notable example of Haiti’s contribution to the revolutionary war was the Chasseurs-Voluntaries de Saint-Domingue which was a regiment of over 500 Haitian free men of African descent who fought at the Siege of Savannah (Georgia) in 1779. Their contribution was pivotal in one of the bloodiest battles of the war. Further, France’s loss of Saint-Domingue helped lead Napoleon to sell the Louisiana Territory to the U.S. in 1803. This acquisition doubled the size of the U.S., setting the stage for westward expansion. Ayiti also contributed to the abolitionist movement in the U.S.

Although the mutual dream and kinship of freedom, liberation and trade between Haiti and the U.S. existed, Haiti was not recognized by the U.S. as an independent and free country until 1862. Frederick Douglas, who was formally enslaved, a leading abolitionist, and an African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church elder, became U.S. Ambassador to Haiti in 1889. Ambassador Douglas praised Haiti as “a beacon of liberty for successfully overthrowing slavery and colonialism.”

Ayiti and the U.S. have experienced profound lament and rare hope in the pursuit of their aspirational dreams of being “a beacon of liberty.”  This month, and especially July 4^th, is an invitation to remember this dream belongs to all, both freed and enslaved people, from the past and today.

This aspirational dream of liberty includes the freedom to vote for our government leadership and to build out relationships with them and for all. In the U.S., we encourage the right to speak up and stand up with our advocacy asks. Today, advocacy for the farm bill is one of the most important timely policies we are called to advocate for. Our recent Advocacy Summit and related Pan African Consultation did this. We encourage you to do the same. You can learn more at www.bread.org/ol.  

Angelique Walker-Smith is senior associate for Pan African and Orthodox Church engagement at Bread for the World.

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The statement can be attributed to Rev. Eugene Cho, president and CEO of Bread for the World:

“Bread for the World is deeply concerned by the devastating funding cuts to humanitarian and development aid programs and organizations that were passed as a part of the House SFOPs appropriation bill. These funding cuts would severely hinder the United States’ ability to respond to humanitarian crises, including hunger and famine crises happening right now in in Sudan, Gaza, Haiti, Armenia, Burkina Faso, and numerous other countries and regions worldwide. They will also impede efforts to prevent these types of humanitarian crises from happening.”   

Specifically, the House legislation would:

• Cut the overall SFOPs allotment by more than 11 percent below the fiscal year 2024 level.
• Cut USAID’s operating expenses by $480 million below the FY 2024 level.
• Cut funding for development assistance by $931 million below the FY 2024 level.
• Cut funding for international disaster assistance by $1.3 billion below the FY 2024 level.
• Cut funding for programs addressing global maternal and child health and infectious diseases by $362 million below the FY 2024 level.
• Cut funding for international financial institutions by $583 million below the FY 2024 level.
• Cut funding for migration and refugee assistance by $500 million below the FY 2024 level.
• Defund a host of institutions at the United Nations, including UNICEF, and prohibit support for the WHO and UNFPA.
• Prohibit funding for a host of programs addressing climate change, one of the primary causes of hunger, including the Green Climate Fund, the Clean Technology Fund, and implementation of the Paris Climate Agreement.  

“Cutting funding for these critical humanitarian aid programs and organizations, including a UN aid organization focused specifically on the wellbeing of children, while the world is in the midst of the worst hunger and famine crisis in a generation is unthinkable. These cuts would impact and endanger the lives of hundreds of millions of people worldwide, particularly women and children.

“We are, however, encouraged that a majority of House members voted down many of the most harmful amendments that were offered, including amendments that would have defunded USAID and international disaster relief assistance. Bread thanks our advocates who contacted their representative and asked them to support humanitarian assistance and oppose the harmful amendments.

“Bread now urges the Senate to pass a sensible SFOPs appropriations bill that recognizes the importance of global humanitarian aid and development while acknowledging the difficult budget environment we are in.”

Read more:

Bread’s Response to Hunger Hotspots in Gaza and Around the World

Bread Urges Lawmakers to Oppose Dramatic Humanitarian Aid Funding Cuts

The post Bread Deeply Concerned by House Humanitarian Aid Cuts appeared first on Bread for the World.

“Juneteenth is a day of profound weight and power. A day in which we remember the moral stain and terrible toll of slavery on our country—what I’ve long called America’s original sin. A long legacy of systemic racism, inequality, and inhumanity. But it is a day that also reminds us of our incredible capacity to heal, hope, and emerge from our darkest moments with purpose and resolve.”

Later that year, August 2, the United Nations Permanent Forum of People of African Descent was established at the UN General Assembly. It was established as “a consultative mechanism for people of African descent and other relevant stakeholders as a platform for improving the safety and quality of life and livelihoods of people of African descent.” 

Both historic events have and do encourage our remembrances of the legal bondage and abolition of enslavement of African peoples in the Unites States and globally. Those events also remind us of historic challenges that are still with us today—despite other significant remembrances of reforms this year like the 60^th anniversary of Brown versus Board of Education, the 60^th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act, and the 30^th anniversary of Apartheid falling in South Africa. All of these anniversaries represent steps that helped move the agenda of more equitable political and economic policies and practices, led by the faithful leadership of African peoples and their partners. The same resilience led to the political independence of African and Caribbean nations and the first Black Republic, Ayiti (Haiti), in 1804.

Still, reforms and recognitions like these have not yet reached the goal of sustainable life, which includes food security and sovereignty, economic justice, full employment, nonviolence, and environmentally stable communities. At the UN Permanent Forum, the Honorable Anielle Franco, Brazil’s Minister for racial equality said, “When we talk about happiness in Brazil, we talk about dignity, jobs, health, food, being able to explore one’s own culture.” Brazil is the nation-state with the second largest number of African people after Nigeria. 

Since the enslavement period, discriminatory policies and practices still contribute to unsustainable life for a disproportionate number of African peoples who have fewer financial resources like savings or property than their white counterparts. For example, as of 2020, the racial wealth gap showed that in the United States, white households have a median family net worth of $147,000 while Black households have a median family net worth of $3,600. The median white family in the United States has 41 times more wealth than the median Black family.

Bread for the World celebrates the resolve, resilience, and faithfulness of African peoples remembered on Juneteenth and at the new UN Forum. Remembrances like Juneteenth help to inspire and engage prayerful advocacy today that seeks to repair the past, present, and future. We invite you to learn more about our advocacy agenda and to be a part of the movement at bread.org. 

Angelique Walker-Smith is senior associate for Pan African and Orthodox Church engagement at Bread for the World.

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The statement can be attributed to Rev. Eugene Cho, president and CEO of Bread for the World:

“The farm bill is our nation’s most important anti-hunger legislation. It incorporates many of our country’s nutrition programs, including the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), and international food aid.

“The Farm, Food, and National Security Act introduced by Chairman Thompson contains many positive elements. It would boost farm safety net programs, improve SNAP participants’ access to nutritious fruits and vegetables through the Gus Schumacher Nutrition Incentive Program (GusNIP), and end the lifetime ban on people convicted of federal drug felonies from accessing SNAP benefits.

“The legislation would also fully fund the McGovern-Dole International Food for Education Program, which helps lower-income countries establish school feeding programs. In fiscal year 2022, the program provided nutritious school meals to more than 2.7 million food-insecure children in 34 countries.

“However, as currently written, the legislation would increase domestic food insecurity and prevent millions of people globally from receiving critical humanitarian nutrition assistance.

“The bill limits future updates to the Thrifty Food Plan, which is used to calculate SNAP benefits. This would result in $30 billion being cut from SNAP over the next decade, leaving SNAP families with fewer resources to buy groceries and lead a healthy life. Currently, 42 million Americans receive nutrition assistance through SNAP.

“The bill also fails to authorize Puerto Rico’s transition from the Nutrition Assistance Program (NAP) to SNAP, leaving these U.S. citizens reliant on a block grant with capped funding levels that fail to meet the needs of the people amid natural disasters or economic downturns.

“Internationally, the bill would require the Food for Peace humanitarian aid program to spend 50 percent of its budget on U.S. commodities and ocean freight – increasing costs and greatly reducing the funding available for vital food assistance. More than 2 million additional people would be left vulnerable to hunger and malnutrition.

“Finally, it would mandate USAID to consult with the USDA in the administration of Food for Peace, creating layers of bureaucracy and slowing the delivery of lifesaving humanitarian aid.

“We urge lawmakers to unite across party lines, address the shortcomings in this current version, and pass a meaningful farm bill this year that helps farmers, improves and protects families’ access to nutrition, and ensures international food aid can reach all who need it in the quickest and most effective ways possible.”

The post Bread Statement on House Farm Bill appeared first on Bread for the World.

Here in the United States, few children are severely malnourished, but many families worry about their next meal or regularly run out of grocery money. Collectively, the world already grows enough food to feed everyone, and the U.S. government has the power and resources to make a historic impact on hunger. That is why Bread and our partners work tirelessly to urge our nation’s decision-makers to prioritize policies and programs that will end hunger.

In 2022, 12.8 percent of all U.S. households were food insecure. This includes 7.7 percent with “low food security” and 5.1 percent with “very low food security.” These increases were largely due to the end of pandemic assistance programs including the expanded Child Tax Credit and increased access and benefits in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC). Inflation and rising food prices are also contributing factors.

Food insecurity is more common in rural areas. In 2022, it affected 14.7 percent of rural households, or 2.7 million families. Although urban areas have a lower rate of food insecurity, at 12.5 percent, this adds up to a much larger number of families—14.3 million—since urban areas are more populous.

Black and Latino households experienced food insecurity at more than twice the rate of white households in 2022, at 22.4 percent and 20.8 percent, respectively.

In households with very low food security—more than one in 20 U.S. households—there were times during the year that people’s food intake was reduced and their normal eating patterns were disrupted because the household lacked money for food. Of households with very low food security:

• 98 percent worried that their food would run out before they had money to buy more.
• 97 percent found that the food they bought just did not last, and they did not have money to get more.
• 96 percent could not afford to eat balanced meals.
• 96 percent skipped meals or ate less because there was not enough money for food.
• 65 percent had been hungry but did not eat because they could not afford enough food.
• 29 percent did not eat for a whole day because there was not enough money for food.

The post Facts About U.S. Hunger appeared first on Bread for the World.

“Bread for the World celebrates the bipartisan passage of this legislation and sees it as a significant victory for the thousands of Bread supporters who wrote emails and letters, made phone calls, and met with their members of Congress in support of domestic and international nutrition programs,” said Rev. Eugene Cho, president and CEO of Bread for the World.

The legislation fully funds vital domestic child nutrition programs including WIC, the National School Lunch Program, the School Breakfast Program, and Summer EBT. These programs play a critical role in ensuring our nation’s children receive the nutrition they need to lead healthy and productive lives. The legislation also fully funds SNAP, our nation’s most important program addressing hunger.

In addition, the legislation provides funding for the international nutrition programs Food for Peace and the McGovern-Dole Food for Education Program. These initiatives are the pillars of our efforts to address hunger and malnutrition globally. While funding for both programs decreased slightly from 2023 levels, the legislation did not include the 70 percent cuts that had been proposed last year.

“Bread thanks leadership in both the House and the Senate for prioritizing nutrition in this minibus and looks forward to continuing our collaboration with policymakers and stakeholders to build a more food-secure world,” added Cho.

Read more: Government Shutdowns Disproportionately Impact People Experiencing Hunger

The post Bread Celebrates Passage of First “Minibus” appeared first on Bread for the World.

Approximately 16 million children will benefit from the CTC expansion, including nearly 3 million children under age 3. Once the CTC expansion is in full effect, 500,000 children will be lifted out of poverty.

The following statement can be attributed to Rev. Eugene Cho, president and CEO of Bread for the World:  

“Bread for the World welcomes the House of Representative’s passage of the expanded Child Tax Credit. The CTC expansion will serve as an important lifeline for millions of families with children struggling to make ends meet. This is especially true for families who in the past have not made enough to receive the full tax benefit but will now be eligible to do so.  

“Now that tax season has begun, Bread hopes the Senate will act with urgency and quickly pass the expanded CTC so that families are able to include it when they file their taxes.”

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Additional resources from Bread for the World on the Child Tax Credit:

Urge Your Senators to Vote Yes on Child Tax Credit Expansion

Bread Urges Congress to Pass Child Tax Credit Expansion

The post Bread Welcomes House Passage of Child Tax Credit Expansion, Urges Senate to Quickly Act appeared first on Bread for the World.

Recently I attended a play about one of my extended family members in Tuskegee, Alabama. Remembering Sammy is about Sammy Younge, a freedom fighter born and raised in Tuskegee and later a student at Tuskegee University. He became known for his public voice and organizing against racial segregation. On January 3, 1966, he was fatally gunned down by a racist white man at the Tuskegee Greyhound bus station after he used a “whites only” restroom.

Mr. Sammy Younge is specifically known as being the first African American university student to be murdered in the United States due to his actions in support of freedom for people of African descent during the Civil Rights movement. He became one of many more freedom fighters whose lives were sacrificed for a more inclusive society after him. One of the opportunities that inspired his courageous life and other students of that time was going to Mississippi to spend time with Ms. Fannie Lou Hamer, a renowned freedom fighter. In Mississippi, he learned from and worked with Ms. Hamer. 

Like Ms. Hamer, Mr. Younge had a commitment to making his freedom message known specifically among people of faith—as well as the wider community. Predominantly white churches were some of the most fiercely opposed to desegregating their churches and communities. Hamer and Younge were closely aligned with young people of faith who were primarily persons of African descent and whose parentage had been enslaved in the U.S. They, like the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., understood that their fight for freedom meant speaking to the churches, the public and private sectors, and the policymakers. They were motivated by the same strong views that Rev. Dr. Martin expressed in his “Letter from Birmingham Jail”:

“I must make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers. First, I must confess that over the last few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizens Councillor or the Ku Klux Klanner but the white moderate who is more devoted to order than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice ….”

Mr. Younge and Ms. Hamer understood the ironies of the perspectives of some faith leaders—and their lack of support for a more equitable society. This Black History Month begs the same question that Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. asked in his last book, Where Do We Go from Here? Bread for the World is playing a vital role in addressing this question. Learn about our Offering of Letters and to speak out and act!

Angelique Walker-Smith is senior associate for Pan African and Orthodox Church engagement at Bread for the World.

The post Speak Out and Act! Fannie Lou Hamer and Sammy Younge  appeared first on Bread for the World.

The United States is often called the wealthiest country in the world, yet 13 million children are food insecure. Thirteen million young boys and girls across this country cannot be sure that they will get regular meals, sometimes do not know when or where their next meal will be, and do not have access to an affordable, nutrient-dense diet.

While food may be seen as a given for many well-off Americans, the reality is that it has become harder to obtain for others. Food should not be difficult to access – especially for children. 

Hunger in children and teens in America carries a myriad of consequences. Teachers and administrators have reported that hungry students have less energy in class, are more easily distracted when it comes to schoolwork, score lower on exams, and come to school late or miss school entirely. Researchers have had data that confirms such impacts for at least a decade, and Bread staff has been in communication with pediatricians at Children’s HealthWatch in Boston about the health consequences of child hunger since 2011.

Early childhood hunger, even for relatively brief periods, carries especially severe consequences for children’s development. Especially for those in the critical human nutrition period known as the ”1,000 Days,”  from pregnancy to age 2, hunger can cause devastating damage to the developing brain. Clinically diagnosed stunting is rare in the U.S. This is a condition that includes lifelong health problems and developmental delays. It indicates that a person has survived early childhood malnutrition. 

Researchers are learning more all the time about the impacts of early life experiences. For example, there is now a list of “Adverse Childhood Experiences” (ACE) which, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC), can have a “tremendous impact” on lifelong health and opportunity. 

The most heartbreaking consequence of all is not even listed among the serious physical and mental consequences associated with hunger, but something even greater: childhood hunger strips away dreams, hopes, and futures. The U.S. is known as a country where dreams become reality, where you can achieve anything you set your mind to, and where children are told they can grow up to become presidents, astronauts, and anything else they can think of. 

Hunger can not only affect your physical and mental health, but also make it harder for you to dream of the future. As a country, and as individual parents, teachers, mentors, elected leaders, and people of faith, we must respond to childhood hunger for the emergency it is. 

As Rep. Jim McGovern (D-MA) put it in his support for the Universal School Meals Program Act of 2023: “No child in America should be hungry – period, end of story. In the richest country in the history of the world, every child that does not have enough to eat is a policy failure and a moral outrage. We have a responsibility not just to teach kids reading and math, but to ensure they have healthy, nutritious food at school.”

It is good news that there are currently initiatives and legislative proposals aimed at ending child hunger in the U.S. Many Bread members have devoted special time and effort to advocating passage of the Universal School Meals Program Act.

This vital piece of legislation offers a permanent solution to ending child hunger in America “by offering free breakfast, lunch, dinner, and a snack to all students, preschool through high school, regardless of income, eliminating all school meal debt, and strengthening local economies by incentivizing local food procurement.” The bill was introduced by Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT), along with Senators Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) and Martin Heinrich (D-NM), and in the House by Representatives Ilhan Omar (D-MN), Gwen Moore (D-WI) and Jim McGovern.

The Universal School Meals Program Act is a more comprehensive, permanent long-term version of the highly successful free school meals program that Congress approved during the COVID-19 pandemic. The initial program, which provided free school meals to all U.S. students through high school, led to significant positive outcomes, including higher rates of participation in school meals, reduced levels of perceived stigma affecting lower-income students, and an end to school meal debt. 

Unfortunately, the program was temporary. It expired in September 2022, leaving millions of children who relied on free meals under strain and uncertainty.

The Universal School Meals Program Act will not only bring unprecedented relief to low-income students, but to all schoolchildren. This new act imagines a country where food is freely given to children at school, and no child enrolled in an American school goes hungry. The act provides for not only free food, but free healthy, nutritious food that provides the diet needed for children to thrive.

The evidence that this approach works includes data from the nine U.S. states that already provide free school meals. California led the way and was followed by Maine, Colorado, Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota, Massachusetts, New Mexico, and Vermont. A number of other states are planning to take steps in school year 2024-2025 that will bring them closer to universal school meals.

Teachers are noticing the difference. Just one example: Lowell Elementary in Albuquerque, New Mexico, has reported a significant decrease in hunger-related issues for several of their students who “used to suffer stomach cramps or would feel dizzy because they didn’t have enough to eat.” Albuquerque Public Schools have also seen “an immediate increase in participation. And in the first seven days of the school year that started this month, the numbers increased by 1,000 per day for breakfast and lunch.”  

It is very good news that the leaders of nine states are now ensuring that children in their states get enough to eat.  But we cannot stop there. It is time for Congress to finally end child hunger with universal free school meals.

Izzy Koo is an intern on U.S. and global hunger issues, Policy and Research Institute, with Bread for the World.

The post Ending Child Hunger in America through the Universal School Meals Act appeared first on Bread for the World.

A new USDA pilot program is helping to improve nutritious, sustainable, and culturally sensitive food options that support Indigenous communities. 

A study of food insecurity among Native Americans, based on data for the decade 2000-2010, found that they are more likely to experience food insecurity than the U.S. population as a whole. One main cause of disproportionate poverty and food insecurity is historical inequities in federal policies and underinvestment in the well-being of Native Americans, including those who live on reservations. 

Native Americans are eligible to participate in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), but reservations are very often located in food deserts, far from the nearest grocery store. This makes it hard for residents to use these benefits. An alternative is the Food Distribution Program on Indian Reservations (FDPIR), which closes the distance gap by directly shipping food to local schools, food banks, and other community sites for distribution. An estimated 83,800 Native Americans benefited from the FDPIR program in 2019 (latest available statistics). Approximately 38 percent of participants reported that FDPIR was their only source of food. 

Indigenous communities in the Northwest are expected to benefit from the new USDA pilot program. Using $5 million in funding from the Inflation Reduction Act and the Bipartisan Infrastructure law, the program will invest in local communities, provide culturally appropriate foods, and work to restore ecological balance in the region. For example, the program will purchase bison meat from small and mid-sized local and tribal bison producers in feasible quantities and make it available to FDPIR programs on reservations. The producers are located on several Sioux reservations, including the Lower Brule Sioux Tribe, Standing Rock Sioux Reservation, Cheyenne River Sioux Reservation, and Rosebud Sioux Reservation, thus contributing to local bison procurement. 

Typically, USDA purchases foods for the FDPIR in bulk, but this makes it more difficult for Indigenous-owned or locally operated businesses to take part in food assistance partnerships in their own communities. Thus, it is important that the pilot program is catering to local bison ranches working in Indigenous communities.

The pilot will help advance food sovereignty among Native Americans. Food sovereignty is a concept that includes both the right to healthy and culturally appropriate food produced using ecologically sound and sustainable methods and one’s right to define one’s own food and agriculture systems. 

In addition to investing in Indigenous communities, centering bison as the consumable for the FDPIR pilot program is important culturally and nutritionally. Access to bison as a source of meat, leather, and other resources has been an important part of many North American Native cultures. But this link was severed by the near-extinction of bison in the American West. U.S. policies that caused or enabled this drive toward extinction attacked the sovereignty of Native American tribes, reduced the size of reservations, and degraded grasslands.

Further, making bison meat more accessible is important in the context of past and present nutritional inequities. The original U.S. government food commodity programs often sent low-quality and culturally foreign foods to reservations. Not only were these meals no longer familiar or easily accessible to Indigenous families, but the U.S. commodities often lacked nutritional value. The pilot aims to make bison meat more readily available to FDPIR recipients. 

In addition to delivering locally driven, culturally appropriate, and nutritious food, the program will contribute to the environmental stewardship goals of the U.S. Department of the Interior’s Grasslands Keystone Initiative. 

Initiatives that seek to enable Native communities to exercise their food sovereignty have been growing. Public Law 93-638, the Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act (commonly known as the 638 authority) supports these efforts since it does allow tribes to fully manage federal programs and services, including the FDPIR. It is thanks to the continued efforts of Tribal leaders through USDA consultations, reports, and monitoring of these programs, that these food sovereignty programs are being created to work to end hunger in Indian country. 

Partnerships like this are an effective way to reinvest in Indigenous practices that solve food security issues, restore local ecologies, and support food sovereignty for Native communities. Two among many ways that these partnerships could potentially be scaled up to help meet the cultural and dietary needs of Native communities are to expand the program to include fresh produce grown by local Indigenous people, and/or to continue to identify and eliminate barriers for small and mid-sized Indigenous-led agriculture businesses to participate in federal Native nutrition programs. 

Isabel Vandermolen is the climate-hunger fellow, Policy and Research Institute, with Bread for the World.

The post Investing in Native American Food Sovereignty and Food Security  appeared first on Bread for the World.

In addition to funding for Ukraine, the Middle East, and Taiwan, the supplemental aid will also provide and help to sustain critical bilateral support and multilateral financing to other countries in crisis, including hunger hotspots such as Sudan, Somalia, and Armenia. 

The following statement can be attributed to Rev. Eugene Cho, president and CEO of Bread for the World: 

“It is vital that Congress pass the Biden administration’s supplemental humanitarian aid request. The world is experiencing the worst hunger crisis in a generation. As many as 783 million people are facing chronic hunger and 129,000 people are expected to experience famine in Burkina Faso, Mali, Somalia, and South Sudan.

“Without these supplemental humanitarian funds USAID and the World Bank will be forced to drastically cut funding from multiple ongoing crises, leaving hundreds of thousands of people at risk of malnutrition and death. We cannot stand by and let that happen.  

“’Do not withhold good from those to whom it is due, when it is in your power to act.’ (Proverbs 3:27 NIV).”

Bread for the World is a Christian advocacy organization urging U.S. decision makers to do all they can to pursue a world without hunger

The post Bread Urges Congress to Pass Supplemental Humanitarian Aid Request appeared first on Bread for the World.

The farm bill sets national policies for nutrition, agriculture, conservation, and forestry. It provides nutrition assistance to millions of Americans through programs such as SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program), which typically gets the largest funding share of any program in the farm bill. 

The farm bill is due to be reauthorized by Congress every five years; the most recent farm bill was enacted into law in 2018, and it expired in 2023. When Congress delays reauthorization, the existing farm bill has to be extended until the next one is completed. Programs included in the farm bill provide lifesaving assistance to millions of people facing dangerous levels of hunger and malnutrition, both in the U.S. and around the world.

In this article, we will discuss:

• What is the farm bill?
• What is included in the farm bill?
• How much does the farm bill cost?
• What federal programs are authorized in the farm bill? 
• Why is the farm bill important for ending hunger in the U.S.?
• Does the farm bill provide global food assistance?
• What is Bread for the World advocating for in the 2023 farm bill? 
• Was the farm bill reauthorized in 2023?
• What happens if the farm bill expires?
  

What is the farm bill? 

The farm bill is an enormous package of policies and programs that is reauthorized by Congress every five years and sets the nation’s agricultural and food policies. The bill governs both U.S. and global programs and impacts everything from the price and quality of the food we eat to the health and sustainability of the nation’s farms and natural resources. 

Since the 1930s, Congress has enacted 18 farm bills. Each farm bill has several unique titles, such as conservation, nutrition, rural development, trade, and others; but the omnibus package of legislation as a whole is commonly referred to as the “farm bill.” The farm bill that expired in 2023 is called the “Agriculture Improvement Act of 2018.” President Trump signed the 2018 farm bill into law on December 20, 2018. 

Reauthorizing the farm bill gives Congress an opportunity to improve food and nutrition security through several federal nutrition assistance programs.

What is included in the farm bill?

The farm bill governs a variety of agricultural and food programs. The farm bill has become increasingly expansive in the past several decades. It has an important impact not just on nutrition assistance for Americans but on how food is grown and what kinds of foods are prioritized in agricultural policy. 

The current (2018) farm bill has twelve chapters, called titles:

Title 1: Commodities.
What it covers: Price and income support for the farmers who grow crops like corn, wheat, soybeans, rice, and sugar (it also includes dairy).

Title 2: Conservation.  
What it covers: Natural resource conservation efforts on farms and ranches. 

Title 3: Trade. 
What it covers: Food export subsidy programs and international food aid programs.

Title 4: Nutrition.  
What it covers: The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and other nutrition programs.

Title 5: Credit.  
What it covers: Federal loan programs that help farmers access loans.

Title 6: Rural Development.  
What it covers: Programs for rural businesses, housing, and infrastructure.

Title 7: Research, Extension, and Related Matters.  
What it covers: Farm and food research and education, such as training for farmers and ranchers.

Title 8: Forestry.  
What it covers: Forest conservation programs.

Title 9:  Energy.  
What it covers: Programs for growing crops for biofuel and helping farmers install renewable energy systems.

Title 10: Horticulture.
What it covers: Farmers market programs, organic farming and certification programs.

Title 11: Crop Insurance.  
What it covers: Subsidies to farmers and private crop insurance companies to protect against losses in crop yield or revenue. 

Title 12: Miscellaneous.  
What it covers: Agricultural labor safety, livestock health, and support for beginning farmers and socially disadvantaged farmers, such as farmers of color and female farmers. 

How much does the farm bill cost?

The total cost of the 2018 farm bill is about $428 billion over the 5-year period 2019–23.

The majority of the farm bill’s funding is for nutrition programs, which accounted for about three-quarters of farm bill spending from 2019 to 2023. 

According to the Congressional Budget Office, the next farm bill is estimated to be the first-ever farm bill to exceed $1 trillion. Nutrition is projected to make up more than 80% of the total farm bill spending. 

What federal programs are authorized in the farm bill? 

The major federal nutrition assistance programs authorized in the farm bill are:

• Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), formerly the food stamp program
• The Emergency Food Assistance Program (TEFAP)
• Food Distribution Program on Indian Reservations (FDPIR)
• Commodity Supplemental Food Program (CSFP)
• Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Program (FFVP)
• Seniors Farmers’ Market Nutrition Program (SFMNP)
• Healthy Food Financing Initiative (HFFI)
• Community Food Projects
• The Gus Schumacher Nutrition Incentive Program (GusNIP)
  

Why is the farm bill important for ending hunger in the U.S.?

The farm bill impacts hunger in the United States by providing access to nutritious food for millions of Americans struggling with hunger. 

Feeding Families

Hunger exists in the U.S. just as it does overseas. In the U.S., low-income households spend a greater share of their income on food, and more than one in five U.S. children are at risk of hunger. 

Food insecurity is three times higher for children living in Black and Latino households than for children living in white households. Programs included in the farm bill are vital for getting nutritious food to individuals and families so they can live thriving, productive lives. 

Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program

The U.S. flagship nutrition program and the main vehicle for reducing hunger under the bill is the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) – formerly food stamps – which currently serves more than 41 million people. 

Research shows that SNAP is one of our most effective tools in reducing hunger and food insecurity.

SNAP helps families put food on the table but is rarely enough to ensure an adequate amount of healthy food. SNAP recipients, on average, consume lower amounts of fruits and vegetables than the average American. The Gus Schumacher Nutrition Incentive Program (GusNIP) is an indispensable enhancement to SNAP by providing additional benefits to purchase fruits and vegetables.

The Emergency Food Assistance Program

Another important program authorized by the farm bill is The Emergency Food Assistance Program, or TEFAP, a federal nutrition program that moves food from farms to food banks to people facing hunger. Through this program, the U.S. Department of Agriculture purchases healthy foods from U.S. farmers for food banks and other organizations to distribute. 

These and other farm bill programs address long-standing nutritional inequities to ensure that marginalized and underserved communities receive nutritious food. 

For example, the Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Program (FFVP) promotes fresh fruits and vegetables in high-need elementary schools throughout the United States. The Seniors Farmers Market Nutrition Program (SFMNP) provides low-income seniors with access to locally grown fruits, vegetables, honey, and herbs. The Food Distribution Program on Indian Reservations (FDPIR) offers a wide variety of fresh fruits and vegetables, frozen meats, whole grains, and traditional foods.

Does the farm bill provide global food assistance?

The farm bill governs both U.S. and global agricultural and food policies and programs. The United States is a leading contributor to global efforts to save lives and relieve suffering among people who confront hunger and malnutrition. 

The farm bill spells out the main ways the United States provides emergency nutrition assistance as well as long-term development support to help communities become more resilient to chronic challenges and sudden shocks. 

Since 1954, U.S. assistance has reached more than 4 billion people in 150 countries.

The main causes of the current global hunger crises are conflict, climate change, and shocks such as the COVID-19 pandemic. The next farm bill offers an opportunity to increase funding for solutions that will reduce hunger and malnutrition for people around the world who are suffering from the impacts of these crises. 

Global food aid comes in three forms: in kind, meaning food shipped from the United States; vouchers to purchase food at local markets; and food purchased from local farmers and distributed to families.

Historically, U.S. food assistance was exclusively in kind. But shipping food from the United States delays the arrival of much-needed supplies, sometimes for months. It also adds significantly to the costs. Meanwhile, people suffering from severe malnutrition urgently need all available resources. 

This is why Bread for the World members have worked diligently over several five-year farm bill cycles to persuade Congress to permit a larger share of food aid to be purchased locally or regionally. These efforts have paid off: In 2020, 59% of U.S.-provided emergency food was purchased locally or regionally – an increase from 11% in 2010.

Important global nutrition assistance programs included in the farm bill are: 

• Food for Peace
  In fiscal year 2022, Food for Peace programs provided $2.6 billion across 31 countries in food assistance to women, children, and communities in hunger hotpots.  
  
  

• The McGovern-Dole International Food for Education and Child Nutrition Program
  This program has enabled food-insecure countries to establish school feeding programs for preschool and primary school children in need, providing 5 billion school meals since it was created 20 years ago.
  
  
• The Bill Emerson Humanitarian Trust
  The Bill Emerson Humanitarian Trust makes funds available to provide emergency humanitarian food assistance to developing countries.
  
  
• The John Ogonowski and Doug Bereuter Farmer-to-Farmer Program
  This program provides technical assistance to farmers, agribusinesses, and other agriculture sector institutions in developing and transitional countries. 

What is Bread for the World advocating for in the 2023 farm bill? 

The farm bill strengthens nutrition security in the United States by increasing access to healthy food. Bread supports a farm bill that will help build a healthy, equitable, and sustainable U.S. food and agricultural system. 

Bread advocates for measures in the next farm bill that will enhance nutrition, nutrition equity, and sustainability in the United States and globally, including:

• Enhanced global maternal and child nutrition through U.S. food aid initiatives
• Expanded access to SNAP among marginalized populations 
• Equitable opportunities for all food producers 
• Self-governance and food sovereignty for Tribal Nations
• Increased resources for food aid to reach people in crisis as quickly and efficiently as possible
• Funding for programs, research, and policies that address the threat to food security posed by the climate crisis
• Increased support for post-harvest food recovery to reduce food waste and feed people experiencing food insecurity, and reduce the greenhouse gasses that contribute to climate change when food ends up in landfills.

Bread’s advocacy agenda is a result of more than 100 meetings with grassroots advocates and stakeholders, including Black, Hispanic, and Indigenous farmers and food system leaders, Historically Black Colleges and Universities, U.S. Department of Agriculture officials, and local food system leaders. 

In 2023, Bread staff met with congressional offices in leadership positions on Senate and House Agriculture committees and subcommittees to introduce Bread’s farm bill policy team to them and gain insight on what Senate and House members could be expected to prioritize in the farm bill. These meetings and consultations also informed Bread’s farm bill policy platform in 2023. 

The Current State of the Farm Bill

Was the farm bill reauthorized in 2023?

No, Congress missed their September 30, 2023, deadline for passage of a farm bill. 

Debate over the more-than-$1 trillion price tag is part of the reason the farm bill was not reauthorized. Some lawmakers want to cut back on SNAP benefits and initiatives designed to help farmers improve their yields and address climate challenges. There are also disagreements over funding levels for farm subsidy programs.

Reduced funding for SNAP would put more American families at risk of food insecurity.

What happens if the farm bill expires?

If the farm bill expires without a new bill in place or if programs are not granted an extension by Congress, programs face one of three scenarios. Some lose the funding to operate and must shut down. A few key programs, like SNAP, would continue, but others that America’s farmers rely on to sustain their enterprises would revert back to outdated laws from 1938 and 1949 farm bills.

How is the farm bill reauthorized?

The farm bill is reauthorized when it is passed by the House and the Senate and signed into law by the president of the United States. 

Typically, committees in the House and the Senate both draft versions of the bill, then debate and revise them until the bills pass in both chambers. Then the bills are combined and must be voted on and passed by both the House and Senate before being sent to the president.

How can you make a difference in the passage of the farm bill?

Leaders in Congress really do listen to their constituents. Get involved by adding your voice to those calling for the reauthorization of the farm bill. 

Every letter you write to your representatives on Capitol Hill is read and cataloged  – and tells your representative which issues to prioritize. 

Look up your senators and representatives using our free search tool, write them a message and share it with those in your community. 

Conclusion 

The farm bill is our nation’s most important national food system legislation. It is critical to the work of ending hunger at home and abroad.

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Economic Research Service (USDA ERS), in 2022, 44.2 million people lived in food-insecure households. The reauthorization of the farm bill is a vital step toward ensuring that Americans – and others around the world – can have access to and afford a healthy, balanced diet. 

Bread for the World encourages U.S. senators and representatives to support a farm bill that will help build a nutritious, equitable, and sustainable U.S. food and agricultural system.

The post The Farm Bill: What It Is and What It Means for Hunger (2023) appeared first on Bread for the World.

Bread for the World attributes this significant rise, in part, to the end of pandemic assistance programs including the expanded Child Tax Credit and increased SNAP and WIC access and benefits. Inflation and rising food prices are also contributing factors.

The following statement can be attributed to Rev. Eugene Cho, president and CEO of Bread for the World:  

“As many of us in the anti-hunger community anticipated, the end of pandemic assistance programs coincided with a significant rise in food insecurity in the U.S. Programs such as the expanded Child Tax Credit, and increased access to SNAP and WIC, have again been proven to reduce hunger – especially among families with children.

“Now that Congress is poised to focus on the FY 2024 budget following the election of House Speaker Mike Johnson, Bread urges lawmakers to take these lessons to heart and support programs like the expanded CTC, SNAP, and WIC, which help families experiencing hunger.

“We know how to reduce hunger in the U.S. What’s needed is the collective will to do it.”

———————-

According to the report, in 2022:

• In the U.S., 44.2 million people lived in food-insecure households compared to roughly 34 million in 2021.
• 11.7 million adults lived in households with very low food security.
• 7.3 million children lived in food-insecure households in which children, along with adults, were food insecure.
• 783,000 children lived in households in which one or more child experienced very low food security.

Bread for the World is a Christian advocacy organization urging U.S. decision makers to do all they can to pursue a world without hunger

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The United States needs a government funded through appropriations because this enables critical services to operate around the country. The appropriations process is also necessary for the U.S. to honor its good faith commitments to provide nutrition services and other humanitarian assistance around the world.  

Advocacy by Bread’s grassroots members and constituents helped persuade Congress to reach a last-minute deal to keep the government running, a stop-gap measure called a continuing resolution (CR). The CR passed on September 30 keeps essential government functions and programs, including international food assistance programs, in operation for 45 days. It is not, however, an annual budget produced through the appropriations process. 

Negotiators from the administration and Congress had intended to prevent the near-shutdown crisis of September 30 from happening through the debt ceiling agreement. This agreement, known as the Fiscal Responsibility Act, was signed into law on June 3. It prevented a catastrophic default on the federal debt. It also included negotiated funding levels for the annual appropriations bills—set with the goal of establishing a more coherent path for passing appropriations measures that would enable smooth passage of the U.S budget. 

The U.S. Senate plans to honor the agreement and is sticking to the negotiated spending levels. The House, however, backed away from its commitments under the Fiscal Responsibility Act. It included provisions in its appropriations bills that would have eviscerated funding for critical measures such as Food for Peace and the McGovern-Dole International Food for Education Program. 

House debates on these bills were taking place in the last few days before the end of the fiscal year on September 30, adding to the risk of a government shutdown. Bread’s grassroots members helped to defeat these proposed harmful measures, protecting funding for critical lifesaving programs.

As time was running out for the House and Senate to reconcile their different versions of the appropriations measures, the Senate passed a continuing resolution to avoid a government shutdown. 

The Senate’s posture reflected a bipartisan approach that sought to serve the American people in good faith. The House eventually approved the Senate’s version of the CR. But the brinkmanship cast a shadow of panic and uncertainty over public confidence in the House’s ability to govern as part of the legislative branch and along with the other branches of government. 

Once Food for Peace has been reauthorized as part of the U.S. farm bill and funded through appropriations, its programs will support emergency and long-term development food assistance targeted for vulnerable populations. In fiscal year 2022, Food for Peace programs provided $2.6 billion across 31 countries of food assistance to women, children, and communities in hunger hotpots. 

The McGovern-Dole International Food for Education Program has enabled food-insecure countries to establish school feeding programs for preschool and primary school children in need. Since its creation 20 years ago, McGovern-Dole has provided 5 billion school meals. It has also enabled communities to implement programs that improve nutrition and maternal health in the critical 1,000 days between pregnancy and a child’s second birthday. 

School meals promote education because they encourage families to keep their children, girls and boys alike, in school. They help to boost literacy rates in countries such as Burundi, Cambodia, the Gambia, Lesotho, Madagascar, Mauritania, Tanzania, and Timor-Leste. 

Bread is a faith-based organization focused on promoting human flourishing and dignity by addressing hunger and its root causes, and grassroots leaders have been the backbone of our work for the nearly 50 years of our history. 

Advocates’ passion and commitment to putting their faith into action will remain crucial until Congress passes a budget for fiscal year 2024. The risk of a government shutdown remains since the current CR expires on November 17. 

We must continue to speak out and remind Congress of the global hunger crisis and its responsibility to ensure that the U.S. does its part to save lives and enable people to find ways of earning a living for their families.  

Conflict is driving hunger. Climate shocks are driving hunger as homes, crops, and livelihoods are threatened. The high cost of nutritious food is driving hunger. The 2023 State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World (SOFI) report tells us that 783 million people faced hunger in 2022. In addition, 148 million children suffered from stunted growth and development due to a chronic lack of essential nutrients, and 45 million children suffered from wasting, the most severe and life-threatening form of malnutrition. 

By working in good faith and in a bipartisan way, lawmakers can make sure that U.S. politics no longer serves as another driver of hunger. Congress can meet its obligations by passing an annual budget that provides sufficient resources for the lifesaving global food assistance and nutrition programs our country already has in place. 

Abiola Afolayan is co-director, Policy and Research Institute, with Bread for the World.

The post Ending Hunger Calls for Bipartisan Cooperation in Congress appeared first on Bread for the World.

The proof is apparent via some depressing news, unfortunately. In 2022, the Census report shows, the child poverty rate more than doubled, rising to 12.4 percent, compared to 5.2 percent in 2021. The increase in child poverty was caused mostly by the expiration of improvements to the Child Tax Credit made in 2021 in the American Rescue Plan. As many of our supporters know Bread for the World has been a persistent advocate for these improvements.

Between July and December of 2021, the Child Tax Credit increased from a maximum of $2,000 per child to $3,600 for children under age six, and to $3,000 for children between ages six and 17. Moreover, the credit was restructured to be delivered in monthly installments, rather than a lump sum payment during tax season: $300 per month to the families with children under age 6 and $250 to those with children 6 to 17. Hard to overstate this improvement to what resulted in similar dramatic progress against child hunger in 2021. 

But the most important improvement of all was that the credit was made refundable, allowing it to become available to millions of families who previously earned too little income to qualify. It meant some 18 million children were newly eligible for the full tax credit, including 40 percent of all Black and Latino children, nearly half of all children in single-parent households, and more than one-third of rural children.

As a result of these changes, the Child Tax Credit became a form of universal basic income. You can call it anything you want; universal basic income is simply a recurrent payment—often delivered monthly—and is available to all members of a community with no work requirements or other conditions imposed on the recipients. That’s worth noting because work requirements became the main sticking point in negotiations to extend the improvements to Child Tax Credit beyond 2021.

Hence, it was a short-lived experiment, lasting only six months during the second half of 2021, but it led to an unprecedented reduction in child poverty and child hunger. And then it ended. What members of Congress giveth in 2021, they voted to taketh away in 2022—not all of them, but a majority was all it took to undo. Those 18 million children who benefited in 2021 were no longer eligible for the full tax credit in 2022. 

The postmortems following release of the report emphasized how policies can make a difference in achieving progress against poverty and other hardships. In an op-ed published by Religion News Service, David Beckmann, Bread for the World’s president emeritus, lays this out as well as anybody has. 

Another outcome revealed by the Census report also merits attention. It used to seem axiomatic to call “a job” the best anti-poverty program. (We don’t want to understate the value of steady employment. Earnings make up most of household resources, including for families that are in poverty). Jobs remain necessary to escaping poverty, but they clearly are not always sufficient—and haven’t been for some time. No year tests that theory better than 2022, when the unemployment rate was near historically low levels. Yes, inflation took a bite out of paychecks, but wages were rising for workers at the bottom of the income ladder faster than for workers on rungs higher up. 

It is sad that policymakers for whom work requirements dominate their thinking about addressing child poverty won’t do more to improve jobs for parents who clearly want to provide for their kids. Here are a few examples of policy inaction: The federal minimum wage hasn’t received a raise since 2009, childcare policy lags behind other wealthy countries, and there remains no federal law guaranteeing a right to paid family and medical leave. There are many others, but those alone are enough for an evidence-based indictment of inaction.

So then, it’s not just that policies matter in addressing child poverty. It’s a very particular policy: a form of universal basic income delivered through the Child Tax Credit. 

Public outrage over harmful government actions has a fleeting half-life. The best time to make an issue of the harm done to children by reversing improvements made to the Child Tax Credit is now.

Todd Post is senior domestic policy advisor, Policy and Research Institute, with Bread for the World.

The post The Best Anti-Poverty Program: Give Them Money appeared first on Bread for the World.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) began to measure food security in 1996. Before that, anti-hunger advocates had only a rough proxy—data on poverty from the U.S. Census Bureau. In most years, hunger rates do track closely with poverty rates, but there are times when they do not. 

Access to data on food security has been an improvement since it includes information at the household level about people’s access to food each month.   

In 2022, USDA announced that it would begin to track nutrition security alongside food security. What is nutrition security, and how does it differ from food security? 

Food security itself is a formal term for what most people might call having enough money for food or not going hungry. By definition, all members of a food secure household, at all times, have enough food for an active, healthy life. This is not just any food—it is nutritionally adequate food that is safe to eat and has been obtained in a socially acceptable way.

 Nutrition security includes the elements of food security plus access to foods that prevent disease and, if needed, treat disease. Disease associated with poor dietary quality—including high blood pressure, diabetes, and heart disease—is the leading cause of premature death in the United States. Altogether, disease associated with poor diet consumes almost 20 percent of all healthcare spending.

The announcement that USDA is beginning to track nutrition security alongside food security has been welcomed by many healthcare professionals, especially those who treat the consequences of poor diets. Much of the damage to human health of a poor diet is caused by lack of access to foods that promote good health, often due to lack of resources. Diet-related diseases are more prevalent in low-income communities. There are fewer healthy food choices, and to stretch every food dollar as far as possible, families often resort to purchasing less healthy or unhealthy foods.

While USDA had previously paid some attention to nutrition security, the 2022 announcement signaled its intention to update the way it evaluates nutrition programs’ effectiveness. 

The largest of these programs is the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, better known as SNAP. 

In July, Sen. Corey Booker (D-NJ) and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) introduced the SNAP Nutrition Security Act of 2023, which calls for:

• Measuring and reporting annually on nutrition security and diet quality, as USDA currently does for food security. 
• Adding reporting on food and nutrition security to annual state SNAP-Ed reports. 
• Collecting and reporting every four years on national and state SNAP sales data. Data will be collected in the aggregate and the privacy of SNAP shoppers and retailers will be protected.
• Adding improving nutrition security and diet quality to Congress’s declaration of policy, or congressional rationale, for SNAP.

The bill is not universally popular among anti-hunger advocates. The main concern is that it could open the door to limiting the food choices of SNAP participants. SNAP, unlike other federal nutrition programs, does not prohibit the purchase of ultra-processed foods or foods with no nutritional value. 

Some advocates, mindful of the need to protect the freedom of SNAP participants to make their own food purchase decisions just like everyone else, argue that tracking nutritional security could help make the case for restrictions. The bill does not contain proposed restrictions on purchases, nor does it state that restricting SNAP-approved foods is a goal. But uncertainty about policymakers’ intentions could be a valid concern. 

Yet everyone, especially SNAP participants, could potentially benefit from insights into nutrition security. For example, the additional knowledge could help improve the U.S. food system. The information may not come as welcome news to everyone, but diet-related disease is a significant problem leading people to premature death, and information is needed to understand and solve it. 

This article began by pointing out that the United States did not measure food security until 1996. Data on poverty was an imprecise proxy. There is no proxy at all for nutrition security, so collecting more information is an important step toward developing new strategies to protect our population’s health.  

Todd Post is senior domestic policy advisor, Policy and Research Institute, with Bread for the World.

The post A Step Forward on Nutrition Security appeared first on Bread for the World.

Empezando el 15 de septiembre hasta el 15 de octubre se celebra en los Estados Unidos el Mes de la Herencia Hispana y Pan para el Mundo dedica esta serie de oraciones para tener en nuestros corazones y honrar a la comunidad hispana/latina en los Estados Unidos y las Américas. Como somos llamados a ser el cuerpo de Cristo, honrémonos unos a otros como honramos a Cristo – Dios con nosotros. 

En 2022, había 63.7 millones de hispanos viviendo en los Estados Unidos y durante la última década los latinos representaron más de la mitad de todo el crecimiento de la población en los EE.UU. Se calcula que la producción económica total de los hispanoamericanos supera con creces los 2 billones (trillion) de dólares La mayoría de los latinos de EE.UU. viven en cinco estados: California, Texas, Florida, Nueva York y Arizona, pero en todo el mundo los latinos están creciendo y provocando cambios para bien.

Los latinos aportan una gran diversidad junto con profundas raíces en las comunidades indígenas y africanas. Dios nos ha bendecido verdaderamente para que, en nuestra diversidad, mostremos el amor extravagante de Dios por todas las personas.

Oremos:

Santo Dios, tú hiciste todo lo que es y siempre será,

Y por tu Amor nos has conectado a cada uno de nosotros. 

Oramos ahora por tus hijos hispanos/latinos(a).

Oramos por las diversas lenguas, culturas y contribuciones de los hispanoamericanos.

Oh Dios, bendice a tu diversa familia humana

y fortalécenos para que caminemos juntos en tu gracia.

Toda la Gloria y el Honor son tuyos Dios.

Amén

Para unirse a Pan para el Mundo en la oración, suscríbase a Oraciones para acabar con el hambre o visite Bread.org.

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The independence days for Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua are held on September 15. Mexico and Chile celebrate their independence on September 16 and September 18. October 12, known as Indigenous Peoples’ Day for many nations, happens during this time. Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands are also related territories of the United States that may think about independence during this time. 

But what may be even less well known is the Pan African relatedness with this month. All of these places have significant roots, legacies, and identities with Pan African peoples. A 2015 Pew Research Center survey of Latino adults shows, for example, that one-quarter of all U.S. Latinos self-identify as Afro-Latino, Afro-Caribbean, or otherwise of African descent with roots in Latin America. 

At the recent annual Bread Advocacy Summit—and the related Latino/a Convening and Pan African Consultation—a joint conversation between these lineages found opportunity to celebrate their mutual focuses. Both events identified Board members associated with these populations and all participants benefitted from their wisdom and leadership regarding Bread for the World’s legislative agenda. More specifically, they shared insight about how the 2023 Farm Bill can support farming and farmers in these communities. 

They shared how they were embracing Bread’s call for a farm bill that is equitable and sustainable and that offers good nutrition for everyone. In addition to other aspects of this bill, they agreed that Congress should support S. 949/HR 253, the Puerto Rico Nutrition Assistance Fairness Act, which would transition Puerto Rico from NAP (Nutritional Assistance Program) to SNAP (the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program). 

Why does this matter? NAP to SNAP contributes to a more equitable 2023 Farm Bill. SNAP and NAP were both created to address hunger and nutrition by providing monthly nutrition aid to beneficiaries, but Puerto Rico’s NAP is a restrictive, capped block grant which cannot change regardless of the need in the island. For Puerto Rico to be included in SNAP, the 2023 Farm Bill must include language authorizing participation in the program.

SNAP would bring greater nutritional equity to Puerto Rico, would bring immediate nutrition aid in times of disaster, and would provide economic benefits to help lift families, the elderly, and children out of poverty. Now is the time to emphasize the urgency of this transition from NAP to SNAP, as we advocate for the five-year reauthorization of the farm bill. 

Please visit the Bread website to learn more and to learn how to advocate on this issue.  

Angelique Walker-Smith is senior associate for Pan African and Orthodox Church engagement at Bread for the World.

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This month, we think back to the March on Washington, which occurred 60 years ago this August, along with some other significant Pan African moments from 1963. Tradition suggests that the diamond is the symbol for 60^th anniversaries, which causes us to reflect on the Greek root of diamond—adamas, meaning unconquerable and enduring. 

The epigraph from Deuteronomy suggests that remembrances of generations past can provide lessons for our todays and tomorrows about being unconquerable and enduring. 

We draw one such lesson from the story of Moses and the deliverance of the Israelite people from bondage. It is a story about newfound freedom and discovering a new way to live. This was not an easy task. This was illustrated when they were hungry in the wilderness after their release: 

In the desert the whole community grumbled against Moses and Aaron. The Israelites said to them, “If only we had died by the LORD’s hand in Egypt!” (Exodus 16:2-3)

And God heard their plea and provided food for the people to eat. 

This biblical text of God’s faithfulness to the Israelite people comes to mind during this month of Black August. This is a time for recognizing the enduring faithfulness of Pan African peoples in their resilient advocacy.  

This year’s Black August includes a remembrance of the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech at the March on Washington. A commemorative event will take place at the Lincoln Memorial on August 26. 

August 31 will be another date to commemorate, as it marks the third International Day of People of African Descent. That date will be complemented with recommendations from the United Nations 2^nd Permanent Forum of People of African Descent. 

On August 29 Bread will have a hybrid event to celebrate and commemorate both of these significant dates.

We will also be thinking about two 60^th anniversaries from earlier this year. May 25, 1963, marked the founding of the Organization of African Unity, now called the African Union. And the All Africa Conference of Churches held its first assembly on April 20, 1963 in Kampala, Uganda. 

Bread for the World has partnered with these Pan African partners and continues to do so with its mission and vision to end hunger and to address the wealth and income racial equity gap. 

In this moment, Bread believes the reauthorization of the farm bill is a policy that addresses equity, nutrition, and sustainable life—vital issues for Black August.

Pan African communities can and will continue to speak out, advocate, and show their historic resilience and resolve to address these issues from a faith perspective. Bread celebrates Pan African leadership as we partner to end hunger. 

Please visit www.bread.org/offering-letters/ to learn more about the farm bill and to advocate for it. 

Angelique Walker-Smith is senior associate for Pan African and Orthodox Church engagement at Bread for the World.

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Bread wasted no time in endorsing the farm bill priorities of the Zero Food Waste Coalition, which align with our own. Bread members identified food waste as an important issue in listening sessions held before Bread’s farm bill platform was drafted, and reducing food waste is a key component of the platform.

Nearly 40 percent of the food produced in the United States goes to waste. “So much of the fresh produce grown on America’s farms never make it to market, often due to small blemishes that don’t diminish its nutritional content one bit,” said Reverend Eugene Cho, President/CEO of Bread for the World, in his endorsement of the coalition’s priorities. “That’s why Bread endorses the Zero Food Waste Coalition’s call for the 2023 farm bill to support food recovery organizations.”

The Zero Food Waste Coalition is led by the Food Law and Policy Clinic at Harvard; two national environmental advocacy organizations, the Natural Resources Defense Council and World Wildlife Fund; and ReFED, the go-to source for data on food waste and evidence-based ways to reduce it. 

In addition to supporting food recovery, the coalition’s main priorities for the farm bill include:

• Creating a food loss and waste reduction office within the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and authorizing it to offer grants for projects to reduce food waste.
• Increasing funding for planning and infrastructure to reduce food waste and enhance food recovery.
• Funding research in food waste prevention, upcycling, and recycling solutions.
• Standardizing and clarifying date labels.

The 2018 farm bill authorized one staff position to coordinate activities at USDA aimed at reducing food waste, supporting federal efforts to fulfill the pledge, made in 2015, to cut food waste in half by 2030. According to ReFED’s latest analysis, there has been little progress toward this goal. Cutting food waste in half will take more than one staff member working to coordinate USDA efforts. At a minimum, it calls for a coordinated federal plan and activities as well as staff who can support the work of state and local governments, Tribal governments, nonprofits, and the private sector.

Much can be done to improve the infrastructure necessary to reduce food waste, and the country already has a solid network of people trained in equipping others to implement cost-effective solutions. One of many examples is a program known as SNAP-ed that is offered to people who participate in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). SNAP-ed demonstrates potential ways of stretching grocery budgets to enable the purchase of more healthy foods. SNAP-ed is not currently required to teach strategies for avoiding food loss and waste, but since both SNAP and SNAP-ed are part of the farm bill, it would be straightforward to change the rules.

Most food waste in the United States occurs on the consumer end. The average U.S. household wastes more than $1,800 worth of food every year. One reason is confusion about “best by,” “use by,” and other dates on food labels—confusion that is completely understandable since the labels are not standardized. Requiring food labels to include clearer information would help people use more of the food they have purchased.  

Households that participate in SNAP have limited grocery budgets and need to consume the healthy food they have purchased. The “average” $1,800 in food waste would be months of SNAP benefits for most families. SNAP-ed could provide information on food labels that people can put to use right away.

We recently wrote about the significant potential to mitigate climate change by reducing food loss and waste. Climate change poses one of the gravest threats to ending global hunger, so reducing food waste is important to our advocacy to end global and U.S. hunger. Although the United States is the cause of more food waste than nearly any other country, cutting food waste in half is an achievable goal, and the Zero Food Waste Coalition’s priorities should be included in the farm bill.  

Todd Post is senior domestic policy advisor, Policy and Research Institute, with Bread for the World.

The post Making Progress on Food Waste Through the Farm Bill appeared first on Bread for the World.

“Bread for the World is grateful White House and congressional negotiators were able to come to a debt ceiling agreement that will enable the federal government to pay its bills. Preventing a default on our federal debt is vital to preventing a hunger crisis. One in four Americans participates in federal nutrition programs such as SNAP and WIC – those programs would come to a standstill if the U.S. were to default. The Social Security checks for 67 million seniors and people with disabilities would be delayed or simply not issued.

“However, we are deeply disappointed the agreement expands SNAP requirements to older Americans aged 50 to 54 who do not have children living at home. Close to 750,000 people will be impacted by the expanded work requirements. Many people in this group are unable to secure employment due to age discrimination, physical ailments, and the need to care for family members. Others will lose SNAP benefits because of administrative and reporting error issues.

“While we support the dignity of work, studies show that work requirements do not increase employment rates or income and simply result in the loss of food assistance for the people who need it most. Bread is thankful that the debt agreement now exempts veterans, people experiencing homelessness, and former foster youth from these requirements.

“Bread will continue our bipartisan efforts for people who struggle with hunger – both in the U.S. and abroad. We look forward to working with Congress on the farm bill negotiations to ensure everyone experiencing hunger has access to the food and nutrition they need to lead healthy and productive lives.”

Bread for the World is a Christian advocacy organization urging U.S. decision makers to do all they can to pursue a world without hunger

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Ezekiel 47:1-2 and 11-12, was the scriptural basis for Dr. Brown’s message that healing waters flowing from our sanctuaries can also replenish our communities with safe water and nutritious food. He linked this vision to equitable contributions of independent Black farmers in partnership with Black churches.

This vision of healing for people of African descent and of a more equitable life for Black farmers was inherent to the Emancipation Proclamation, which was not delivered to some enslaved people of African descent until 1865—despite being issued in 1863. We honor that late message of freedom on June 19, the Juneteenth holiday. The Emancipation Proclamation legally liberated people of African descent from enslavement, including forced farm labor on lands settled and owned by white planters. But despite the merited celebration at the passage and implementation of the Emancipation Proclamation—with military protections and a short-lived Reconstruction period—formerly enslaved people of African descent saw the limitations of this law as early as 1868.

In 1868 a 14^th Amendment became necessary to further ensure the citizenship of people of African descent—a law that would support life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness under “the equal protection of the laws.” But this still was not enough. In 1869 the 15^th Amendment was passed and guaranteed men of African descent (though not women) the right to vote. 

Together, these Constitutional amendments were acts of reparatory justice that sought to move the United States away from the gross injustice of enslaving people of African descent. In so doing, these laws marked not just a moment of reparatory justice but the beginning of a reparatory journey by the U.S. government. Since then, the nation has made gradual steps towards reparatory justice, impelled by constant demands for this by people of African descent and their allies. But much more still needs to be done, given the significant racialized disparity of generational wealth, the income gap, and the low ownership of lands by Black farmers. 

Bread celebrates Juneteenth, but we also recognize the continued need for healing—not only in communities of African descent in the U.S. but within all of us because of these historic and present-day inequities. Bread believes that advocating for the farm bill is one of the ways we support the legacy and spirit of Juneteenth and the movement for reparatory food justice. You are invited to be a part of this. Please go here to learn more about advocating for the farm bill.

Angelique Walker-Smith is senior associate for Pan African and Orthodox Church engagement at Bread for the World.

The post Juneteenth: An Invitation to Reparatory Food Justice appeared first on Bread for the World.

The event, “Keeping the Faith: Bipartisan Commitment for a 2023 Farm Bill,” featured Senators Debbie Stabenow (D-MI) and John Boozman (R-AR), the Chairwoman and Ranking Member of the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry. 

In welcoming remarks, Bread president and CEO Rev. Eugene Cho proclaimed, “it is an honor to be among this group of people who all share a similar passion – ensuring America’s food and farm policies help everyone in our country thrive, especially people who are experiencing hunger.” 

Rev. Cho continued, “We can acknowledge the intense polarization of our times, and at the same time acknowledge that this event and every leader here are hopeful reminders that we can work together toward the common good.”   

More than 200 faith leaders, advocates, and community members attended, as did Senate Agriculture Committee member Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH).

Chairwoman Stabenow and Ranking Member Boozman, and Senate Agriculture Committee member Senator Mike Braun (R-IN), gave remarks about their intent and hope for a bipartisan farm bill and shared their personal connections to the legislation.

Following the event, Ranking Member Boozman shared, “The faith community’s advocacy for a bipartisan approach to the farm bill is so important as we move forward in the process. As I noted in my remarks, the world needs givers. The room was full of givers that night and it was very inspirational to be surrounded by them. I count on their continued engagement as we all work together to get the farm bill across the finish line.” 

In addition to Sens. Stabenow, Boozman, and Braun, other speakers included U.S. Senate Chaplain Barry C. Black, who led the opening prayer; Bishop Elizabeth Eaton, presiding bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA); Bishop James B. Walker, a Bread board member and presiding bishop of the Seventh Episcopal District of the Christian Methodist Episcopal (CME) Church; Rev. David Beckmann, Bread president emeritus and Circle of Protection co-chair; and, Min. Heather Taylor, managing director of Bread.  

Bread for the World is honored to have co-hosted the event with The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, the Christian Methodist Episcopal Church, the National Association of Evangelicals, Catholic Charities USA, Latino Christian National Network, Friends Committee on National Legislation, Sojourners, and the Circle of Protection.

For more information about the farm bill and how you can help, visit Bread’s Offering of Letters webpage at bread.org/ol.  

The post Keeping the Faith: Bipartisan Commitment for a 2023 Farm Bill appeared first on Bread for the World.

“Bread for the World reiterates our call for the White House and congressional leaders to come to a bipartisan debt ceiling agreement that does not expand work requirements for SNAP or cut funding for domestic and international nutrition assistance programs.

“Removing people from nutrition programs at a time when food prices in the U.S. remain high and food banks are stretched to their limits would only add to the hardship those families and individuals face.

“Furthermore, cutting funding for international food and nutrition programs while the world is in the midst of a food crisis – with up to 350 million people facing hunger globally – would certainly result in more people succumbing to malnutrition and death.”

“While we believe preventing a default on our federal debt is vital, it should not come at the expense of those who have the least resources.

“’He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God.’ (Micah 6:8 NRSV)”

Bread for the World is a Christian advocacy organization urging U.S. decision makers
to do all they can to pursue a world without hunger

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The bill would also rescind the enhanced fruit and vegetable benefit (known as the “benefit bump”), cutting the benefit by 62 percent. The benefit bump provides funds to enable WIC participants to purchase more fruits and vegetables. If the legislation is passed, children will receive just $11 a month toward the purchase of nutritious fruits and vegetables, compared to the $25 they currently receive.

Most children in the U.S. do not eat the recommended daily amount of fresh fruits and vegetables. Yet, since 2021, when the benefit bump was enacted, fruit and vegetable purchases have tripled among WIC participants.

The statement can be attributed to Rev. Eugene Cho, president and CEO of Bread for the World:

“Bread for the World is concerned by legislation recently passed by the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Agriculture which would rescind the enhanced fruit and vegetable ‘benefit bump,’ making it more difficult for children, and pregnant and breastfeeding women, to access nutritious fruits and vegetables.

“Dramatically cutting funding for a program that has helped so many low-income women and young children access the nutrition they need to lead healthy and productive lives will likely result in higher health care and social costs down the road.

“The agriculture appropriations bill would also freeze WIC funding at 2023 levels and rescind $500 million in unused funds – even as more women and children are expected to enroll in the program.  

“These proposed cuts would unduly impact the health and well-being of the nearly five million women and children enrolled in WIC. We urge lawmakers to oppose this shortsighted legislation.”

Bread for the World is a Christian advocacy organization urging U.S. decision makers to do all they can to pursue a world without hunger

The post Bread Concerned by House WIC Nutrition Benefit Cuts appeared first on Bread for the World.

“Bread for the World is opposed to any proposal in the ongoing debt ceiling negotiations that would expand work requirements for SNAP or make policy changes to other federal nutrition programs with the intended effect of removing people from these programs.”

Proposals being considered would increase the age people are required to work to receive SNAP benefits to 55 and tighten work requirements for families receiving TANF. Studies show that work requirements do not increase employment rates or income, and taking away nutrition assistance makes it harder for people to secure employment.

“While we support the dignity of work, removing individuals and families from nutrition programs at a time when food prices in the U.S. remain at an all-time high and food banks and pantries are struggling to keep up with record demand, including demand from some working adults, would only serve to increase hunger and hardship.  

“Bread believes that preventing a default on our federal debt is vital to preventing a hunger crisis. One in four Americans participates in a federal nutrition program such as SNAP, WIC, or school meals – those benefits would come to an end if the U.S. were to default. The Social Security checks for 67 million seniors and people with disabilities would be delayed or simply not issued.

“We urge the White House and Congress to come to a bipartisan debt ceiling agreement that does not expand work requirements for SNAP and make adverse changes to other nutrition assistance programs.

“’If there is among you anyone in need, a member of your community in any of your towns within the land that the Lord your God is giving you, do not be hard-hearted or tight-fisted toward your needy neighbor.’ Deuteronomy 15:7 (NRSVUE).”

Bread for the World is a Christian advocacy organization urging U.S. decision makers to do all they can to pursue a world without hunger

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The U.S. farm bill, which is reauthorized every five years, plays an influential role in federal food and agricultural policy. Bread for the World members are working to secure improvements as Congress drafts the 2023 farm bill. The current farm bill expires September 30, 2023.

Increasing access to healthy food is key to ending hunger and poor nutrition. One way to do this in the farm bill is to strengthen the Gus Schumacher Nutrition Incentive Program (GusNIP).

Many people are familiar with SNAP, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. As the country’s first line of defense against hunger, SNAP helps an average of more than 40 million Americans put food on the table each month. GusNIP’s Nutrition Incentive Grants enable people who participate in SNAP to receive an additional monthly benefit amount specifically to buy fruits and vegetables. 

Bread advocates for the elimination of the GusNIP match requirement, under which recipients of GusNIP Nutrition Incentive Grants must raise 50 percent of program costs themselves. The match requirement means that grantees often cannot afford to expand and provide equitable access to fruits and vegetables to people in rural areas.  

In Alabama, Auburn University’s Hunger Solutions Institute (HSI) has a three-year GusNIP Nutrition Incentive Grant. HSI is working to scale up its program to include more small independent grocers in rural areas. Dr. Kara Newby, HSI’s Outreach Project Administrator, explained, “Our farmers’ markets tend to be in, for the most part, large cities or suburbs, so adding grocers is really important, especially smaller rural grocers.” 

HSI needs more funding to expand and reach more people. A larger GusNIP grant would prompt a larger match requirement, however, and there is no more room in the organization’s budget to meet the match. Newby said, “The biggest limiting factor for us is the match [requirement]… We’ve got people wanting to join our program, but we just don’t have any more money.” 

HSI uses its GusNIP grant to run Double Up Food Bucks (DUFB) Alabama, which operates in seven farmers markets and three grocery stores statewide. SNAP participants who are customers receive vouchers or tokens for up to $10 in “double-up food bucks,” which can be used to purchase fresh fruits and vegetables. 

Both farmers markets and grocery stores are important to GusNIP’s efforts to improve people’s access to fresh fruits and vegetables. Alexis Clark, the City Venues Operations Manager for the city of Tuscaloosa, explained that GusNIP funds, made available through the DUFB program, attract more SNAP participants to the Tuscaloosa River Market, and also benefit farmers. “We have some people who come back every week and … we have others who learn about it for the first time and are just tickled,” she said. For example, once the DUFB program became involved, Hale Farms’ revenue from SNAP benefits rose from $500 annually to about $1,700. 

But SNAP participants spend a large proportion of their grocery money at grocery stores. Although a lower percentage of the extra money for nutritious foods is redeemed at grocery stores than at farmers markets, expanding GusNIP’s nutrition incentives to additional grocery stores is more expensive than adding more farmers markets. When money ran out before the end of the grant year, the program was able to serve fewer people overall, and it halted expanding into grocery stores for a time. 

The match requirement adds to budget uncertainties for businesses like the Tuscaloosa River Market. Finances, and therefore services, are not always stable from year to year. In its first year, the market ran out of funds provided through GusNIP before it was eligible to request more. Clark describes the impact: “We had to go about a month and a half without any funds and our poor customers were so sad.”

Bread has received similar feedback from other GusNIP grantees, including Fresh Access Bucks in Florida, Produce Perks in Ohio, and DUFB Heartland in Missouri and Kansas. We suspect that many others agree. 

HSI has decided that, in addition to applying for another GusNIP grant, it will also apply for funds from the state of Alabama. This will hopefully help ensure that people have year-round access to the nutrients they need.

Allison Bunyan is an Emerson Hunger Fellow, Policy and Research Institute, at Bread for the World.  

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At this writing, it is unclear what those cuts would be. But it would be impossible to reduce the national debt significantly without deep cuts to programs for lower-income Americans. President Biden opposes such cuts. 

Exceeding the authorized debt limit would mean that the U.S. government has effectively run out of money. The Congressional Budget Office expects this to happen in June or July if Congress does not raise the debt ceiling.

Nearly everyone would be affected by default on the debt. It would immediately cause a deep recession. Moody’s Analytics, respected worldwide for its financial risk analysis, modeled a default scenario in March 2023. Its results: loss of an estimated 7 million jobs and $10 trillion in household wealth.  

The likelihood of a national hunger crisis and other consequences for ordinary Americans has received far less attention. Here, I’ll describe the implications of default for people who are at risk of food insecurity.  

One in four Americans participates in a federal nutrition program. Groups of people immediately cut off from benefits would include:

• millions of children who receive free school meals 
• half of all babies born in this country, who benefit from the Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) program, along with their mothers and siblings younger than 5
• participants in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP)—an average of 42 million monthly
• people turning to food banks because much of the food provided is government-funded 

Another group that would be disproportionately affected is the 67 million seniors and people with disabilities who receive Social Security. Their checks would be delayed or simply not issued. Most Social Security beneficiaries report that the benefits are at least half of their income, so even a brief delay could cause hardship. Because Black and Latino seniors live in poverty at 2.5 times the rate of whites, a far larger share of seniors of color would soon run out of grocery money. 

The list goes on: the federal workforce, the nation’s largest employer, and its retirees; many members of the military, who already have high rates of food insecurity; the people whose healthcare bills are paid by Medicare (65 million), or by Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) (more than 91 million people).

Why would members of Congress risk such economic devastation? They argue that the national debt is unsustainable, and something must be done now to reduce it. 

The total national debt – $31.5 trillion – –sounds alarming. The size of the debt has much less of a relationship to the fiscal condition of the government than one might think. As the economy grows over time, the debt will shrink as it did after World War II. Following World War II, the nation was saddled with comparable levels of debt when defined as a percentage of gross domestic product.

It is sometimes said that excessive government debt imposes an unfair burden on our children. But there is no proof of this. Conversely, we have all the evidence we need to show that severe cuts to government programs that pushed more children into poverty would impose a heavy burden for the rest of their lives.

Moreover, there are other strategies that could reduce the national debt and help ease concerns about it. One is very simple: investments in long-term growth of the economy are far more effective and less painful. We have the playbook, too. Investments in the nation’s infrastructure, such as the interstate highway system that were driven by President Eisenhower, a Republican, and embraced by both parties.  President Biden has launched a new era of infrastructure investment, with bipartisan support, that will help spur economic growth. We should avoid drastic austerity measures until these investments have had time to begin paying off.  

Finally, it’s important to understand how the country came to have more than $31 trillion in debt. Much of the debt accrued since 2000 is from one of two things: spending to recover from the Great Recession of 2009-2011 and the COVID-19 pandemic; and tax cuts enacted by Congress. The convergence of all these factors is rare.

The crux of the matter is that neither “option”—default on the debt or deep cuts to essential programs—would help solve a problem that currently faces the United States. 

Reducing the national debt should not take priority over promoting inclusive economic growth and funding nutrition programs and other essential services. It is not necessary to cause a hunger crisis in response to the debt.

Todd Post is senior domestic policy advisor, Policy and Research Institute, with Bread for the World.

The post To Avoid a U.S. Hunger Crisis, Raise the Debt Ceiling appeared first on Bread for the World.

Today, more than 40 million Americans struggle to put food on the table. And Black households in the U.S. experience food insecurity at three times the rate of white households. 

King’s statements are part of a chorus of leaders and grassroots activists that have spoken up about hunger and poverty throughout time. From Marian Wright Edelman’s efforts to reduce child poverty to Ertharin Cousin’s work in the World Food Programme, there are many who have made strides to help end hunger.

Bread for the World continues to build upon those efforts. Moved by faith and God’s redemptive love, our organization has long advocated for Black freedom from hunger. We join the chorus of Black voices to help address racial inequities, food insecurity, and issues caused by climate change in Black communities in the U.S., Africa, and other parts of the world.  

In acting out our mission, we underscore the need for effective food systems to address disproportionate hunger rates among Black populations. In this article, we will look at the state of hunger among Black populations, the role climate change plays, and how effective food systems can help reduce hunger. 

The State of Hunger in Black Communities

What is the hunger rate among Black populations? 

Hunger Rates in the United States

Black communities consistently face hunger at disproportionate rates. This is often due to historical discrimination, along with social, economic, and environmental challenges. 

According to the U.S.  Department of Agriculture, nearly 20 percent of Black households in the U.S. experienced food insecurity in 2021 — over three times the rate of white households. 

Black children are also more likely to experience hunger than other children: While more than 1 in 5 U.S. children are at risk of hunger, the rate is 1 in 3 among Black children. In 2021, Black children were almost three times as likely to face hunger as white children, and 22 percent of Black children lived in food-insecure households.

Moreover, 2020 Census data shows the U.S. has an overall poverty rate of 11.4 percent, but within the Black community, the poverty rate is 19.5 percent. In other words, economic disparities are significantly high within Black communities and linked to food insecurity. It can be difficult to budget for enough nutritious food when living from paycheck to paycheck or underemployed.

Bread for the World’s 2023 state fact sheets give a local-level snapshot of poverty and hunger in the United States, and have highlighted once again that food insecurity exists throughout the country. What’s more, Feeding America’s most recent Map the Meal Gap research study included rates for several racial and ethnic groups. It found that disparities can vary significantly by population and place; and that while nearly 40 percent of the food insecure population in the U.S. is white, Black individuals are more likely to live in food insecure households.

Key takeaways:

• Black Americans overall are experiencing hunger at disproportionate rates.
• Black children in the U.S. are more likely to experience hunger than children of other backgrounds.
• Economic disparities are a major cause of food insecurity among the Black populations in the U.S.

Global Hunger Rates

Globally, more than one-third of people living with hunger live in Africa. The region has the highest prevalence of undernourishment, which is 21 percent of the continent’s population — more than double the rate in all other regions of the world. The World Economic Forum reports that “the main drivers of hunger [in Africa] include conflicts, climate change, and the COVID-19 pandemic.”

The situation in Somalia is particularly concerning, where near-famine levels of hunger are threatening millions. The country’s last famine, in 2011, led to the deaths of 260 million people, half of whom were children under 5. 

People in Somalia have endured decades of political instability and violence due to armed conflict, leading to alarming levels of life-threatening hunger and malnutrition. The problem has been exacerbated in recent years by climate changes that have caused damage to the local environment and economy.

Hunger rates in several other African countries are considered to be at an emergency level by the World Food Programme, including in Burkina Faso, Madagascar, Mali, Nigeria, Niger, South Sudan, Ethiopia, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Conflicts, climate change, and economic inequality have slowed progress on reducing hunger in these nations. For example, more frequent severe weather and droughts have hurt farmers’ ability to produce enough food.

Additionally, many people experiencing poverty and hunger in sub-Saharan Africa live in rural areas and make their livelihoods off the land. Decades of underdevelopment and underinvestment in agricultural infrastructure have impeded their farming capabilities as well.   

Key takeaways:

• People throughout Africa are experiencing hunger at disproportionate rates. 
• The main drivers of hunger in Africa include conflicts, climate change, and the COVID-19 pandemic.
• Near-famine levels of hunger are threatening millions in Somalia; 
• Hunger rates in several other African countries are considered at an emergency level, including in Burkina Faso, Madagascar, Mali, Nigeria, Niger, South Sudan, and Ethiopia 

The Impact of Climate Change

What impact does climate change have on Black communities?

Climate change is the greatest environmental challenge the world has ever faced. It is damaging crops, threatening water security and safety, and disrupting access to food for millions. This is especially true for Black communities and other populations that are disproportionately impacted by hunger. 

Impact of Climate Change in Africa

The African continent is at an exceptionally high risk of the consequences of climate change, despite only producing about 3.8 percent of annual global CO2 emissions. And as soon as the 2030s, climates and weather trends in many African countries are expected to be impacted. 

The negative results of climate change are already being felt by farmers who grow food in Kenya and across the continent. Climate-related disasters, like flooding and drought, have devastated food supplies and critical infrastructure. This has repeatedly caused disastrous effects on the most vulnerable communities.

Recognizing the need to address climate change and its impact on people experiencing hunger in Africa and worldwide, Bread for the World hosted a Convocation on Climate Change and Hunger in Nairobi, Kenya, in October 2022.  

The two-day event was organized ahead of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP27). We brought together close to 70 Christian faith leaders from Africa, Europe, and the U.S. to discuss the ways climate change is exacerbating global hunger and to sign a faith statement outlining our commitment to take action.

Strikingly, in Kenya alone, 3.5 million people need humanitarian assistance, and 360,000 Kenyans are on the verge of famine. In the nation’s largest county, Marsabit, “20 percent of the population is suffering from life-threatening hunger and malnutrition.” The Red Cross estimated in 2022 that around 755,000 Kenyan children under age 5 are acutely malnourished.

Still, there is progress being made and ample opportunity for more positive change. Smallholder farmers and others in Kenya are leveraging their resources to reduce the impact of climate change, strengthen local infrastructure, and lower national hunger rates. We can all play a role by calling on the U.S. government to assist such efforts in Kenya and other African nations through direct aid and support. 

Impact of Climate Change on Black Communities in the U.S.

Climate change is negatively impacting Black communities in the United States as well. 

According to the American Public Health Association, communities of color are more likely to experience poor living conditions. This has been attributed to historical discrimination and a lack of economic resources, and often leaves Black communities vulnerable to severe weather. 

Notably, 54 percent of Black Americans live in southern states, a region of the U.S. that is expected to see increased flooding and hurricanes due to climate change. What’s more, historical housing biases have led many African Americans to live in less desirable,  flood-prone areas​ and neighborhoods with poor access to quality, affordable food — also known as “food deserts” —  in cities throughout the U.S.  

Black Americans also tend to live in neighborhoods that are close to ​power plants​, chemical ​plants, and factories. These facilities are often unprepared or ill-equipped to deal with strong storms, and storms can result in the release of toxic pollution. For example, after Hurricane Harvey – which hit parts of Texas and Louisiana in 2017 – local petrochemical plants released cancer-causing benzene at alarmingly high rates. 

Adding to such issues is a lack of economic and political leverage that could aid in building climate resilience, or the ability to prepare and respond to extreme weather events caused by climate change. 

The unfortunate consequences of this were apparent during 2005’s Hurricane Katrina: many Black residents of New Orleans were forced to leave their homes, and more than ​half of those who perished​ in the hurricane were Black.

Research has even shown that U.S. neighborhoods historically shaped by discriminatory “redlining” housing policies tend to have “lower than average vegetation cover,” thus residents are at greater risk of being exposed to extreme heat. 

All of these factors can contribute to disruptions in quality of life, access to nutritious food, and contamination of water supplies, all of which exacerbate hunger and food insecurity in Black communities across the U.S. Yet, there is hope in today’s myriad of activists and voices who are advocating for climate justice and an end to hunger and poverty. With our collective will and advocacy, we can see progress on climate issues that impact hunger rates—not only among Black communities in the U.S. but among people around the world. 

The Need for Effective Food Systems

How can effective food systems help end hunger in Black communities?

Effective food systems are key to ensuring all people have access to enough nutritious food, especially in Black communities.  

The term “food system” typically refers to the steps and methods within the food supply chain — from the production of crops, livestock, fish, and other food commodities to the transportation, processing, preparation, and retailing of foods. It also involves the policies and cultural norms around food. 

An effective approach would be to first consider how historical inequities have left Black populations and other groups disproportionately impacted by hunger. Through this lens, we can work to establish solutions for food access that meet the needs of all.

Thankfully, there is work being done toward this objective at both the grassroots and political level. Black voices have been present alongside numerous activists, churches, and organizations in efforts to end hunger, building on a legacy of advocacy among leaders of all backgrounds. And today, our collective call for effective food systems holds the promise of ensuring a brighter, more equitable future.

A Vision for Effective Food Systems

Ideal food systems would be centered on sustainability, access, nutrition, safety, affordability, and efficiency. To realize this vision, we must urge our leaders to enact legislation and policies that move our nation and the world toward sustainable and equitable food systems. We also need continued investments in agricultural research and technological innovations that can further pave the way toward this goal. 

For instance, in the U.S., soil degradation is a serious problem often caused by widespread use of artificial fertilizers. Another big issue is increasing emissions of nitrous oxide, one of the greenhouse gases that contribute to climate change. By funding research on sustainable alternatives, we can prevent further damage to fertile soil and the environment. 

Bread for the World believes that every human being is created in the image of God and has the right to proper nourishment. We have worked alongside Black farmers to transform our nation’s food systems in sustainable ways. Our organization also advocates for effective structures and policies that “affirm equality and advance equity to alleviate hunger and poverty.” 

These structures include the agriculture, activities, and resources necessary to bring food from its source to people’s tables. It is essential that systems around farming, processing, and preparing food function to protect those disproportionately impacted by hunger. As such, we’re calling for reauthorization and expansion of the Farm Bill. 

The Importance of the Farm Bill

“Farm bill” refers to legislation that impacts many parts of the U.S. food system. In fact, nearly three-fourths of the bill’s funding goes to nutrition programs, particularly the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). In 2021, SNAP helped more than 40 million Americans put food on the table.

This year, the Farm Bill is due to be reauthorized for an additional five years, and Congress has an opportunity to improve food security and agriculture across the country. 

The United Nations estimates that 2.3 billion people — over a quarter of the world’s population — are food insecure and uncertain of their next meal. Therefore agricultural research is critical to ensuring farmers have the right tools to grow nutritious food sustainably, and investment in the research title of the Farm Bill is a Bread priority.  

Bread for the World’s Advocacy

In 2022, Bread held 29 regional Farm Bill listening sessions with 730 grassroots advocates and over 100 meetings with farmers, local food system leaders, members of Historically Black Colleges and Universities, and U.S. Department of Agriculture officials.

Our goal was to build and strengthen relationships and learn what they are planning to advocate for in the 2023 Farm Bill. As a result, we stand alongside our partners in seeking to:

• improve nutrition in the U.S. by increasing access to healthy food;
• foster equity by expanding access to SNAP among marginalized populations; and
• address the threats to food security posed by climate change

This Black History Month and beyond, let’s reflect on the disproportionate rates of hunger among Black populations globally and commit to being part of positive change. 

In doing so, we can all seek to learn more about effective food systems and urge our nation’s leaders to expand and reauthorize the Farm Bill, which has significant domestic and international implications. Writing and emailing members of Congress, for example, can be an impactful way to push for solutions that help address historical racial inequities. Hunger is solvable in our time. There is hope in the present and an attainable vision for a future where all people have access to nutritious food. As individuals, congregations, and organizations, we have a special opportunity to take action toward this goal.

The post How to Address Disproportionate Hunger Rates in Black Communities appeared first on Bread for the World.

Months ago, in a piece published in Institute Insights, we called on the White House and Congress to  use the conference to think “expansively,” looking beyond just improvements to federal nutrition programs (for example, SNAP and WIC) to eradicate persistent hunger and food insecurity in the United States. We are pleased to see many of our recommendations included in the Biden-Harris administration’s national strategy.

It’s especially rewarding to see the administration set a goal to end hunger in the United States by 2030. Bread for the World has been arguing for a goal to end hunger for more than a decade. Nearly every nation around the world signed on to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in 2015, including the global goal of ending hunger by 2030. Bread was one of the few U.S. anti-hunger organizations to call for the United States to use the opportunity of the SDGs as motivation to develop and carry out a plan to end hunger in this country.

Another aspect of the plan that feels particularly rewarding is the explicit linkages made between hunger, nutrition, and health. Bread for the World’s 2016 Hunger Report, The Nourishing Effect: Ending Hunger, Improving Health, and Reducing Inequality, was a seminal contribution to a national dialogue on these linkages that was just beginning.  The role of hunger in the ever-rising costs of medical care did not receive much attention. The 2016 Hunger Report framed hunger as one of the social determinants of health, factors outside the healthcare system with major impacts on medical costs. Bread argued that healthcare professionals needed to play a much bigger role in fighting hunger. Fast forward to 2022, and it is clear from the significant presence of the healthcare sector at the conference that our argument has had some resonance.

The new national plan to end hunger includes several of Bread’s priorities for the 2023 farm bill. Bread argues that ending hunger in America is virtually impossible if people from several highly vulnerable groups remain ineligible to participate in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, better known as SNAP. These include people who were formerly incarcerated and low-income college students who do not work at least 20 hours per week. It also includes any adult who is able to work and does not have dependents but is out of work for more than three months in a three-year period. The national plan calls for ending these exclusionary laws. The 2023 farm bill reauthorization is clearly a good opportunity to do this.  Another provision that Bread supports is extending eligibility for SNAP to people in Puerto Rico and other U.S. territories, replacing the current inferior program.

Stay tuned for a complete list of Bread’s priorities for the 2023 farm bill, which will be released by the end of the year.

It was particularly exciting that in his opening remarks at the conference, President Biden mentioned the astounding progress against child hunger and poverty made possible by the temporary expansion of the Child Tax Credit (CTC) in 2021. The expansion increased the value of the tax credit significantly.  For several months, millions of previously ineligible low-income families, disproportionately Black and Latino, were eligible to receive the CTC. President Biden declared his commitment to working for a permanent expansion of the CTC.

Bread has long maintained that federal nutrition programs, while essential and helpful, are not enough to end hunger. Parents struggling to feed their kids and themselves need more income. Paying higher wages would be the best way to increase family incomes, but the federal minimum wage has been stuck at $7.25 since 2009, losing value every year to inflation.  CTC expansion is the next best option. It has been proven effective and it is immediately available. Bread members and everyone celebrating the release of the national plan to end hunger should ask their elected leaders to make permanent expansion of the CTC, as an integral component of ending U.S. hunger, an urgent priority.

Todd Post is senior domestic policy advisor with Bread for the World.

The post The United States Gets Serious About Ending Hunger appeared first on Bread for the World.

The gathering comes at a momentous time in our nation – and our world – as skyrocketing food prices, conflict, and record drought are fueling a global hunger crisis. Closer to home – too many children go to bed hungry, and people of color are disproportionately impacted by hunger due to structural inequities. 

The Biden administration wants to change that. 

At the conference, the administration unveiled a new national strategy for ending hunger in the United States by 2030. It promises to be transformative with a clarion call for everyone to get involved: federal, state, Tribal, local and territory governments; the private sector, academia; and nonprofit and community groups as well. 

And that’s where you – our Bread advocates – come in. In fact, you’ve already played a significant a role. 

For more than a year, Bread for the World and its members worked with faith leaders to convene local and regional conversations to urge the Biden administration and Congress to host this conference. Bread also sent a letter to President Biden with signatures of more than 400 local pastors and faith leaders calling for the conference.

Leading up to the conference, the White House and agencies spent months hosting listening sessions to help develop the national strategy. Bread for the World hosted a partner-led convening with 35 of its most active faith leaders to hear their input and feedback for the conference. 

Many of the policy priorities laid out in the national strategy were recommendations raised by our network of faith leaders such as expanding the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) to currently ineligible individuals, tackling food waste, and advancing economic security for families. 

And next year, you’ll be able to advocate on those issues through the reauthorization of the farm bill. 

“I’m proud that our country is taking these needed steps to generate political will grounded in lived experience and evidence-based policy,” said Bread president Rev. Eugene Cho, who attended the conference. “If we can work together, across sectors and faiths and party lines, we have a real opportunity to end hunger and improve lives and livelihoods in America.”

What’s in the National Strategy? 

The national strategy is a roadmap to meet this critical goal of ending hunger in the U.S. by 2030. It calls for actions that the federal government will take administratively, several proposals that will require congressional approval, and measures for non-government entities to take. 

First, the plan calls for advancing economic security by reinstating the fully refundable child tax credit, expanding the earned income tax credit, and raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour, which are foundational to human flourishing.

Second, it calls for investing in child nutrition programs by providing free, healthy school meals for all by 2032 and expanding the Summer Electronic Benefits Transfer program so children don’t miss meals when not in school.

Third, it calls for expanding SNAP eligibility to underserved populations such as those formerly incarcerated and individuals living in U.S. territories and providing incentives to support purchasing more fruits and vegetables for SNAP recipients through the USDA Gus Schumacher Nutrition Incentive Program. 

Lastly, it calls for supporting food sovereignty, improving access to traditional foods, and ensuring Tribal communities are equitably served in federal programs. The plan also calls for reducing barriers to food recovery.

What Is Next?

“What happens today is important, but what happens tomorrow is even more important,” said Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) at the conference. He was one of the key congressional leaders who pushed for the hunger conference.

Many of the proposed ideas laid out in the national strategy will require congressional approval. The reauthorization of the farm bill – slated for next year – is one legislative vehicle that could be used to expand SNAP eligibility to underserved populations, expand incentives for SNAP recipients, and reduce food waste. 

However, there are immediate steps the administration plans to take around reducing food waste and improving access to federal nutrition programs. For example, it will direct the Treasury Department to clarify charitable deduction rules for businesses donating leftover food – to ensure that business don’t just throw food away. 

The Agriculture Department will work with states and other federal agencies to increase awareness of the availability of federal nutrition programs and help enroll more eligible individuals. 

This is only the beginning. We’re hopeful that a lot of the actions laid out in the national strategy come to fruition – especially with your advocacy – and that an end to hunger is finally realized by 2030. 

Sergio Mata-Cisneros is an advocacy and policy analyst at Bread for the World.

The post White House Conference Calls to End U.S. Hunger by 2030 appeared first on Bread for the World.

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Although the package includes much needed support to help the millions of people impacted by the crisis in Ukraine, general humanitarian assistance funding was cut, and most other global poverty focused development and humanitarian programs saw little to no funding increases.

“While we appreciate the funding for Ukraine, the small increase in funding for foreign assistance falls short of what is needed to address the humanitarian and hunger crises in other parts of the world including Afghanistan, Yemen, Tigray in Ethiopia, and Myanmar, among others,” said Rev. Eugene Cho, president and CEO of Bread for the World.

“We are facing a global hunger crisis and record numbers of people are suffering from malnutrition,” added Cho. Right now, 44 million people are at risk of famine and more than 283 million are facing severe hunger. These numbers will likely go up as food prices rise and wheat exports from Ukraine and Russia become scarcer.

Globally, the omnibus also fails to fund COVID-19 relief efforts. This will hinder efforts to overcome and fully emerge from the pandemic.

Domestically, Bread is also concerned that the waivers for school meal programs in the U.S. were not included in the spending bill. These waivers, which have broad, bipartisan support, enable schools to offer free meals to all students and expand afterschool and summer meals during the pandemic.

“If these waivers are not extended, millions of children will lose access to summer and school meals next school year. And Black, Latino, and Indigenous children will be disproportionately impacted,” said Cho.

Despite these shortcomings, Bread appreciates the inclusion of $2.5 million for a White House Conference on Food, Nutrition, Hunger, and Health and urges the White House to publicly commit to convening this whole-of-government conference to better ensure the policies and programs needed to reduce hunger are duly implemented.

“As the Bible tells us – do not withhold good from those whom it is due when it is within our power to act (Proverbs 3:27),” said Cho. “This bill is clearly a missed opportunity. We cannot reduce humanitarian funding in the middle of a global hunger crisis or ignore the residual impacts of the pandemic on children and families here at home. Congress and the administration must do better.”  

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Build Back Better, the administration’s groundbreaking human infrastructure bill, is stalled in the Senate. All Republican senators and at least one Democratic senator oppose the legislation in its current form.

One issue cited as a sticking point in negotiations is the expansion of the Child Tax Credit (CTC). The result of this stalled legislation is children continuing to face the daunting consequences of food insecurity.  Child hunger, already at high levels in the United States, rose sharply in the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, as Institute Insights explained in the summer of 2020. The dramatic progress made possible by expanding the CTC is already well documented. This is because families benefited from a temporary expansion authorized under the American Rescue Plan.

For six months—July 2021 through December 2021—most U.S. families with minor children received monthly CTC checks. Researchers found that about 90 percent of low-income families who received the credit used it to pay for immediate basic needs, such as food, clothing, rent, and utilities.

The CTC expansion made two key changes to tax law. The first was an increase in the amount of the credit. Most U.S. households with minor children benefited, because taxpayers with annual incomes of up to $200,000 for individuals and $400,000 for married couples are eligible. The second change was even more important for the lowest-income children in our country: the full credit was made available to households that were previously ineligible because they did not have enough taxable income. An estimated 27 million children lived in these households. In 2022, these families are once again ineligible for the full credit.

The monthly payments that began in July 2021 had an immediate effect on reducing child hunger. On August 16, 25 percent fewer parents reported that their families did not have enough food than had reported such food insecurity on July 5. Such a steep and rapid decline as this has never before been recorded, and it seems clear that the cause was the CTC expansion.

The United States has higher levels of child poverty and child hunger than other high-income countries. This is unnecessary and inexcusable in a country as wealthy as the United States. One of the most significant things the United States can do to reduce its child poverty to levels closer to those seen in peer countries is to restore the CTC expansion and make it permanent.

Many people don’t realize that allowing child poverty and hunger to persist is enormously expensive. Even beyond the very considerable harm to each child individually, the costs to the national economy— from lost productivity, additional healthcare costs, and a wide range of other expenses—are staggering.  One study estimates these unnecessary losses at more than $1 trillion each year. This money could instead be invested in infrastructure, education, health care, or other spending that would benefit everyone.

The last time the U.S. government made a significant commitment to reducing poverty, in the 1960s, there was a very substantial reduction in poverty rates among seniors.  Two of the main causes of the lower poverty rates were improvements in Social Security and the creation of Medicare.  In the intervening decades and still today, seniors have consistently been less likely to live in poverty than children or younger adults.

Changing policies to reduce the hardships of vulnerable people in transformative ways is always possible, if the American people are willing to press our government to do it. We currently have a rare opportunity to cut child poverty in half and make similarly unprecedented progress against child hunger in sustained ways. Bread urges all our members and partners to persevere in efforts to make these policy changes a reality, disregarding cynics who argue that this is only a dream.

Todd Post is senior researcher, writer, and editor with Bread for the World.

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The House bill expands the Child Tax Credit for another year and makes the full refundability of the credit permanent. The bill also strengthens child nutrition programs; invests in vital maternal health programs; and improves access to high-quality childcare. These provisions would make an immediate impact on the lives and well-being of millions of children and families across the country.

“The fact the House was able to pass a bill right before Thanksgiving that will help millions of families put food on the table should not be lost,” said Rev. Eugene Cho, president and CEO of Bread for the World. “As we enter the Christmas season, we are reminded that God requires us to care for our neighbors and provide food for those who experience hunger. We urge senators to keep this in mind as they work to pass their own version of the bill.”

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“There are numerous provisions in the Senate budget resolution that would significantly reduce hunger and poverty in the United States,” said Rev. Eugene Cho, president and CEO of Bread for the World. “COVID-19 has exposed shortcomings in the safety-net that were present long before the pandemic hit. These provisions will help address many of these shortcomings and provide much-needed support to families here at home.”

We urge the Senate to include the following priorities in the reconciliation bill:

• Strengthening child nutrition programs to help more children get the food and nutrition they need to thrive.
• An extension of the expanded Child Tax Credit, which will cut child poverty nearly in half, and the Earned Income Tax Credit, which will help low-income workers without children.
• The creation of a nation-wide paid family and medical leave program. Just 8 percent of workers earning less than $14 an hour had access to paid family leave in 2020.
• Expanded access to affordable, high-quality child care for lower-and middle-income families and universal preschool for 3- and 4-year-olds.
• Expanded access to and promotion of equitable health care coverage.
• Lawful permanent status for as many as 10 million qualified immigrants and their families.
• Debt relief for farmers.
• Provisions that would address the climate crisis – a primary driver of hunger globally that causes droughts, floods, and unpredictable weather patterns which make it difficult for farmers to grow their crops.

Many of these provisions are a part of Bread’s 1000 Days infrastructure plan. The plan urges lawmakers to invest in the health and well-being of mothers and children during the 1,000 days between a woman’s pregnancy and her child’s second birthday – a time of tremendous potential and enormous vulnerability. Investments made during this critical time period are essential for ensuring the development of children’s physical and mental health, as well as the security of the most vulnerable families in America for generations to come.

“While improvements to roads, bridges, and broadband are crucial and necessary, we must also invest in the health and well-being of families,” said Cho. “Every person matters to God. And God longs for every human being to live a life of dignity and in good health.”  

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We usually think of U.S. development assistance as funding that the United States sends directly to another country. Bread advocacy generally focuses on winning policy improvements and budget increases for this country-to-country assistance, often called bilateral assistance. Over the years, Bread has worked with Congress and the administration to ensure that projects supported by bilateral assistance include ending hunger and malnutrition as a top priority.

In addition to legislative successes such as the passage and reauthorization of the Global Food Security Act (GFSA), which created Feed the Future, and winning funding increases for important development initiatives such as Child Survival, Bread advocates have lhelped create change within the executive branch. For example, the U.S. government adopted a “whole of government” nutrition strategy after Bread advocates and our partners made the case that early childhood nutrition impacts the entire course of a person’s life.

The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) manages most bilateral funding, allocating resources to projects in health, nutrition, education, and other sectors. These programs and funds are vital to Bread’s mission of ending hunger, malnutrition, and extreme poverty. In addition, the United States is a key donor and a leader in encouraging other countries to contribute bilateral assistance.

There is another, lower-profile type of U.S. development assistance that also advances Bread’s mission–“multilateral” assistance. Since bilateral assistance is between two countries, you might guess that multilateral assistance is among several countries, and you would be right. The United States is a member of several international financial institutions, usually called simply IFIs.

IFIs include, among others, the World Bank, the African Development Bank, and the International Fund for Agricultural Development. The United States and other donors invest funds in these institutions that are then pooled and made available to low- and middle-income countries in the form of grants or low-interest loans.

IFIs are important to the effort to end hunger since they are the largest source of international finance for many countries. Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, IFIs have mobilized record levels of resources to support countries in responding to the health and economic consequences of the pandemic. As Bread has pointed out, surges in global hunger and malnutrition are among the pandemic’s most devastating impacts.

The World Bank, through its International Development Association (IDA), has the largest amount of lower-cost financin available to low-income countries. Since the food price crisis of 2008, IDA has more than tripled its annual financing for food security, from $2 billion to $6.8 billion in fiscal year 2020. Since the pandemic began, IDA has made new commitments of $5.3 billion for food security initiatives, and an additional $6.6 billion for food security is planned for this year.

Notably, half of these new resources will help meet immediate food needs, and half will go to efforts to build more lasting food security. If you’ve followed along with us at Bread for the World, you know that we believe both are necessary and we advocate for both.

IDA has also made available $500 million in “crisis response” funding, intended to help countries prepare for and respond to crises that develop more slowly than a sudden disaster. Hunger emergencies are usually crises that develop over time, not overnight. Hopefully, the funding will enable countries to respond to some crises in the making and thus avoid major catastrophes.

In addition to IDA, the World Bank also houses the Global Agriculture and Food Security Program, known by the acronym GAFSP. Established in response to the 2008 food price crisis, GAFSP pools donor resources for programs in food security, nutrition, and agriculture. The funding is in the form of either grants or low-cost loans made to governments, producer organizations, and civil society organizations. The U.S. component of GAFSP is Feed the Future. Since 2010, GAFSP has invested more than $1.6 billion in 39 countries. Since the global pandemic began, GAFSP has allocated nearly $60 million in additional funding to 15 countries to help them respond to hunger crises caused or exacerbated by the pandemic.

The International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), mentioned earlier, is a specialized agency of the United Nations. IFAD was established in the 1970s in response to that decade’s episodes of food shortages, malnutrition, and famine. IFAD is the only IFI devoted exclusively to transforming agriculture, including rural economies, and food systems. It works to make these sectors more inclusive, productive, resilient, and sustainable.

In 2020, IFAD launched a multi-donor COVID-19 Rural Poor Stimulus Facility. Begun with $40 million in seed funding, the facility is expected to raise at least $200 million from other donors. The funding will be used to help preserve the livelihoods and jobs of low-income, vulnerable rural people or, failing that, to enable them to recover more quickly. It does this by supporting agricultural production, access to financial and agricultural markets, and access to new jobs.

Two other important IFIs are the African Development Bank and the Asian Development Bank. Each has increased its funding commitments to respond to the pandemic. Along with the IFIs mentioned earlier, the two regional banks have invested in food security initiatives such as providing support for farmers to purchase seeds, livestock, and other necessities; giving families cash assistance to purchase food; distributing packages of food; and supporting food banks.

As the United States and other high-income countries with access to COVID-19 vaccines begin to emerge from the pandemic, Bread emphasizes the importance of global vaccine equity. The International Monetary Fund noted recently that recovery paths are starkly divergent for lower-income countries and households compared with wealthier nations. The IFIs need continued support from donors so they can continue to provide urgently-needed assistance to low- and middle-income countries. Such support is essential to preventing even higher levels of hunger and malnutrition, saving the lives of young children, and enabling countries to begin to recover from the economic devastation caused by the pandemic.

Jordan Teague is interim co-director, policy analysis and coalition building, with Bread for the World.

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2021 could see the largest public investment in U.S. infrastructure in more than half a century. We should be glad for that. Much of our nation’s physical infrastructure is badly in need of repair. A significant investment could also create millions of good jobs for people who have been unemployed or underemployed because of the economic fallout of COVID-19.  

I think there’s a natural tendency to think of infrastructure solely in terms of physical objects—highways, bridges, the electric grid, and other structures built with heavy machinery. That’s certainly one kind of infrastructure.

But there’s another sort of infrastructure in which the returns on investment are much higher. Here I’m talking about our nation’s human infrastructure—the skills and ingenuity of the workforce, which in turn depend on the health and education of our population.

The U.S. economist James Heckman won a Nobel Prize in 2000 for his pioneering work showing that investments in people during their early childhood yield lifelong returns: they ultimately are better educated and more productive on the job, and they are less likely to need government safety net programs. Talking about “investment” and “productivity” may sound as though we’re thinking of young children as commodities, but our use of these terms is quite limited; it is strictly in the context of comparing investments in human infrastructure and physical infrastructure.

The primary reason governments spend taxpayer money on infrastructure is to promote sustainable economic growth. In the 1950s, President Eisenhower didn’t call for massive investments in interstate highways so that Americans could appreciate the scenery as they drove by. His goals were to advance interstate commerce and improve national security.

The Biden-Harris administration’s plan for investing in human infrastructure through the American Jobs Act and the American Families Plan presents a unique opportunity to advance an infrastructure package for early childhood development. Let’s call it a 1,000 Days infrastructure plan.

Institute Insights readers probably recognize that I mean a specific 1,000 days—the “1,000 Days” that is the unique human nutrition window open between pregnancy and age 2. Readers may remember from Bread’s advocacy on global nutrition that the 1,000 Days is when good nutrition has greatest potential to improve the course of a person’s entire life. Bread has worked on issues around the 1,000 Days in other countries, but of course the United States also has many people in that window, and in this piece I’m talking specifically about a 1,000 Days infrastructure plan for the United States.

As an anti-hunger organization, Bread pays particular attention to nutrition. The U.S. nutrition program tailored to people in the 1,000 Days—it seems more natural to think of them as pregnant women, babies, and toddlers—is WIC. WIC does a pretty good job of reaching lower-income women and their babies with nutritional support, and it could be even better with a few specific policy changes. But the 1,000 Days infrastructure we need is much broader in scope than WIC.

Major weaknesses in other parts of the 1,000 Days infrastructure are not only causing the United States to miss out on much of the positive impact that could be made during this nutritional window of opportunity, but are also reducing the effectiveness of WIC.

WIC is associated with reduced rates of maternal and infant mortality. But U.S. maternal and infant death rates are higher than those of any other high-income country. Few health indicators speak to the need to center racial equity in the 1,000 Days infrastructure more starkly than those on maternal mortality. Black women are far more likely to die as a result of pregnancy and childbirth: their death rate is more than three times that of whites.

Health care is inseparable from all other parts of a 1,000 Days infrastructure. Without it, the entire edifice is weakened. Most families eligible for WIC are already receiving Medicaid. Better coordination between WIC and Medicaid would improve services in both. For example, both WIC and Medicaid provide support for breastfeeding, and they could coordinate more closely, drawing on WIC’s proven strength in culturally competent peer support.

The United States has much lower rates of breastfeeding than other high-income countries. This is one consequence of the fact that the United States is also the only high-income country that has no national paid leave policy.

Nearly one in four U.S. women return to their jobs within two weeks of giving birth, which makes it difficult or impossible to establish and continue breastfeeding. The Family and Medical Leave Act provides for 12 weeks of unpaid leave, but low-income women can ill afford to take time off without pay. Some employers voluntarily offer paid leave, but this almost always goes to higher-earning professionals rather than women who participate in WIC or Medicaid.

I hope you’re seeing how the pillars of a 1,000 Days infrastructure plan reinforce each other. This piece can only briefly mention a few components of a comprehensive 1,000 Days infrastructure plan. Suffice it to say there are many more.

In a recent blog post, I discussed the temporary expansion of the Child Tax Credit (CTC) in the American Rescue Plan. This expansion is expected to cut child poverty nearly in half. Poverty and food insecurity occur at higher rates in families with young children. Critics of the expansion contend, without evidence, that it will discourage parents, particularly mothers, from working. Low-income parents simply cannot afford not to work. What prevents parents, mostly mothers, from working—more than anything else—is  lack of affordable, accessible child care.

Bread President Rev. Eugene Cho and Blythe Thomas, Director of 1,000 Days, explain what a 1,000 Days infrastructure would accomplish in an op-ed published in The Hill.

WIC, Medicaid, paid leave, child care, and CTC expansion are some of the essential elements of a 1,000 Days infrastructure. Individually, each is vital to positive outcomes during the 1,000 Days; together and aligned, they are a transformational investment in the nation’s human infrastructure—our next generation.

Todd Post is senior researcher, writer, and editor with Bread for the World Institute.

The post The infrastructure plan our country needs appeared first on Bread for the World.

The $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan includes a one-year expansion of the Child Tax Credit (CTC), making the credit available to all low-income families with children.

Before the expansion, an estimated 27 million children under age 17 lived in families who did not earn enough to qualify for the full CTC for children because they did not have sufficient taxable income. These are families in which food insecurity and hunger are widespread.

Young children are more vulnerable than any other group to the damaging impacts of hunger even for short periods. At the same time, families with young children are more likely to face hunger than those with older children. This is why additional monthly resources are especially important for young children.

All children stand to benefit from CTC expansion, but children from groups that have disproportionately high hunger rates will benefit most. Poverty among Black children will be cut by an estimated 52 percent, among Latino children by 45 percent, among Native American children by 62 percent, among Asian American and Pacific Islander children by 37 percent, and among white children by 39 percent.

A CTC expansion not only contributes to better life prospects for the most vulnerable children in the country but also offers a good return on investment. In a way, the United States cannot afford not to reduce poverty among children, because every year, it costs the economy between $800 million and $1.1 trillion. The costs come in lower productivity, higher healthcare costs, and the need to spend more on public safety, services for homeless people, incarceration, and care for survivors of child abuse.

Major components of the CTC expansion:

• Increases the benefit from $2,000 per year to $3,600 for children up to age 6 and to $3,000 for children 6-17.
• Delivers monthly installments of $300 per month for each younger child and $250 per month for each older child.
• Equally available to all families starting at $0 income through middle-income status.

CTC expansion is a big deal, and we should feel great it was included in the American Rescue Plan. But we aren’t done yet. Now we must work to make the expansion permanent.

Expanding the CTC would do more to reduce hunger and poverty among our nation’s children than single policy in decades

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March is Women’s History Month in the United States, and on March 8, the world observed International Women’s Day. First and foremost, gender equity is a critical component of respect for human rights. It is also essential for every country intent on building a more prosperous future, without hunger, malnutrition, or any of humanity’s many other longstanding problems. No community can meet its goals if half its people are blocked from using all their talents to help meet those goals.

It goes without saying that the COVID-19 pandemic has affected nearly all facets of life for women around the globe. But before I say anything more about the pandemic’s global impact, I want to celebrate a significant victory for children in the United States. Please see our recent blog post for the details of a particularly important provision of the recently passed American Rescue Plan—the expansion of the Child Tax Credit (CTC). It may not seem important at first glance, but experts expect that it will cut child poverty nearly in half.

For the past several years, Bread for the World members have been urging Congress to improve two tax provisions with the potential to help many more families living with food insecurity: the CTC and the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC). The work of Bread’s grassroots advocates made a difference as a CTC expansion was included in the American Rescue Plan. Thank you and congratulations to all who supported improvements in the CTC and EITC!    

As the pandemic enters its second year, many people have paused to reflect on the enormous damage to virtually every country on Earth in only one year. In addition to the suffering of patients themselves and their families, even larger numbers have been forced to go without necessities as the global economy was brought nearly to a halt. Hundreds of millions of people lost their means of earning a living, whether that had been in a profession or job, or in the so-called “informal sector,” where people work as smallholder farmers, market women, tailors, midwives, and in many other capacities to sustain their communities and feed themselves and their families.

As noted most recently, another major impact of lockdowns and other restrictions imposed for public health reasons is that many people have been unable to access basic health care. This is particularly dangerous for young children, many of whom have missed screenings for malnutrition and immunizations against childhood diseases that remain deadly in many countries.

Recently we have also taken a look at the grim consequences of the pandemic for people living in situations that were already extremely difficult. In regions such as the Sahel, which stretches along the southern edge of Africa’s Sahara Desert, countries such as Burkina Faso and Niger had extremely high rates of child malnutrition during “normal” times, significant armed conflict, and frequent disasters linked to climate change.

In areas around the world that, like the Sahel, are severely affected by conflict and climate change, the pandemic has caused soaring rates of hunger and malnutrition. The number of people in acute hunger emergencies has more than doubled, to an estimated 271.8 million.

Women are facing particular hardships due to pervasive gender discrimination. The World Health Organization reports that in Africa, for example, the pandemic is worsening gender inequality and causing millions of women great physical, mental, and economic distress. The burdens of unpaid, labor-intensive household chores fall mainly on women, as does responsibility for caring for children. In many societies, this includes ensuring that children have food and clothing.

Women with small businesses have been hit hard. Oulimata Sarr, regional director of U.N. Women in West and Central Africa, said that the results of a study in 30 countries of 1,300 female-owned businesses found that, “The message is the same. We have lost the vast majority of our revenue.”

She added that some countries responded by giving women food and some cash transfers instead of capital to keep their businesses afloat, while in several countries, governments have given stimulus checks and packages to a number of well-organized business associations, most run by men. Sarr said that governments in the region need to respond to this gender financing gap.
 
There is much more that could be said about gender equity and hunger in the context of the pandemic, ranging from women’s higher rates of unemployment to persistent reports of significant increases in domestic violence. But as COVID-19 vaccine supplies begin to arrive in lower-income countries, and the people of many countries have become increasingly adept at protecting themselves and their families from being exposed to the virus, I prefer to look ahead to spring in the hope that this year, hundreds of millions of people will be able to take significant steps to a better life.

Michele Learner is managing editor with Bread for the World Institute.

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“Bread for the World is thankful Congress passed and the president signed the stopgap spending bill. The bill provides $8 billion in nutrition assistance for children and families who struggle with hunger and poverty due to COVID-19 and expands and extends the Pandemic Electronic Benefits Transfer Program (P-EBT). P-EBT enables parents to buy groceries to cover the cost of school breakfasts and lunches their children miss because schools are closed. Since its implementation, P-EBT has kept millions of children out of hunger. We especially want to thank Speaker Pelosi and Majority Leader McConnell for including the measure in the bill.”

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“Our country’s 350,000 religious congregations cannot make up for the proposed cuts to programs that help people living in hunger and poverty, including children,” said Rev. David Beckmann, president of Bread for the World. “The amount the congregations would need to raise is larger than many of their annual budgets.”

Critics of federal assistance programs often say it is churches and other religious congregations, not the government, who should be helping people living in hunger and poverty.

“While religious congregations and charities play an important role in helping people who are struggling to make ends meet, federal programs provide the bulk of the assistance,” said Beckmann.

The proposed budget would cut more than $1.3 trillion from domestic and international aid programs over ten years. Domestically, these cuts include $181 billion from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), $1 trillion from Medicaid and Affordable Care Act tax credits, and $1.7 billion from child nutrition programs such as school meals. Internationally, the cuts include $60 million in global nutrition programs, programs that help struggling farmers, and the elimination of the McGovern-Dole international school feeding program.

“A budget is more than a financial statement—it is a statement of our nation’s priorities and values. It should be evaluated on how it treats the most vulnerable people among us,” said Beckmann.

“As a Christian, I believe that God calls on me to care for ‘the least among us’ – be it through charity or advocating for policies and programs that help people living in hunger and poverty,” added Beckmann.

The post Every Religious Congregation Would Need to Raise $375,000 More a Year to Offset White House Budget Cuts appeared first on Bread for the World.

“We are alarmed by the Trump administration’s fiscal year 2021 budget, which would drastically cut funding for programs for people living in hunger and poverty. We will continue to work with Congress to hold back these harmful cuts. Unfortunately, the administration has repeatedly found other means of pursuing its budget cuts through rulemaking and administrative action. Congress must rein in the administration’s rulemaking.”    

The post Statement on the White House FY 2021 Budget appeared first on Bread for the World.

A one-page fact sheet for hunger in the United States, and for each state plus Washington, D.C. Each fact sheet provides these indicators of hunger and poverty: the proportion of households in the state that struggle to put food on the table, the number of people living in counties with poverty rates of 20 percent, the number of veterans living below the poverty line, and more.

Ending Hunger by 2030

The United States has made significant progress against hunger and poverty over the past 50 years. But too many people are being left behind. Ending hunger and poor nutrition in the U.S. calls for comprehensive strategies that promote racial, gender, and class equity and take into account differences in personal, family, and community circumstances. Even more important, it requires the political will to turn these ideas into legislation. The United States should:

• Create jobs that pay
  Millions of workers are paid so little that they cannot feed their families. The best, most lasting way to end hunger is to ensure that people have access to jobs that pay enough to support their families. The United States can move in the right direction by making essential improvements through legislation and policies.
• Invest in people
  To be successful, people must have access to the tools they need. Government plays an important role in ensuring that everyone has their basic needs met and benefits from equitable opportunities. Targeted investments should be made in communities with the highest hunger rates.
• Strengthen the safety net
  Most people need some help at some point in their lives and everyone should have access to help in hard times. The United States should strengthen national nutrition programs such as school meals, summer meals, SNAP, and WIC. Essential social programs should be a consistent national priority and they should be provided in an equitable manner.
• Remove obstacles to earning a decent living
  Discriminatory practices should be ended and the playing field should be leveled for communities at higher risk of hunger by providing targeted support. These include people of color, women, and children, particularly women and children of color. Laws against racial, gender, and other forms of discrimination should be enforced, and a racial, gender, and class equity lens should be applied to all nutrition, anti-hunger, and anti-poverty programs and policies

Hunger and Poverty Facts by State

The post U.S. Hunger and Poverty State Fact Sheets appeared first on Bread for the World.

Nearly half of all child deaths worldwide—that is, nearly 2.5 million preventable deaths of children under the age of 5 every year—are related to malnutrition. Much larger numbers of young children—149 million, or nearly one in every four—are affected by chronic malnutrition.

Malnutrition should not claim young lives and damage children’s health and futures in our time—particularly on such an enormous scale. The persistence of malnutrition is, at its core, an issue of global inequities as the majority of impacted families live in countries in South Asia, sub-Saharan Africa, and Central America.

But there is good news! We have the knowledge and tools to improve nutrition, and global nutrition programs have worked. Peru, Ghana, and Kenya have rapidly reduced their rates of stunting (a sign that children have survived chronic malnutrition very early in life) since 2000. Perhaps best of all: more than 16 million fewer children under the age of 5 are stunted today than in 2012.

Improved nutrition for women and children will allow countries to improve health overall, put more kids in school, and expand their own economic growth. Bread for the World and its partners are asking Congress to provide $200 million for global nutrition in the fiscal year 2020 budget to jumpstart efforts to make faster progress on global nutrition and help the United States spur action from other partners.

Nearly half of all child deaths worldwide are related to malnutrition

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“There is no way our country’s 350,000 religious congregations can make up for the proposed cuts to programs that help people facing hunger and poverty, including children and the elderly,” said Rev. David Beckmann, president of Bread for the World. “While religious congregations and charities play an important role, federal programs provide ten times more in food assistance.”

The proposed budget would cut $1.4 trillion from domestic and international assistance programs over ten years. Domestically, these cuts include $220 billion from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), $1.1 trillion from Medicaid, and $1.7 billion from child nutrition programs such as school meals.

The proposed budget cuts to international humanitarian and development assistance include a reduction of $66.5 million to global nutrition programs and a $508 million cut to Feed the Future – nearly a halving of both programs. The budget eliminates the McGovern-Dole international school feeding program and the Food for Progress program.

“A budget is more than a financial statement—it is a statement of our nation’s priorities and values. It should be measured on how it treats the most vulnerable people among us,” Beckmann said.

A high-resolution version of the graphic is available upon request.

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“Bread for the World calls on Congress to pass and the President to sign the bipartisan funding deal. While this deal is not perfect, it is a compromise that will ensure hundreds of thousands of low-income families will continue to receive nutrition and housing assistance. However, we were disappointed that the deal included harmful border enforcement provisions and did not add additional funding to address the root causes of migration from Central America. After this vote, Congress should immediately work to fund $600 million for Puerto Rico’s Nutrition Assistance Program.

“It is encouraging to see that global nutrition received a $20 million increase. This increase is greatly needed and will provide nutrition in the first 1,000 days between the start of a woman’s pregnancy and her child’s second birthday. In FY 2020, we urge Congress and the administration to increase funding for global nutrition and the root causes of migration from Central America.”

The post Bread Statement on Government Funding Deal appeared first on Bread for the World.

Good nutrition during the 1,000 days from a woman’s pregnancy to her child’s second birthday is crucial to ensuring the child’s health, physical growth, and brain development. Assisting mothers and children with nutrition must be accompanied by good bodily and household care practices, clean environments, and access to health services.

A great deal of progress has been made globally in reducing malnutrition, but there is still a long way to go. We need to accelerate progress on maternal and child nutrition to ensure that all women and children are able to live dignified, healthy lives. Nearly half of all preventable child deaths are linked to malnutrition, and in 2017, 151 million children were physically stunted, a consequence of chronic malnutrition.

Early childhood malnutrition also stunts a child’s future, limiting his or her ability to grow, learn, earn a living, become self-sufficient, and move out of poverty, due to malnutrition’s harmful effects on cognitive growth as well. Children suffering from poor nutrition are more vulnerable to illnesses in their early years and into adulthood. Expectant mothers who are malnourished are at higher risk of bearing malnourished children, perpetuating an intergenerational cycle of malnutrition.

As one of the largest donors to global maternal and child health programs, the U.S. has long led the international community in efforts to improve child survival. Through the 1,000 Days Partnership, the U.S. has helped raise awareness about the devastating impact of malnutrition and mobilized support for the global Scaling Up Nutrition Movement. The Sustainable Development Goals adopted by all nations in September 2015 aim to end hunger, malnutrition, and preventable child deaths by 2030. To
help achieve these ambitious and transformative goals, the U.S. must demonstrate continued leadership in improving global nutrition.

Experts in economics agree that fighting malnutrition should be the top priority for policy makers and philanthropists.

Copenhagen Consensus, 2012

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In 2017, 11.8 percent of households in the U.S.—40 million people—were food-insecure, meaning that they were unsure at some point during the year about how they would provide for their next meal. While the number of food insecure households is still too high, it has been declining since the post-recession high of 14.9 percent in 2011.

Unfortunately, the overall food insecurity rate has not recovered to pre-recession levels. In 2007, 11.1 percent of U.S. households experienced food insecurity, compared to 11.8 percent in 2017. At the rate of decrease we saw this year, the United States would not end hunger until 2040.

All the nations of the world have agreed on development goals for 2030, including the goal of ending hunger. To end hunger by 2030, our country needs to see the same decreases it saw from 2014 to 2015, when the rate of food insecurity declined at a statistically significant rate of 1.3 percent. Ending hunger by 2030 will require strong political commitment and a comprehensive approach to address hunger’s root causes and accelerate progress.

Fact: More than 1 in 6 children in the United States live at risk of hunger

The post Fact Sheet: Hunger by the Numbers [2018] appeared first on Bread for the World.

The military community includes both people on active duty (more than 1.3 million) and veterans (20 million). There are also 800,000 reserve forces. The five branches of the U.S. military are the Army, Navy, Marine Corps, Air Force, and Coast Guard. U.S. military personnel come from the 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, Guam, and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

About 23,000 active duty personnel received benefits from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, previously food stamps) in 2013, the latest year for which statistics are available. This is a lower percentage than hunger rates for the average U.S. household (2 percent versus 12.3 percent). However, no one helping to defend our country should struggle to put food on the table.

Similarly, veterans experience hunger at just over half the national rate (7 percent v. 12.3 percent). Nearly 1.4 million veterans face food insecurity. Veterans are at higher risk of food insecurity if any of the following apply to them: they are younger, they left the military at a lower pay grade than is typical, they earn less at their post-military jobs, they are unmarried, or they live in households with more children than the typical veteran.

More than 1.25 million veterans live below the poverty line. Young veterans, veterans of color, and female veterans are the most vulnerable. 10 percent of young veterans are poor. Veterans of color are twice as likely to live in poverty as the overall veteran population (14 percent compared to 7 percent). 

Female veterans are much more likely to be poor than male veterans (10.3 percent compared to 6.5 percent). Veterans who fit into two or more of these groups are even more likely to live below the poverty line. For instance, young female veterans have a higher poverty rate than either female or young veterans as a whole—almost 14 percent. These disparities are primarily due to varying forms of racial and gender discrimination and inequities.

“About 23,000 active duty personnel received SNAP benefits in 2013, the latest year for which statistics are available”

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Bread for the World Institute

Racial Wealth Gap Learning Simulation

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Key Facts About SNAP

• SNAP works exactly as it’s supposed to. SNAP was designed to respond quickly and efficiently to increases in need. When poverty and unemployment spiked in 2008, 2009, and 2010, so did SNAP participation.
• SNAP reaches exactly whom it’s supposed to. The average SNAP household has a gross monthly income of $813. This is well below the strict national income limits. Ninety two percent of SNAP benefits go to households with incomes at or below the poverty line.
• SNAP participation increased mainly due to the poor economy. The largest increases in SNAP participation came on the heels of the recession.
• SNAP encourages work. Employment rates among households with children and at least one non-disabled adult rose nearly 10 percent from 2009 to 2015, the Great Recession years.
• SNAP fraud is the exception, not the rule. The USDA tracks two types of SNAP fraud data: trafficking and error rate. The majority of SNAP payment errors are a result of administrative errors, not intentional fraud.
• Charity alone can’t feed everyone. Our federal nutrition programs deliver more than 19 times the amount of food assistance as private charitable sources.

SNAP is a lifeline for millions of Americans. Congress must do its part to end hunger by protecting SNAP.

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“With this bill, the threat of massive cuts to anti-poverty programs has been put on hold. 

“The president and this Congress had both approved budgets that outlined cuts of more than $2 trillion from programs that help people in poverty. But thankfully, anti-poverty programs fared well in the negotiations of the last month. In fact, Congress has not finalized any significant cuts to anti-poverty programs since the Trump administration began.    

“Bread for the World has taken up an ‘offering’ from churches across the country – not an offering of money, but of letters to Congress urging continued funding for programs that help to reduce hunger and poverty in our country and around the world. Churches organized hundreds of letter-writing events across the country, resulting in hundreds of thousands of hand-written letters and personalized emails to their lawmakers. Clearly, Congress heard our message.

“Our celebration is tempered by the dramatic increase in deficit spending — $2 trillion over the last four months, mostly for tax cuts for high-income people. Only 3% of this deficit spending went to programs for low-income people. So, when Congress gets serious about deficit reduction again – as they should do – no one should propose fixing the problem by cutting programs for people in poverty.”

The post Bread for the World Statement on the FY 2018 Omnibus appeared first on Bread for the World.

The launch falls as the Trump administration has released its fiscal year 2019 budget.

“As we saw in the president’s budget proposal, programs that provide help and opportunity to people in need are under threat in Washington,” said Rev. David Beckmann, president of Bread for the World. “Through the Offering of Letters, tens of thousands of faithful advocates will call upon Congress to maintain funding for programs that help hungry and poor people in our country and around the world.”  

President Trump’s budget would make massive cuts to programs that help people experiencing hunger and poverty, including domestic nutrition programs such as SNAP and aid to countries on the brink of famine.

“Budget cuts are now the biggest threat to people struggling with hunger and poverty,” Beckmann said.

The name of the letter-writing campaign, “For Such a Time as This,” references Esther from the Old Testament – who saved her people from destruction through advocacy (Esther 4).

During an Offering of Letters, participants write letters, usually as a group, and present them as an offering to God before mailing them to Congress. Hundreds of Offerings of Letters campaigns are held each year across the country, resulting in hundreds of thousands of hand-written letters and personalized emails to Congress.

“Just as Queen Esther from the Bible was called to stand up and advocate on behalf of her people, we are called to stand up and advocate for families who are struggling now,” Beckmann said.

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Bread believes that any continuing resolution passed by Congress must:

Increase funding for non-military programs

• Programs such as Women, Infants, and Children (WIC), nutrition assistance for low-income seniors, and international assistance are just a few of examples of the many programs that could face significant cuts without sequester relief.

Enact bipartisan legislation that provides Dreamers with a pathway to citizenship and keeps immigrant families together. 

• Bread is encouraged by the recent bipartisan proposals in both the House and the Senate. Leaving DACA recipients and other Dreamers in limbo violates our nation’s values. Providing them with a pathway to citizenship would allow these young people to move forward with their lives and get better jobs.

Fully fund and reauthorize the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP).

• Young children in every state in America rely on the CHIP for their health care, and millions of children could begin to lose their health care coverage as early as this month. No family should have to worry about how their children will get needed health care.

Provide disaster relief for Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Texas, Florida, and California.

• We are especially concerned about the continued suffering endured by Puerto Rico.

“We pray that our nation’s leaders can reach an agreement and approve these four measures,” Beckmann said.

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The same budget resolution that permits $1.5 trillion in deficit spending for tax cuts outlines more than $2 trillion in cuts to low-income programs such as SNAP and Medicaid.

The direct benefits of the House tax bill would go mainly to high-income people, with mixed impacts among middle-income families and no help for low-income families.

In fact, it could load lots of new paperwork and delay on many low-income workers who qualify for the Earned Income Tax Credit. It would end the Child Tax Credit for three million children in low-income immigrant families. The average annual income for these working families is $21,000 a year, and they would lose an average of $1,800.

The bill also eliminates the New Market Tax Credit, which has done more to fight food deserts than any other program to date and has created up to 750,000 jobs in low-income communities.  

The bill’s defenders argue that it will boost the job market. While deficit spending is likely to boost to the economy, the corporate sector already has cash reserves they are not investing, and high-income people tend to spend less of their income than low- and middle-income people.

“This tax bill is part of an unprecedented push to shift resources from low-income to high-income people,” said Rev. David Beckmann, president of Bread for the World. “It’s hard to see how shifting resources from low-income to high-income people will create jobs.”

Beckmann is both a Lutheran pastor and an economist. 

Last week, Bread released “Tax Policy Is a Hunger Issue,” which outlines how tax reform could be used to help low-income families and reduce hunger. 

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People shouldn’t have to choose between paying for food or medicine. Ensuring individuals can access affordable health insurance is a critical component in reaching the goal of ending hunger by 2030. When more people are insured, struggling households are better able to afford nutritious food and lead healthier lives.

In 2015, for the first time in eight years, the United States saw a significant decline in the overall rate of food insecurity and poverty. This decline was due, in part, to increased access to health care through the expansion of Medicaid and overall health insurance enrollment through the Affordable Care Act (ACA).

Millions of Americans have gained coverage through the ACA. However, health care costs continue to rise and too many moderate to low-income families are still unable to afford quality health insurance. To end hunger by 2030, the United States must have a health care system that works for all.

“Just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another…”

John 13:34

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This wide scope makes the Farm Bill vital not only to farmers, but to other residents of rural areas, people anywhere in the United States who do not have enough money for food, and countries where many people struggle with hunger and malnutrition. 

The Farm Bill can help put the United States on track to end food insecurity and hunger in our country and save millions of lives overseas. To do so, it must be designed with strong and resilient food systems and good nutrition as its top priorities.

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Estos recortes presupuestarios afec-tarían particularmente a la comunidad latina, ya que los hogares latinos tienen hasta tres veces más probabilidades de experimentar hambre y pobreza.

The post Fact Sheet: El Impacto del Presupuesto 2018 en la Comunidad Latina appeared first on Bread for the World.

These budget cuts would hit the Latino community particularly hard since Latino households are up to three times more likely to experience hunger and poverty.

The post The Impacts of Proposed Fiscal Year 2018 Budget Cuts on the Latino Community appeared first on Bread for the World.

“These proposed cuts would be devastating to families who are already struggling to get by,” said Rev. David Beckmann, president of Bread for the World. “The programs the House proposes to cut have moved tens of millions of people out of hunger and poverty. Clearly, this is not a ‘balanced’ approach to developing a budget.”

The House budget resolution drastically cuts safety-net programs while cutting taxes and increasing defense spending. It calls for at least $203 billion in fast-tracked mandatory spending cuts over the next decade. The proposal assumes these cuts would be enacted this year and would impact programs like SNAP (formerly known as food stamps), Medicaid, and refundable tax credits.

On top of the fast-tracked spending cuts, the budget assumes $114 billion in cuts to Medicaid above those already proposed in the American Health Care Act (AHCA), and $150 billion in cuts to SNAP and $20 billion in cuts to the earned income tax credit and child tax credit.

The House budget also cuts the school meals program by $1.6 billion by making changes to the community eligibility requirements. This program provides breakfast and lunch to millions of children from low-income families.

In addition, the budget makes $1.3 trillion in non-defense discretionary spending cuts over 10 years. This will put pressure on appropriators to cut programs like Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) and international development programs.

“This budget unfairly targets programs that help the most vulnerable people,” Beckmann said. “Congress must consider the entire budget when it is looking for places to make cuts or generate revenue. I urge all House members to reject the resolution and pass a fair budget that lives up to the values of their faith.”

The post House Budget Resolution Cuts Programs for Poor and Hungry People appeared first on Bread for the World.

Un presupuesto es más que un documento financiero — es a la vez un documento moral. Es una declaración de las prioridades y los valores de nuestra nación. Nuestro presupuesto federal se debe medir por cómo trata a los más vulnerables entre nosotros.

Al establecer un presupuesto, los legisladores en el Congreso pueden cambiar las políticas, los programas y las condiciones que permiten que persistan el hambre y la pobreza. Con solo un plumazo al aprobar un presupuesto federal, se crean políticas que pueden reorientar millones de dólares y afectar a millones de vidas.

The post Fundamentos del presupuesto: El Hambre y el presupuesto nacional appeared first on Bread for the World.

This guide answers the questions:

• How is the federal government’s budget put together?
• Why is it an important tool and place for advocacy to end hunger?

In simple terms, this fact sheet and our corresponding infographic explain the often complex process of developing a budget for the federal government.

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