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National & World Ag News Headlines |
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Feeding America: Every U.S. County Facing Hunger
USAgNet - 05/04/2016
Feeding America, the nation's largest domestic hunger-relief organization, today released Map the Meal Gap 2016, the latest report on county and congressional district level food insecurity and county food cost in the United States.
Food insecurity is the U.S. Department of Agriculture's measure of lack of access, at times, to enough food for an active, healthy life for all household members.
Food insecurity exists in every county, ranging from a high of 38 percent in Jefferson County, Mississippi to a low of four percent in Loudoun County, Virginia.
Children are at greater risk of hunger than the general population.
The highest rate of child food insecurity is 42 percent in Apache County, Arizona, home to parts of the Navajo Nation, Zuni and Fort Apache reservations.
The lowest rate of food insecurity among children is in Billings and Stark Counties, North Dakota. Statewide in North Dakota more than 19,000 children, 11 percent, live in households that are food insecure.
"This new research documents the pervasiveness of hunger in every community in our nation. While the economy has improved and unemployment rates have declined, many people are still struggling to access adequate amounts of nutritious food for their
families," said Diana Aviv, CEO of Feeding America.
Overall food insecurity rates differ across congressional districts as well. At 30 percent, Mississippi's 2nd Congressional District has the highest rate of overall food insecurity, while Virginia's 10th Congressional District has the lowest rate of overall food
insecurity at five percent.
Nearly 90 percent of counties with the highest food-insecurity rates in the country are located in the South. Nearly 3.5 million individuals are estimated to be food insecure in these southern high food-insecurity rate counties.
More than half of the counties with the highest rates of overall food insecurity are rural although rural counties make up less than half of all U.S counties. Among counties with child food-insecurity rates in the top 10 percent, 64 percent are rural.
Food insecurity is present in many households that are not living below the poverty level. There are 167 counties where the majority of food insecure children do not qualify for federal nutrition programs -- such as the Supplement Nutrition Assistance Program
(SNAP) and free and reduced-priced school lunch programs -- including such highly populated communities as Nassau County, New York and Honolulu County, Hawaii. For these food-insecure households, the charitable food assistance network may be the
only source of support.
In addition to food insecurity estimates, Map the Meal Gap 2016 reports on food price variation across counties. Using data from the Current Population Survey (CPS), the study finds that, on average, food-secure individuals report spending $2.89 per person,
per meal. This is a slight increase from the national average of $2.79 as reported in Map the Meal Gap 2015.
Combining this national average cost per meal with data from Nielsen, the report estimates the relative cost of a meal by county, showing a range in average meal costs as low as $2.02 in Willacy and Maverick Counties in Texas and as high as $5.61 in Crook
County, Oregon. This variation illuminates the challenges faced by people at risk of hunger in many counties where food prices are high.
Map the Meal Gap 2016 uses data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, U.S. Census Bureau, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and food price data and analysis provided by Nielsen (NYSE: NLSN), a global provider of information and insights. The study
is supported by founding sponsor The Howard G. Buffett Foundation, ConAgra Foods Foundation and Nielsen.
The lead researcher is Dr. Craig Gundersen, Professor of Agricultural and Consumer Economics at the University of Illinois, Executive Director of the National Soybean Research Laboratory and a member of Feeding America's Technical Advisory Group.
This is the sixth consecutive year that Feeding America has conducted the Map the Meal Gap study.
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