USDA Study Aims to Make Food Aid More Effective
Published October 22, 2009 @ 06:00AM PT
For the first time in the agency's history, the USDA will conduct a five-year analysis--the National Household Food Purchase and Acquisition Study (NHFPAS)--to document the food choices and expenditures made by families in the U.S. The study will provide the first hard data on where households purchase food and what factors are involved in making food choices, with the results being used by USDA's Food and Nutrition Services division to make federal food aid programs more effective.
This study is partially in response to a report commissioned by Congress this past summer that measured the extent and consequences of food deserts in the U.S. The authors of the study noted the need for a massive public-education campaign if consumer demand is the driving factor behind the lack of healthy food options available in low-income communities. I'm curious to see--through the results of the NHFPAS--if this assumption of demand is indeed accurate.
The announcement of the study also comes on the heels of a recent report that found school lunches around the country lack any meaningful calorie restriction goals, and do not include an adequate supply of fresh fruits and vegetables. Hopefully the NHFPAS will give the USDA some key insight into how to make their National School Lunch program a more effective tool. (Apart from recommendations that have already been made.)
More than anything else, I hope the NHFPAS finds that the mass availability of highly-processed foods made cheap by federal crop subsidies actually undermines Secretary Vilsack's goal of increasing the health of Americans, particularly in low-income communities.
Only when the USDA acknowledges its irreconcilable support for both crop subsidies and better nutrition will federal food aid programs begin to yield the benefits they are intended to.
(Photo credit: Mr. T in DC on Flickr)
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Author
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Greg Plotkin is currently a grant-writer living in Washington, DC. As a two-year AmeriCorps member teaching in DC Public Schools, he saw families struggling with poverty on a daily basis and has become particularly interested in hunger, nutrition and food access issues. He has also viewed poverty through the lens of his work with Habitat for Humanity and Charlie's Place--a DC soup kitchen and homeless support center.
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I'll say this much from living in the city and again from living in small towns miles and miles from where much of anything grows - it's not that we don't have produce in our stores, it's that no one who's poor can afford to buy the produce that's there. If I have $20 and ONLY $20 to buy food for a week, I need to buy the most food for that $20 - who cares about how healthy any more at that point? I sure don't. At that point, never mind healthy, even having a vegetable becomes a fantasy sometimes and particularly fresh ones. I thought I'd hit the jackpot earlier this month when I found a sale that let me buy a roast and get potatoes and carrots for free.
Maybe it IS the subsidies causing this lopsidedness and making crap like ramen and mac-n-cheez cheaper than real food. I'm not an expert in agri-business or economics. I know that it's not reasonable to think that we can all, always grow even part of our food. I have no where for even a window box and Seattle has a waitlist of YEARS for a spot in a "P-Patch". Besides, even if I got a spot, my disabilities would severely limit my abilities to garden more than a window box. Yet I know that's what many are going to quickly suggest as "an alternative". I guess if you CAN, then perhaps you SHOULD - just don't try to propose that as a one-size-fits-all answer to the problem. Besides, a lot of urban people are clueless about this sort of gardening. Who's going to teach them? Or perhaps as or even more importantly - who's going to clean up the land so the soil's clean enough to garden?
Posted by Danetta Amschler on 10/25/2009 @ 11:12PM PT
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