This article originally appeared in the January-February 2004 issue of the Children's Advocate, published by Action Alliance for Children.

Hunger in the nation's salad bowl

More than 1 million California children sometimes go without enough nutritious food-and hunger is worst in the Central Valley

By Joan Flores

When teachers handed adults in a Fresno ESL class a survey on hunger, parents had a lot to say about how hunger impacts their kids. "My children are afraid that there isn't enough food in the house. They are angry and sad, because there is no money and no food," wrote one parent. "It affects the studies, the health, and everything else," wrote another.

Fresno and neighboring Tulare County-the heart of the agricultural Central Valley that feeds the nation-ranked as hungriest in the 2002 Cali-fornia Health Interview (CHI) Survey by the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research.

The 2003 Children Now California Report Card, released in November, says that in Fresno and Tulare counties, more than three-fifths of families are low-income and almost half of these experience what advocates call "food insecurity"-not knowing where the next meal will come from. And the CHI survey found that in Tulare County, over 10% of the population (roughly 13,000 people) live with physical pains of hunger on a daily basis.

In California as a whole, reports Children Now, "more than 1.1 million parents say they are regularly unable to put enough food in their families' tables."

Hungry kids

Children in Fresno County have a higher rate of food insecurity than adults, estimates Edie Jessup, Hunger and Nutrition Project coordinator for the Fresno Metro Ministry. "In Fresno city alone, we know that at least 80% of kids qualify for reduced-price or free meals at school," she says. At the FoodLink food bank in Tulare County, about 92,000 people received food in 2002, and half of those were children under five.

Hunger has special consequences for children. "How kids use food is different than adults," says Jessup. "Cognitive development, behavior issues, the ability to focus at school, even self-esteem-these are all linked to food and nutrition."

In Tulare and Fresno counties, the rates of diabetes, obesity, and anemia among school-aged children are the highest in the state. Obesity affects many children in "food insecure" families, says California Food Policy Advocates, because kids are offered cheap, non-nutritious food as a way to fill up. On-and-off hunger, says Jessup, affects kids' metabolism-their bodies store fat to prepare for times when they can't get food.

Local anti-hunger groups like Jessup's combine emergency food programs with advocacy for state policies that could help prevent hunger.

Why hunger?

• Low-wages and "dead-end" jobs are common in an economy based on agriculture and fast-food restaurants. "People work and work, but they just do not rise above the poverty level," says Sandy Beals of FoodLink.

• Unemployment is also high, especially because employment in agriculture is seasonal. Fresno County's official unemployment rate is 17% but Jessup suspects the actual rate is twice that.

• Undocumented workers, important in California agriculture, don't qualify for food stamps or other government aid.

• Shortage of grocery stores makes access to nutritious food difficult in some areas. "Bus-inesses here tend to go downhill," says Reverend Bob Felts of the Ivanhoe (Tulare Co.) Presbyterian Church and Food Pantry. "We used to have a big grocery store, but that just went out of business. There's a barbershop, repair shop, a drug store, a couple of other businesses. But everything else is packing houses and fields."

Finding food

• Food banks and pantries are often the first places families go for food, but many are overwhelmed with requests and allow families to receive food only once every few months. "When my sister was getting food from a pantry," wrote one of the Fresno parents, "it was very difficult. She waited for six or seven hours, there were so many people in front of her."

• Food stamps keep many families from going hungry-but a number of barriers prevent many eligible families from receiving them. "Ap-plying for food stamps is very hard because you have to wait for so many hours," wrote another parent. "There are lots of papers to fill out and when you do finally talk to a social worker, they are often mad at you." Obstacles include an interview process that can take several days, a 13-page application form, and language barriers. The result: Less than half of eligible Cali-fornians receive food stamps.

• School breakfasts or lunches are the only meals that some kids receive throughout the day. However, California Food Policy Advocates estimates that over 1 million low-income children don't eat breakfast because their school doesn't have a breakfast program.

Community action

• Removing the stigma at-tached to hunger and poverty is an important goal of both hungry families and advocates. Says Lana DeSilva of Tulare Emergency Aid, "A 'bum' who doesn't care, doesn't work, is a user of the system-this is who most people imagine when they think of a hungry person. That image just isn't true." To de-stigmatize hunger, FoodLink offers "Hunger 101," a class that helps others-church and community groups or groups of volunteers from local businesses-put themselves in the shoes of a hungry family. "For one hour," says Sandy Beal, "you go through the process of getting food at the Food Stamp office, the food pantry, a pretend grocery store, while you have no money. Afterwards, you see that there's less blaming of the victim."

• Help with other expenses In addition to providing children and their families with groceries, food pantries like Tulare Emergency Aid help families with other needs, such as medical prescriptions, gas vouchers, and rent and utility costs, so that more of a family's budget can go towards food. "You can't put a band-aid on the problem by just giving out food," says DeSilva.

• Universal school breakfast. Some school districts, including the Cutler-Orosi Joint Unified School District in Fresno County, have started offering breakfast right in the classroom to all kids regardless of family income. Cutler-Orosi Food Service Director Robert Schram told the California Child Nutrition Task Force that offering breakfast to all greatly increased the number of kids who ate breakfast because it removed the stigma.

Advocacy

Anti-hunger activists scored a big victory last fall when outgoing Gover-nor Gray Davis signed AB 231, which eliminated two major barriers to food stamp participation-a rule that said you couldn't get food stamps if you own a car worth more than $4,650, and a requirement that food stamp applicants had to apply in person.

But now Governor Schwarzenegger is campaigning to repeal AB 231 to save the state money by increasing barriers to getting food stamps.

CFPA is fighting to keep AB 231. It also advocates:

• Full participation in school breakfast and lunch programs

• Outreach to increase the number of eligible families that receive food stamps

• Passing a federal bill that would support more "universal classroom break-fast programs" like the one in the Cutler-Orosi school district

• Eliminating California's requirement that everyone applying for food stamps be fingerprinted

• Funding for the 2001 California law that calls for the state to add 10 cents a meal to school food programs, to improve the quality of school meals

• State and local "living wage" laws that would bring higher incomes to poor families.

For more information on anti-hunger advocacy and how you can get involved, contact California Food Policy Advocates, 415-777-4422, www.cfpa.net

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