Before the coronavirus pandemic hit Mississippi this year, Lee County had experienced minimal food insecurity.
“Our lack of food confidence rate was about 16. 2 percent,” said Jason Martin, executive director of the Tupelo/Lee County Hunger Coalition. This figure is higher than the state’s overall lack of food confidence, as the USDA found in 2019 that Mississippi had the highest rate in the country at 15. 7%.
However, with the arrival of COVID-19 instances in the state, Martin said that many of the equipment offering food and resources had outperformed significant changes: in more rural spaces with larger populations, the pantry has noticed a decrease in the number of customers, Martin said it is likely due to concerns about contracting the virus. Martin said he heard other people say they were too afraid to go to a food bank as a user and that he would only give in when they ran out of food at home.
In more urban areas, however, he said the pantry has noticed a 40% increase in the number of other people requiring service.
“The customers who were served there were many workers or others who had recently been fired,” Martin said of urban food banks. “There is no doubt that blacks and maroons in our network probably suffer more than Caucasians,” Martin said. Blacks have also been disproportionately affected by the virus, and those deaths in turn have been affected by food security. Martin gave the example of a 60-year-old African-American woman who now cares for her grandchildren after the death of her son COVID-19 and relies on local charities.
“They have an incredible effect,” Martin said of the virus.
What Martin sees in Mississippi has happened across the country. A June report from Northwestern University’s Institute for Policy Research (IPR) found that the general lack of confidence in eating had doubled and tripled among families with young children as a result of the pandemic, the report found. knowledge. from the US Household Pulse Survey.
One of the report’s authors, IPR Director Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach, wrote in a September report for the Center for Action, Research and Food that the number of adults who reported that members of the family circle did not have enough to eat increased from approximately 8 million in 2018 to between 26 and 29 million between April and July.
In an interview with CBS News, Schanzenbach said he “trusts” that this style of developing a lack of confidence in food will “continue. “
“I feel very comfortable saying he’s tall, ” said Schanzenbach.
Schanzenbach’s studies have shown that black and Hispanic families are experiencing a dramatic increase in lack of food confidence. In 2018, the lack of confidence in food among black adults was more than 3 times greater than that of white adults. This trend remained largely in the COVID-19 era, with a lack of food confidence of 7% among white respondents and 20% among black respondents. doesn’t have enough to eat.
Solving this crisis is not difficult, Schanzenbach said, however, it is just an investment. He said the challenge could be alleviated by more investment for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), formerly known as food stamps, and the restoration of a Popular Unemployment gets benefits that provided $600 a week in addition to unemployment insurance. The benefits gained expired at the end of July.
“It’s not hard to solve. Schools are difficult to solve,” Schanzenbach said, comparing the challenge of reducing food confidence with the reopening of schools with face-to-face learning. “Actually, when it comes to feeding people, it’s just money. “
Congress and the White House have been stuck in negotiations on a new coronavirus relief bill for months. Unemployment established through the bipartisan CARES law in March expired in August because Democrats and Republicans were unable to agree on the amount in the future.
The House approved a $3. 4 trillion relief bill in May and a lighter edition of $2. 4 trillion last month. Both expenses would have included more investments for nutritional assistance. But Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell said he and the Republican majority in the Senate wouldn’t settle for any proposal that costs more than $2 trillion.
On October 6, President Trump abruptly announced that he was asking his representatives to stop negotiating with Democrats on a relief bill until the election ends. She later reported that she was willing to sign independent expenses that would provide direct monetary assistance to Americans, and yet President Nancy Pelosi said she would not make any independent bills without a guarantee of help for broader relief legislation.
“There is no independent bill, a bigger bill,” Pelosi told reporters thursday.
Trump then tweeted Friday that “Covid’s bailout negotiations are moving forward,” indicating that White House officials and House Democrats reach a deal, but even if they succeed, it is not certain that the Republican-controlled Senate will pass the law in excess of $1. 5 trillion.
Luis Guardia, president of the Center for Action, Research and Food, told CBS News in an interview that the federal government will have to do more to address food insecurity.
Guard that Congress accumulates maximum SNAP benefits of up to 15%, highlighting the good luck of the accumulated benefits provided by the Recovery Act 2009 after the Great Recession.
“This is our country’s first line of defense against hunger. It provides an incredibly effective economic stimulus for the country,” Guard said of SNAP. “We wonder why they have not yet made progress in expanding SNAP’s benefits. “
In times of economic recession, more people tend to apply for SNAP and then spend this federal aid, which in turn generates a source of income for those who produce, ship, and sell food. The Department of Economic Research found that an accumulation of $1 billion in SNAP profits can simply increase the country’s gross domestic product (GDP) through $1. 54 billion and nearly 14,000 jobs.
The federal government has taken steps to address food insecurity: the president signed a solution that continued to fund the government until December 11, which included a budget for nutritional assistance for young people and extended the Electronic Pandemic Benefit Transfer Program (P-EBT), which provides families with an EBT card to purchase food to update school meals , until September 2021. Guardia said the P-EBT program had helped raise two to 3 million young people through hunger.
Unfortunately, the lack of confidence in food is strongly related to economic instability. According to the fortnightly publication of knowledge at the end of September of the Household Pulse Survey, 24% of adults expect a family member to revel in a source of job loss. income over the next 4 weeks.
Schanzenbach noted that the existing economic recession differs from past crises because more women than men lost their jobs, which affected not only them but also the many young people living with single mothers. Another challenge is the large number of Americans who have not yet lost their jobs. suffered a significant loss of source of income due to reduced number of working hours.
By September, the United States had recovered only part of the 22 million jobs lost in March and April as the coronavirus pandemic spread. As others continue to lose their income, a greater lack of food confidence will continue.
“The amount of desire we’ve noticed is staggering,” Schanzenbach said. “I never expected to see anything like this. “