Food Shortage In Texas

In this critical response to the article America’s Food Crisis and How to Fix it by Bryan Walsh. I am going to talk about how animals are being harmed and are given antibiotics to keep them from becoming sick, where the farmers put all the waste from the animals, and how people could fix it.

Hunger in America can be hard to recognize. With how the economy is now, the effects of hunger are more severe. Many Americans are relying on food stamps and private organizations to help with this crisis. Millions in this nation are currently suffering from hunger in America. Half of that being from job loss. More than 12,000,000 children suffer from food insecure hunger because of limited or uncertain access to nutritious food. About 900,000 are hungry in the three- country Detroit metropolitan area alone. The hardest hits are the elderly, the unemployed, immigrants, and the mentally and physically impaired.

On Tuesday evening, over fifty of our leaders from Auto, Innovation, and Recovery came to fight hunger and feed hope at the San Antonio Food Bank. Collectively they sorted through 20,330 pounds of food which resulted in 16,264 meals for the city of San Antonio and it's surrounding counties. It was an evening of camaraderie and fun that will never be forgotten.

American society has grown so accustomed to receiving their food right away and in large quantities. Only in the past few decades has factory farming come into existence that has made consuming food a non guilt-free action. What originally was a hamburger with slaughtered cow meat is now slaughtered cow meat that’s filled with harmful chemicals. Not only that, the corn that that cow was fed with is also filled with chemicals to make them grow at a faster rate to get that hamburger on a dinner plate as quickly as possible. Bryan Walsh, a staff writer for Time Magazine specializing in environmental issues discusses in his article “America’s Food Crisis” how our food is not only bad for us but dangerous as well. The word dangerous

A severe shortage of food in the United States could occur from many causes. Farms could stop growing crops and breeding animals. Some sort of bacteria could sweep through the country killing different food plants. The more important part of the shortage of food however would not be the causes, but the effects. The stance of the country's economy, the well-being of middle and lower-class families, and the quality of stores that used to sell the products would all decline greatly if an event as severe as an extreme shortage of food were to occur.

The state of Texas, which is the largest state in the continental US, is the second largest by population. This makes by default means that Texas is an important economic center. However, this also means that Texas serves as one of the states with highest overall economic need (Poverty USA). Texas is ranked as number 39 in overall poverty by the states, and currently has over 12% of its population on SNAP benefits which is double that from 2000, despite the leaps and bounds made economically in the country and the state of Texas specifically (Texas Health and Human Services Commision) (Poverty USA). These benefits are used by the population to appropriate food for households, and are an integral part of

Food deserts are very prominent in the state of Oklahoma, not only in the rural areas but also in urban Oklahoma; to be exact food deserts can be found in 32 of the 77 counties (Rex, 2016). Food deserts are areas where full service grocery stores are scarce. In urban areas, a place is considered a food desert if a full grocery store is more than a mile away, in rural areas a place is considered a food desert if a grocery store is more than ten miles.

The Volunteer Center of North Texas (VCNT provides agencies with training programs, background checks for volunteers and employees, and goods donated by area businesses.

So, why do fifteen million children in America face hunger every day? How does this happen? Many people are on food stamps, and they can be extremely helpful, but it is difficult to feed family with them. Food stamps provide only a dollar per person for each meal, according to the organization, Food is Power. More often than not, unhealthy, processed foods are a lot less expensive than nutritious, organic food, and because of this issue, many people on food stamps reach for less expensive junk food. Unquestionably, healthy foods can be very hard to find and expensive in places like food deserts. Food is Power found that thirty-three percent of Americans live in food deserts. Of course, public transportation helps families reach grocery stores, but it still can be a lengthy trip, and in rural and suburban areas, there can be little or no public transportation at all. These issues make it a struggle for parents to provide healthy food for their

“Food Desert” refers to an area in a rural or even urban region with little or no access to big grocery stores that provides affordable and fresh food for people to have a healthy diet. These areas are mostly composed of low-income households who are often Hispanics and African-Americans (Ploeg and Breneman et al). They are often “trapped” in a geographical location where only small convenient stores, which do not have sufficient supply of all common, fresh and healthy food, are available. Currently, there are 13.6 Million Americans who have difficulties in accessing to super markets and large grocery stores. People living in such areas with limited access to grocery stores spend 19.5 minutes more to travel, comparing to the people living in non-food-desert areas (Ploeg and Breneman et al).

The East Texas Food Bank is a nonprofit hunger relief organization based in Tyler, Texas. The East Texas Food Bank serves children, families and seniors through out network of Partner Agencies. Additionally, we target specific demographics such as children for our BackPack, Kids Cafe and Summer Food Programs. Seniors are targeted through our Senior Box Program. Our Priority Population are those who are deemed the “working poor”. This mean they are working, however they still can not meet all obligations for their household, especially regarding food. Needs for the community are assessed through a variety of surveys and data analysis. Some of this information is provided by the US Census, USDA and Feeding America. The subgroups that need

For such a long time, hunger still remains a complicated issue in America. Unlike other countries, hunger in America is not just getting enough food, but rather getting the right food and making the right choices. This project is a perfect example of how difficult it is to create a balance and nutritional meal on a tight budget. For starter, individuals who are under this program might have to sacrifice for some of the less nutritional food if they want to stay under the budget, which might results in some long term effects on the individual’s health. Instead of being able to purchase fresh fruits and leaner cuts of meat every day, I was forced to purchase cheap products that are nowhere close to today’s nutritional standards. Now, it wouldn’t

By understanding and becoming aware of this problem, our community has the power to impact thousands of people in Laredo by simply helping our local foodbanks provide the much-needed

Some people call hunger ‘food insecurity’ interchangeably, but what really is the difference between these two? Food insecurity is a small “availability of ...safe foods or ...ability to acquire ...foods in ...acceptable” manners while being socially acceptable. Hunger, however, is “the uneasy sensation caused by a lack of food.” Being hungry can even be as simple to wanting a snack. “Hunger...is a potential …consequence of food insecurity. (Food Insecurity vs Hunger)”

Coxe has studied the sector for more than 35 years as a strategist for BMO Financial Group. He says it didn’t have to come to this. “We’ve got a situation where there has been no incentive to allocate significant new capital to agriculture or to develop new technologies to dramatically expand crop output.”