Hunger in California’s Central Valley: rising poverty in leading food-producing region

Based on data from the 2003 California Health Interview Survey, the UCLA researchers determined that more than 2.9 million adults in low-income California households feared not being able to feed themselves or their families in the past year. The report notes that if each of the adults suffering from food insecurity had just one child—a modest guess—the total number of people affected by this condition in California would be approximately 6 million. Of those deemed food insecure, almost 900,000 have experienced periods of hunger and the remaining 2 million are at continual risk of being hungry.

In San Joaquin County the study reported that the percentage of adults living below the federal poverty line and in a state of food insecurity, which is defined as not having enough money to not worry about whether one can secure adequate food, grew to 41 percent from 34 percent during the past two years. In this region, 17.7 percent of the population lives below the federally determined poverty level, significantly higher than both the national rate of 12.4 percent and the California rate of 14.2 percent.

Researchers also discovered that more than one in 10 poor adults in San Joaquin County, or about 17,000 people, could not afford to feed themselves regularly. This figure has remained unchanged from 2001. Only three other regions in California—Kern, Sutter/Yuba and Napa counties—reported higher percentages of people suffering from food insecurity.

Gross agricultural production in San Joaquin County in 2003 was just under $1.5 billion, making the region the sixth largest producer of foodstuffs in the state. It is the state’s largest producer of cherries, selling almost $98 million worth in 2003. It is also first in the nation in production of walnuts and asparagus, selling a total of $143 million of these goods in 2003. The region also produces a significant amount of milk, beef, hay, corn and grain. California as a whole is one of the world’s largest agricultural producers and the nation’s leader in agricultural exports, shipping more than $7.2 billion in both food and agricultural commodities to locations around the world in 2003.

According to experts on the question of food insecurity, the growth of the phenomenon is bound up with sharp increases in the cost of living in California.

“Most Americans equate hunger to famine-stricken Third-World nations in Africa,” said Paul Rengh, CEO of Second Harvest Food Bank of San Joaquin and Stanislaus counties. “With the cost of living skyrocketing in California, even working families are finding it more difficult to pay the bills and put food on the table,” he said. “When a person wakes up in the morning they may know what they’ll have for breakfast, but they don’t know if they’ll have dinner.”

In Stockton, the city center of San Joaquin County, poverty rates are even higher than in the region as a whole, standing at 25 percent. Food bank workers here affirm that the extremely poor aren’t the only people having trouble finding something to eat. Julie Ellis, operations manager at the Greater Stockton Emergency Food Bank (GSEFB), recently told the press that more working families are collecting donated food. “If you’ve got to pay $800 a month for rent, plus your PG&E (electrical utility) and other bills, you’re already done,” Ellis said. “Something’s going to fail. It always happens in the food area.”

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http://wsws.org/articles/2005/jul2005/hung-j16.shtml