Hunger Is Concentrated Here
Merced 23.1%
Mariposa COUNTY’S 24.8%
OUR CHILD FOOD-INSECURITY RATE
Nestled in the fertile Californian San Joaquin Valley; just 110 miles from Silicon Valley, lies Merced & Mariposa Counties, which are home to 308,290 people, and 23,178 of our children are hungry.
When you rank all 290 U.S. counties (who have more than 10,000 hungry children) by their child food-insecurity rate and the total number of hungry children.
Merced County is ranked 3rd highest in the state, and Mariposa is ranked second highest for child food insecurity rate – only Imperial County has a higher child food-insecurity rate than Merced & Mariposa Counties – according to the latest Map the Meal Gap report.
That report, released earlier this month by our partner organization Feeding America, collates data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the Census Bureau, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and the Current Population Survey to stitch together a portrait of food insecurity at the state and county levels.
The report showed that the face of hunger has changed, and so has its address.
While hunger is sometimes painted primarily as an urban problem, Feeding America’s research shows that rural communities are overrepresented among the neighborhoods most affected.
Rural counties make up 63 percent of all (3,141) U.S. counties. Of the nation’s most food-insecure counties (the top 10 percent), 87 percent are rural.
Furthermore, poverty rates are higher in rural communities, and 84% of U.S. counties with the highest percentage of food insecure children are rural.
The job market in suburbs and cities has long since recovered from the Great Recession, but job growth remains limited in rural counties and small towns.
Consequently, rural counties experience “persistent poverty” – high rates of poverty over a long period. Nearly 90% of counties experiencing long-term poverty have entirely rural populations.
Merced County is most certainly rural; with our long growing season and fertile soil, along with some of the largest concentrations of fruit and nut farms and dairies in the United States.
Our spring tapestry is colored by sprays of peach and nectarine petals, pink bouquets of apricot blossoms, and a white blaze of almonds, plums, and apples.
Our tree-shaded country roads, dotted with farm stands overflowing with fresh produce; picked from local farms – deep with family roots and tradition – portrays a beautiful rural agricultural community.
But many people do not realize underneath this beauty lies a difficult and persistent struggle with hunger.
So often, we read and hear about the dire statistics related to our challenges here in Merced County and throughout the Central Valley. So much so, that many of us (myself included) have become a little desensitized to the reality of life here for tens of thousands of our neighbors.
Rural communities, like Merced County, are (and have been) facing a perfect storm of issues that contribute to our challenges with hunger. Those primary issues include concentrated poverty, unemployment, low per capita income, and the rising cost of all foods.
To illustrate the gravity of the challenges faced by our neighbors and our children, it’s helpful to put the statistics related to those challenges into a comparable national perspective.
There are 3,141 counties in the United States, and 595 of them have populations of more than 99,999.
Of those 595 counties who have a labor force of more than 99,999 and at least 60,000 impoverished people.
· Merced County had the 3rd highest unemployment rate – 12.2% – March, 2024.
· Merced County has the 8th highest poverty rate at 21.9%.
· Merced County is also ranked in lowest 10% for income per capita, when adjusted for cost of living, and ranks 4th lowest within California.
· And, as previously stated, Mariposa & Merced County’s child food-insecurity rate is the 2nd and 3rd highest in the state, and among the top 10% nationwide.
Having grown up in Northern Appalachia along the West Virginia border, I am familiar with what impoverished communities looked like then and now. Often, Appalachia is referred to as the epicenter of poverty – and rightly so.
However, statistically speaking, our neighbors are facing more collective challenges here than any other part of the country.
For instance, of the ten U.S. counties (with populations over 99,999) that had the highest unemployment rate for 2023, six of them were Central Valley Counties – Tulare, Merced, Kern, Kings, Fresno, and Madera – respectively.
Similarly, of the top 31 counties in the nation with the highest child food-insecurity rates and those that had more than 10,000 hungry children. The Central Valley represented seven of those spots – Merced, Tulare, Fresno, Kings, Kern, Madera and Stanislaus – respectively.
The Central Valley also had 3 of the top 17 most impoverished counties and 3 of the 12 lowest income per capita counties.
Look across the communities served by the Merced County Food Bank during the summer months and you will see sweet potatoes, dairies, almonds, and tomatoes as far as the eye can see.
How can it be that in this fertile, flourishing agricultural community, there are 120,000 people facing hunger; including nearly 23,000 children?
It’s a cruel irony that our neighbors and their children can be malnourished amid forests of trees running to the horizon. But few are aware that communities like ours are often the hardest hit by hunger and food insecurity.
Like most of the new American hungry, our neighbors don’t face a total absence of food, but the gnawing fear that the next meal can’t be counted on – i.e. food insecurity.
Food insecurity means – not having reliable access to a sufficient quantity of affordable, nutritious food.
Food insecurity can be seen as more of a hidden hunger, because the people that experience it often still have a house and a car, yet due to an outstanding circumstance, they could have lost the ability to maintain their lifestyle. In these cases, many people start making trade-offs that involve facing hunger versus paying for transportation, housing, medications, and other bills that they need to sustain.
Chances are good that if you picture what hunger looks like, you don’t summon an image of someone that looks like the 40,000 – 45,000 people we serve each month.
The image of hunger in America today differs markedly from Depression-era images of the gaunt-faced unemployed scavenging for food on urban streets. Today, more working people and their families are hungry because wages have declined while other costs have risen.
For example, recent data from USDA and the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that while wages tracked along with the overall inflation rate, they did not keep up with the inflation rates on food. In fact, in 2022 we spent about 11.3% of our disposable income on food, and since then, food costs have increased over 10%.
When faced with a limited budget and hunger, bills go unpaid because, medicine doesn’t get bought; when push comes to shove, food wins out. You aren’t going to let your child or your family starve.
The added complication of having a limited budget and a family to feed, also forces people to choose less nutritious foods in favor of more filling foods.
Numerous times I’ve heard people say “If they’re really hungry, then how can they be overweight?” The answer is that low-income people are nearly forced into making trade-offs between food that’s filling; but not nutritious, and, as a result, are actually contributing to obesity. For many of the hungry in our community, the extra pounds that result from a poor diet are collateral damage—an unintended side effect of hunger itself.
One comment that illustrates what I’ve seen here over the last 18 months came from Tracie McMillan, author of The American Way of Eating, where she said…
“To witness hunger in America today is to enter a twilight zone where refrigerators are so frequently bare of all but mustard and ketchup that it provokes no remark, inspires no embarrassment. Here dinners are cooked using macaroni-and-cheese mixes and other processed ingredients from food pantries, and fresh fruits and vegetables are eaten only in the first days after the SNAP payment arrives.
Here you’ll meet hungry farmhands and retired schoolteachers, hungry families who are in the U.S. without papers and hungry families whose histories stretch back to the Mayflower. Here pocketing food from work and skipping meals to make food stretch are so common that such practices barely register as a way of coping with hunger and are simply a way of life.”
Her notions that hunger: (1) Is just accepted now. (2) We eat more processed foods than ever. (3) That low-income people can only afford fresh fruits and vegetables when subsidized by the government. (4) Does not discriminate. Are all accurate – based on my experience.
Hunger and poverty are indiscriminate, but they seem to affect our children and neighbors at substantially higher rates than others.As our community has endured the effects of inflation, high unemployment and poverty, we have seen demand for our services increase by 35% – at a time when support for our services is declining due to economic conditions. As we move forward into 2024 and 2025, its likely to get more challenging for us to meet the demands of the community.
So, with all that said. What can we do as a community to fight hunger?
In a nutshell – support the Merced County Food Bank through your donations, time or food.
We are working hard to increase the quality and quantity of the food available to the low-income community. This year, we increased the amount of fresh produce in our distribution network by over 2,000,000 pounds.
Over the coming year, our primary focus area will be directly addressing the most vulnerable of our community, children, seniors and those low-income families and individuals who are in the most difficult situations.
We all know how bad the federal and state fiscal situations are. As a result, there likely won’t be a lot of help coming from them in the coming years. So, we need to work together as a community to help fight hunger locally with local assets. We encourage you to support local non-profits and their efforts to feed people. We hope as you consider giving, that you will include MCFB in your plans.
Donations can be sent to Merced County Food Bank at 2000 West Olive Ave. Merced, CA. 95348. To learn more about us, go to www.MMCFB.org – where you can also donate online if you prefer.
https://map.feedingamerica.org/county/2022/child/california
https://www.feedingamerica.org/research/rural-hunger-research
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/ Unemployment Rate in Merced County, CA
https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/county-level-data-sets/county-level-data-sets-download-data/
https://edd.ca.gov/en/about_edd/news_releases_and_announcements/unemployment-2023
https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/ag-and-food-statistics-charting-the-essentials/food-prices-and-spending/
