14 percent of Americans short of food

http://www.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUSTRE5AF42220091116

By Charles Abbott and Christopher Doering

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - More than 49 million Americans -- one in seven -- struggle to get enough to eat, the highest total in 14 years of a federal survey on "food insecurity," the U.S. government said on Monday.

While Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said programs such as food stamps softened the impact of an economic recession, anti-hunger groups pointed to the huge increase from the preceding year when 36.2 million people had trouble getting enough food and a third of them occasionally went hungry.

"The survey suggested that things could be much worse but for the fact that we have extensive food assistance programs," Vilsack told reporters. "This is a great opportunity to put a spotlight on this problem."

USDA's annual report was based on a survey conducted in December 2008, soon after financial markets slumped and when the jobless rate was marching toward its current 10.2 percent.

About 14.6 percent of U.S. households, equal to 49.1 million people, "had difficulty obtaining food for all their members due to a lack of resources" during 2008, up 3.5 percentage points from 2007 when 11.1 percent of households were classified as food insecure.

About 5.7 percent of households, or 17.3 million people, had "very low food security," meaning some members of the household had to eat less. Typically, food runs short in those households for a few days in seven or eight months of the year, USDA said.

more...

http://www.hungertaskforce.org/

I'm doing volunteer work with them. No matter how you cut it, feeding hungry people is an important mission.

And these numbers are for 2008. I work for a state food bank and we've seen the need go up more than 30% in 2009, a greater increase than what we saw in 2008.