2021 Food Insecurity in America: Impact of COVID-19 Pandemic, SNAP Enrollments, Food Bank Support, Effects on Children and Families, Solving the Hunger Crisis, Community-Based Feeding Programs, Grassroots Networks, Farm Bill

Professionally converted for accurate flowing-text e-book format reproduction, this presents an important House hearing, held on March 11, 2021, about food insecurity in America.

Contents: A Look at Food Insecurity in America * Opening Statement Of Hon. David Scott, A Representative In Congress From Georgia * Opening Statement Of Hon. Glenn Thompson, A Representative In Congress From Pennsylvania * Introductions * Statement Of Kyle Waide, President And Chief Executive Officer, Atlanta Community Food Bank, Atlanta, Ga * Statement Of Zippy Duvall, President, American Farm Bureau Federation, Washington, D.C. * Statement Of Eric Hodel, Chief Operating Officer And Chief Financial Officer, Midwest Food Bank, Normal, Il * Statement Of Max E. Mcbrayer, Jr., Chief Executive Officer, Racetrac Petroleum, Inc., Atlanta, Ga * Statement Of Ron Edenfield, President And Chief Executive Officer, Wayfield Foods, Inc., Lithia Springs, Ga * Questions * Material Submitted For Inclusion In The Record

The opening statement of the committee chairman noted:

This is a momentous hearing. It is a much-needed hearing. We have, ladies and gentlemen, an extraordinary crisis on our hands confronting our nation, and that is a hunger crisis. And it is very important because there is no Committee up here that is more highly regarded to deal with the issue of hunger and food security than our House Agriculture Committee. And this goes for both Democrats and Republicans. We come to this hearing jointly to get the information, to get the facts, to get some understanding as to why, right now, we have 12 million of our children in this country going to bed hungry and malnourished every night. We are, indeed, the greatest country in the world. We are the most powerful country in the world, and now, today, we are going to show truly how great we are and how powerful we are as a nation, because we are going to solve this hunger crisis. And we start today.

We know that we have saved lives, although we have also lost lives. But where are we now? We continue to see lines, waiting hours to pick up a box of food. We see video footage of children saying they are just plain hungry. I was very moved by the report on CNN where they showed this young lady, in tears. ''What is wrong,'' they said. She said, ''I am starving, and my family is.'' And even if we are now seeing a light at the end of the tunnel as vaccination rates increase, we know that SNAP enrollments are way up, and food banks continue to be flooded with people who have never before had to seek help.

Let's look at the numbers very briefly. Prior to the pandemic in February of 2020, there were 36.8 million people in our country on SNAP. By April of 2020, SNAP rolls were up to 40 million people, and that increased to nearly 43 million by September of last year. What can we anticipate in the future? The Congressional Budget Office in February released their baseline projections for the next 10 years for SNAP. They predict that the negative effects of the pandemic will continue through most of 2022, with an average total of 44 million of our precious Americans on SNAP next year, before it begins to decrease in 2023, hopefully and prayerfully. Even if this virus disappears, we are going to be living with its aftermath for some time. This is why I have said over and over that this hearing is perhaps our most critical, because folks, as you well know, we can do without a lot of things, but we cannot survive without food.