CONCLUSION
Re-Engaging Americans in the Search
for Lasting Solutions
Sarah Burd-Sharps and Kristen Lewis, Social Science Research Council
Fresno County, California, leads the nation in agricultural productivity, with an annual agricultural output
valued at $6.8 billion. Fresno farms yield a cornucopia of fresh food, producing more grapes, chicken, turkey,
milk, tomatoes, peaches, plums, and almonds—among others—than any other U.S. county. Paradoxically, Fresno
also has a higher rate of food insecurity than any other California county. One in
“Measure of America’s
five residents—more than 190,000 people—experience times when they don’t have
aim is to rethink the ways
enough food for an active, healthy life.1 There’s no better illustration that hunger
in which we as a society
in the United States is not due to a lack of food than Fresno, a county whose
understand and measure
workers literally feed America, yet often cannot feed themselves.
disadvantage, with a
The presence of hunger amid plenty is profoundly troubling, its persistence
view to reframing the
even more so. If we’re being honest with ourselves, while the composition of the
debate and re-engaging
hungry population has certainly shifted over time, we have failed to move the
Americans in the search
needle on this issue in any fundamental way for more than a decade. U.S. Departfor lasting solutions.”
ment of Agriculture statistics show household food insecurity hovering just under
12 percent from 1998 to 2007, after which it rose above 14 percent in the aftermath of the Great Recession. The
household food insecurity rate in 2012 was 14.5 percent, which translates to nearly 49 million Americans.2
The puzzling part is that this problem endures despite excellent research about the root causes of food insecurity, years of advocacy, important policy reforms, innovative programs on the ground to feed people, the dedica-
www.bread.org/institute?
? 2013 Hunger Report? 169
n