Hunger Paper Released by the Center for American Progress: The Case for State Food Action Plans

The Case for State Food Action Plans: Laboratories of Food Democracy
Joel Berg delivers a comprehensive strategy for addressing hunger at the state level.

• Download the full report here.
• Watch the video presentation of the paper here.
  
  
  States are currently facing unprecedented challenges. Budgets are shrinking at the exact moment that the needs of residents, and particularly low-income and unemployed residents, are greatest. It will take both states and residents some time to fully recover. The times necessitate well-thought-out policy choices that most effectively take advantage of existing resources. Ideally, solutions developed during times of limited resources will inform the best use of more plentiful resources when times are good again.

  When it comes to food, that means states efficiently using federal resources to increase the nutrition assistance available to struggling families, while further leveraging those resources—as well as untapped market forces—to increase the direct income obtained by small- and medium-scale farmers. In large states, increasing the use of federal entitlement programs among eligible households can pump hundreds of millions of additional dollars into their economies. Even in the very smallest states, the increase could be tens of millions of dollars.

  While the best long-term strategy for reducing hunger is to increase the number of residents who hold living-wage jobs, maximizing the use of the countercyclical safety net—which expands when the economy is weak—is the best short-term way to slash hunger.

  States can rapidly achieve these solutions by:

  * Identifying pressing hunger, food, nutrition, and agriculture problems in their state
  * Gathering a diverse knowledge base or group of experts who understand different pieces of the puzzle
  * Discussing and evaluating known best practices and a limited number of innovations worthy of appropriate investments
  * Establishing goals and developing a plan for achieving those goals
  * Tasking key point people and granting them authority to quickly achieve those goals
  * Ensuring accountability for swift, high-quality enactment of those goals

  • Read the full report here.