The number of New York State residents who could not afford a sufficient supply of food again increased, according to a national report released today by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). New York was one of only 16 states in the nation with a statistically significant increase. More than one in ten New York households now lack sufficient food.

In order to most accurately assess the data, the USDA report compares averages for three-year time periods. In the 2000-2002 period, an average of 9.4 percent of state households suffered from food insecurity; that number rose to 10.4% for the 2003-2005 time period.

USDA estimates only the percentage of food insecure households statewide, not the raw number of people who are food insecure, since such raw numbers are somewhat less statistically valid. Still, the New York City Coalition Against Hunger used the USDA data to calculate the best approximation of the numbers, very roughly estimating that the number of people who lived in food insecure households statewide in 2003-2005 averaged 1.924 million people, which would represent a 156,000 person increase over the estimated average for 2000-2002 of 1.744 million people.

While 2005 numbers for New York City are not yet available, previous reports have shown that the city has a far higher rate of hunger than the rest of the state. Advocates noted that the statewide trend was evident at New York City’s more than 1,200 charitable food pantries and soup kitchens, where need has been rising for years.

“Unfortunately, these new federal statistics are no surprise to grassroots agencies that have been struggling for years to help feed an ever-growing number of hungry New Yorkers,” said Joel Berg, executive director of Coalition, an umbrella group for the city's pantries and kitchens, most of which are faith-based. “This rising local hunger has three main causes: wages have not kept up with skyrocketing costs; social services have been cut back; and the City and State still make it too difficult for families to access food stamp and other nutrition benefits. As a result, the number of working families, children, and seniors citizens forced to use feeding charities is now at the highest levels in modern history.”

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The national numbers are available at: http://www.ers.usda.gov/publications/err29/

The state-by-state numbers are available at: http://www.ers.usda.gov/Publications/ERR29/ERR29i.pdf