Investigate Midwest (https://investigatemidwest.org/tag/hunger/)
About 180,000 more Illinois residents are expected to struggle with access to food this year compared to 2019, according to new research. Rural areas in southern parts of the state will likely suffer the most.
Across the country, fewer people have struggled with reliable access to food because of insufficient income in recent years, according to U.S. Department of Agriculture data from 2015 to 2019. But the percentage of single mothers with children who struggled with food access remained steady over those four years, at about 15-16%.
For single fathers and married couples with children, the percentage who were food insecure decreased over the same time period. It dropped significantly for single fathers: from 10% in 2015 to 6.5% in 2019. Women’s income is, on average, less than men’s, and women are more likely to stay at home to care for their children, according to The 19th.
In 2019, about 14% of all U.S. households with children experienced food insecurity. Among them, 5.9% were considered “low food security,” which means parents could not provide adequate, nutritious food for their children at some point in a year because they lacked enough money.
The USDA created the Food Box program to help feed families struggling during the pandemic. A review by the Midwest Center shows that some program contractors were expected to work in a new field or with new products they weren’t used to handling.
Monsanto is working on a genetically engineered variety of corn designed to grow bigger ears. While that's a major leap for the agribusiness company, it's only a small step in corn's long and storied history.
U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack spoke about global food insecurity and hunger on Thursday at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. During his speech, Vilsack highlighted a recently released USDA report that found roughly 14 percent of Americans are food insecure.