Author Archive

Posted by Kristin Roberts | April 12th, 2010

Hi everyone,

The D.C. WIC Agency scheduled a second training for farmers interested in accepting WIC and FMNP vouchers. That training is set for April 15, 1 to 3 p.m. If you want to register, please email me at kroberts@dchunger.org — I’d be happy to pass your name on to the Agency.

The D.C. Farmers’ Market Collaborative meets monthly at D.C. Hunger Solutions. Anyone is welcome to attend and discuss outreach/publicity about the new WIC cash value checks — and publicity for markets generally. Please contact me if you’d like to attend a meeting, and/or if you’d like to be added to our email list to keep up with farmers’ market news and opportunities to help.

Additionally, the Farmers’ Market Collaborative (in cooperation with the WIC Agency) is creating a handy, at-a-glance guide to the four federally-funded nutrition benefits that residents can use at District markets. This guide will be available for all farmers and market managers as a quick-reference to have on hand at their cash registers. (It also might prove a useful model for other states in the future — as the June 2009 CFSC report notes, only about half the states have elected to include farmers’ markets this year as vendors for the new fruit & vegetable checks included in the WIC food package.) Contact me if you would like a copy.

Thanks, and I hope to hear from many of you soon!

-Kristin Roberts, D.C. Hunger Solutions
kroberts@dchunger.org; 202.986.2200 x3041

Posted by Kristin Roberts | January 28th, 2010

By Kristin Roberts, Nutrition Associate, D.C. Hunger Solutions

A new report from the Food Research and Action Center shares some shocking new statistics: one in five households in the District of Columbia aren’t able to afford the food they need. The number is even worse when you look at children: the rate for households with children is 40.6 percent.

That’s right. Two in five D.C. households with children say they cannot afford enough food! These findings vividly underscore that more must be done, and quickly, to help struggling families.

These statistics come from Food Hardship: A Closer Look at Hunger (PDF here). This new report analyzes survey data that were collected by Gallup and provided to FRAC. It contains new 2008 and 2009 data on food hardship – the inability to afford enough food – for the District of Columbia and the Washington metro area.

The Gallup survey question on food hardship is very similar to one posed by the Census Bureau and analyzed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture in its official measure of food insecurity, but because of the large sample size Gallup provides a closer, more localized and more recent look at food hardship. Official government data on food insecurity has a nearly one-year time lag and does not go below the state level.

What does food hardship look like in the D.C. area?