{"id":1174,"date":"2020-09-15T21:12:55","date_gmt":"2020-09-15T21:12:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spokanetrends.org\/newsletter\/?page_id=1174"},"modified":"2020-09-21T20:52:42","modified_gmt":"2020-09-21T20:52:42","slug":"q3-food-insecurity","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/spokanetrends.org\/newsletter\/q3-food-insecurity\/","title":{"rendered":"Decreasing Food Insecurity Over Last Decade: Facing new challenges due to COVID-19"},"content":{"rendered":"
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by Scott Richter and Dr. Patrick Jones<\/strong><\/p>

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought on many new challenges, with no place on the globe unaffected. Getting the right treatment to patients, not to mention case tracking, not to mention developing a vaccine have been huge challenges. Making sure everyone has the basic requirements of food, shelter, and clothing has been challenged too.<\/p>

The United Nations World Food Programme recently doubled their estimates of acutely food insecure people in the world, from 135 million<\/a> to 265 million<\/a> globally. The earlier estimate came from a report before the pandemic listing \u201c\u2026conflict, the effects of climate change, and economic crises.\u201d as the primary causes.<\/p>

The UNICEF<\/a> definition of acute food insecurity is \u201cwhen a person\u2019s inability to consume adequate food puts their lives or livelihoods in immediate danger.\u201d It is more severe than the food insecurity faced in the U.S.<\/p>

A recent Brookings<\/a> report using the COVID Impact Survey \u00a0showing \u00a0initial impacts of COVID-19 has concluded the pandemic has greatly increased food insecurity in the U.S. The Brookings report shows food insecurity during 2018 the U.S. was at or near 20-year lows. By April 2020, food insecurity for mothers with children 0-12 and households with children 0-17 more than doubled from the 2018 estimates. Food insecurity for all households nearly doubled while mothers with children 0-12 who were not eating enough because they could not afford it more than tripled.<\/p>

It seems longer than just 5-months ago, but by April of this year, many places across the U.S. had already entered quarantine. In-class instruction for public schools had been suspended, millions if not tens of millions of jobs were lost, and people who still had jobs were either working from home or were considered essential often in workplaces such as healthcare, food processing, and agriculture with an increased risk of contracting coronavirus. As we know now, April 2020 was just the beginning of a long pandemic and the negative impact on the food insecure population could already be more negatively impacted than the Brookings report indicated in April.\u00a0<\/p>

Feeding America<\/a> defines hunger as \u201ca personal, physical sensation of discomfort\u201d and food insecurity as \u201ca lack of available financial resources for food\u201d.<\/p>

Feeding America uses the U.S. Department of Agriculture<\/a> two-part definition of food insecurity:<\/p>