This is the season of plenty. Today I went to a friend’s house
where I stripped her basil plant of leaves, filling a plastic bag.
She had already picked enough for a large batch of pesto, which she
also shared.
This is the season of plenty. Today I went to a friend’s house where I stripped her basil plant of leaves, filling a plastic bag. She had already picked enough for a large batch of pesto, which she also shared.
This generous friend had extra cantaloupes, so I also took those.
Later my husband and I went to see a different friend who let us glean from his many tomato plants. Searching under the leaves and vines for the red fruit was like an Easter egg hunt, although hotter and scratchier. The distinctive smell of the tomato plants filled our nostrils.
These friends also gave us a couple of cucumbers, some zucchini, peppers and grapes.
When we returned home, we dropped some of the tomatoes and an assortment of the other goodies, at a neighbor’s. He returned the favor with a large carton of apples, extras from a client.
It seems like there is extra food everywhere. My husband is canning tomatoes and tomato sauce, and we freeze peppers and shredded zucchini for later use. The cantaloupes and cucumbers will be eaten fresh. I haven’t decided what to do with the apples yet – maybe a couple of pies, dry some of them and make applesauce with some.
With all this abundance circulating among us and our friends, I’ve begun to wonder why people are hungry in America. There must be enough to go around, right?
Eating only vegetables and fruit would keep us alive, but it wouldn’t be the well-rounded diet we are used to. And not everybody has generous friends with gardens. But why do people need to go to food banks or use food stamps? Where does the system break down?
According to the Second Harvest Food Bank website, “since the last national hunger study in 1997, the number of working families receiving food aid has grown … due to the Central Coast having among the highest housing costs in the nation. Forty-four percent of network clients reported having to choose between paying for rent and food in recent months … So, despite their image as wealthy resort and agricultural communities, Santa Cruz and San Benito counties have thousands of residents ‘presently over 47,000 a month’ who require supplemental food aid to help make ends meet.”
Another website, that of Bread for the World, talks more about the root causes: “From a broader economic perspective … the United States has the highest wage inequality of any industrialized nation (Hunger in a Global Economy: Hunger 1998, Bread for the World Institute) … just providing food seldom gets to the roots of hunger. In the United States, food pantries provide urgently needed help. But food assistance is less important to overcoming hunger than job opportunities.”
And this is while food is cheaper here, as a percent of income, than in many other countries, and low price food imports drive prices down and make life difficult for food producing families.
Each question leads to another question. I’m going to keep looking for answers.
