World Leaders Prioritize Nutrition in the 1,000-Day "Window"

Human growth and cognitive development depend on getting the right foods in early childhood.

Today, January 26, the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, features a series of events on food security and nutrition. Every year, the Forum brings together  global decision makers, country leaders, economic innovators, and representatives of some of the world’s most influential organizations to seek effective solutions to pressing global problems.

Events today highlight the important role of partnerships in ensuring good nutrition during the 1,000-day "window of opportunity" between pregnancy and a child's second birthday. The Scaling Up Nutrition (SUN) Movement supports countries in improving nutrition during the 1,000 Days.

SUN's press release notes: “The fact that nutrition is being highlighted as an essential issue at the World Economic Forum is an example of the SUN Movement’s inclusive approach, which recognizes that a range of sector and partners have a role to play in scaling up nutrition….

"Professionals from agriculture, social protection, and education are combining forces as they increasingly see good nutrition as an important part of their programs and an indicator of their success.”

In his piece yesterday in the Huffington Post, Dr. David Nabarro,the U.N. Secretary General's Special Representative for Food Security and Nutrition, says: "The world will be changed forever if every child is well-nourished during their 1,000-day window of opportunity.

"Those of us working to further the SUN movement and our many partners around the world have seen the great potential nutrition has to give children a stronger start at life.

"Now, we are excited that leaders at Davos see an investment in nutrition during those 1,000 days as a tangible -- and achievable -- contribution to a stronger, more stable world for all."

Next week, February 1-2, Bread for the World will host Church Leaders for 1,000 Days, an ecumenical gathering to build the advocacy voice of the church for maternal and child nutrition. For more information, visit www.bread.org/womenoffaith1000days. 

Michele Learner is associate editor for Bread for the World Institute.

 

 

Where Hope and Opportunity Meet

Did you know that over the past decade (2001- 2010), six of the world’s 10 fastest-growing economies were in Africa? Countries from Ghana in the west to Mozambique in the south have demonstrated consistent growth and the trend is expected to continue.  A number of factors account for this growth, including technological innovations, political stability, trade and investment. For example, according to the World Bank, malaria takes $12 billion out of Africa’s GDP every year. But thanks to more and better technology that allows for affordable treatment and mosquito-treated bed nets, death rates have fallen by 20%. Trade and investment are also on the rise- in 2010, total foreign direct investment was more than $55 billion—five times what it was a decade earlier, and much more than Africa receives in aid.

So it makes perfect sense that Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE), chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on African Affairs, hosted an Opportunity: Africa conference last week. The event, held in Wilmington, DE, on January 18, connected Delaware residents with some of the nation’s leading authorities on sustainable development and trade with Africa. Bread for the World and other participants examined how businesses, faith communities, and individuals in the state can benefit from engagement with Africa.

The conference reflected Sen. Coon’s own commitment to improving the lives of people around the world – a commitment inspired by an early experience studying abroad in Kenya. For example, he is a leading advocate for malaria prevention and serves as co-chair of the bipartisan Senate Working Group on Malaria.

The Africa of today offers good opportunities for U.S. investment. In his welcome address, Coons said: “Whether it is businesses taking advantage of fast-growing new markets, local faith-based organizations engaging in humanitarian work, or individuals interested in promoting development, Delawareans have shown themselves to be extraordinarily interested in engaging in Africa. I organized this conference to help them do that and to help make sure Delawareans have the information and resources they need to connect with tremendous opportunities for engagement afforded by the continent."

In his keynote address, USAID Administrator Dr. Rajiv Shah noted: “Robust growth rates, a new commitment to health and agriculture, and significant advances in science and technology are creating new opportunities in development on the African continent.”

Administrator Shah argued that these gains should be supported and sustained by a U.S. commitment to long-term investments. Making resources available through well-planned programs such as Feed the Future will enable African countries to develop their agricultural infrastructure in sustainable ways and diversify their economies. Feed the Future aims to free 18 million people, more than 7 million of them children, from poverty and malnutrition. The 1,000 Days initiative takes advantage of a unique window of opportunity – the 1,000 days between pregnancy and a child’s second birthday – to create a healthier future for an entire generation. This is because the right nutrition during this period is critical to a child’s ability to grow, learn, and ultimately rise out of poverty.

Faustine Wabwire is foreign assistance policy analyst at Bread for the World Institute.

 

Addressing the State of Hunger

The 2012 Hunger Report executive summary is Bread for the World Institute’s overview of the state of hunger.

Tomorrow night, President Obama will deliver his 2012 State of the Union address, laying out his national priorities based on current conditions in the United States.

Will he discuss the 15 percent of Americans who wonder whether they will have enough to eat this month? Will he say it’s a top priority to make sure that no child goes to bed hungry?

2012 is a particularly important year for hungry people in the United States because Congress is scheduled to reauthorize the farm bill, which will define U.S. farm policies for the next five years. The bill shows exactly how much our country values nutritious food for all as a goal of our farm policies.

Bread for the World Institute’s 2012 Hunger Report recommends effective ways for the U.S. government to respond to the agriculture and nutrition challenges of 2012 and beyond. Read an excerpt from the executive summary of the 2012 Hunger Report: Rebalancing Act: Updating U.S. Food and Farm Policies to learn what we hope President Obama will say in the 2012 State of the Union:

The global agricultural system faces many daunting challenges. Seven billion people currently inhabit the Earth, and the population is expected to rise to 9 billion by 2050. Food production must increase as climate change puts additional stress on natural resources. Nearly one billion people around the world suffer from hunger, and in the United States one in four people participate in a federal nutrition program. U.S. food and farm policies absolutely need to be aligned.

The 2012 Hunger Report recommends ways for the federal government to better respond to the agriculture and nutrition challenges of today and tomorrow. Normally change in food and farm policy occurs incrementally. The 2012 Hunger Report calls for bolder, more determined thinking about how U.S. food and farm policies can meet the global and domestic challenges of the 21st century.

Farm policies should significantly increase production of healthy foods. But farm policies alone can’t automatically improve access to nutritious foods for low-income families. Strengthening the nutrition safety net is also critical. Nutrition programs need to do more than provide food for hungry people; they must ensure that healthy food is available to all.

The 2012 Hunger Report recommends ways for U.S. development assistance and food aid programs to work together more efficiently. Food aid programs should follow the lead of Feed the Future—the new U.S. Global Hunger and Food Security Initiative—by focusing more deliberately on improving nutrition outcomes for the most vulnerable people, especially pregnant and lactating women and children under the age of 2. This will help achieve the strongest possible nutrition outcomes with the limited resources available.

On the eve of 2012, Congress is negotiating dramatic cuts in the federal budget. Cuts to programs designed to overcome the effects of poverty are in neither the short- nor the long-term interests of the nation. The recommendations in the2012 Hunger Report are all the more relevant because the budget decisions are so urgent.

+To read more, download the executive summary of the 2012 Hunger Report: Rebalancing Act: Updating U.S. Food and Farm Policy.

Kate Hagen is Hunger Report project assistant at Bread for the World Institute.

 

The Agricultural 99 Percent

Migrant workers rest after picking cucumbers in Blackwater, Virginia. Photo by Laura Elizabeth Pohl

2011 was a record year for U.S. farmers, with farm income topping $100 billion. This includes sales of $22 billion in fruits and nuts and $21 billion in vegetables and melons – crops that rely on immigrant farm labor.

But even as U.S. farmers prospered in 2011, those working on farms had less to celebrate.

The nation’s agricultural mecca – Fresno Country, California – had the state’s highest agricultural sales ($5.9 billion) and its highest poverty rate – 27 percent. More than 36 percent of the county’s children were poor, also the highest rate in the state. As one agricultural expert puts it, “High farm sales and high poverty rates often go together.”

Low wages, the seasonal nature of agricultural work, and, for many, unauthorized immigration status make it difficult for farm workers and their families to escape poverty. Farm workers’ high poverty rates aren’t totally attributable to immigration status, but it’s certainly one of the causes: 71 percent of all hired farm workers in the United States are immigrants, and about half of them are in the country illegally.

Poverty among farm worker families has decreased greatly since the mid-1990s, when more than half of all farm worker families were poor. Today 23 percent of farm workers nationally live below the poverty line.

Although many farm worker families have escaped poverty, their wages have increased slowly. Between 1989 and 2009 the value of U.S. agricultural exports rose 250 percent while average hourly farm worker wages increased 18 percent ($1.52) from $8.55 to $10.07. 

In addition to not adequately sharing in the profits of agriculture, farm workers face increased threats on other fronts.

In October 2011, the U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) announced its highest-ever number of removals: 396,906 for fiscal year 2011.

About 55 percent of all individuals removed had been convicted of felonies or misdemeanors. Although most of us can agree that all unauthorized immigrants convicted of serious crimes should be removed from the United States, removing those who are guilty of petty traffic violations, or have no criminal history at all, damages families and doesn’t serve the country.

Of ICE’s almost 400,000 removals for FY 2011, only 6,967  – or about 2 percent – were deported for crimes such as homicide or sexual assault.  

For the 45 percent of deportees with no criminal record, they were guilty of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

There are no easy answers to the predicament of many immigrant farm worker families. But any solution should include some sort of legalization.

Immigrant farm workers need assurance that an I-9 audit won’t destroy their livelihoods and legalization would facilitate immigrants’ deeper integration into rural communities, since they could then invest in their new homes and neighborhoods.

Legalization wouldn’t completely solve the problem of poverty among immigrant farm workers, but it would be a step in the right direction.  

Andrew Wainer is Immigration Policy Analyst at Bread for the World Institute. To learn more about farm workers, read Bread for the World’s 2012 Hunger Report and Bread for the World Institute’s briefing paper on farm workers.  

Battling Child Hunger

Improving nutrition among children is essential to the future of the United States. Unfortunately, childhood hunger and poor nutrition is not among the frequently-discussed issues of this primary season. 

Before the “First in the South” primary – South Carolina’s on January 21-- the candidates would do well to read the 2012 Hunger Report to hear about childhood hunger from South Carolina resident and public health expert Ed Frongillo:

“The idea that children are somehow protected from food insecurity by parents is a myth,” says Frongillo, professor of public health at the University of South Carolina. “Children are aware of the inadequate quantity or quality of food, the struggles that adults are going through to meet food needs, and the limitations of resources for meeting those needs.” 

The effects of multiple hardships on children have been well documented by Frongillo, Chilton and her colleagues at Children’s HealthWatch, and researchers elsewhere—and portrayed more bluntly in the images and words of Witnesses to Hunger. Violence, evictions, parental anxiety rising to crescendo as the month comes to an end and the refrigerator empties—the list goes on.

There is only so much any one program can do to soften the effects of these problems on children. But an analysis by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities shows that SNAP lifts more families with children out of poverty than any other assistance program except the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC). About half of all Americans will receive SNAP benefits at some point before age 20. Among African-Americans, the figure is 90 percent.

The EITC offers a tax refund, a lump sum payment that comes once a year and is ideal for paying down debt, fixing a busted car, dealing with a lingering medical problem, or other such expenses. Low-income working families find it difficult or impossible to budget for these items, because all their resources are simply consumed by day-to-day needs.

SNAP and other nutrition programs, on the other hand, come through for low-income families all year long. They also help the many people who have short-lived scrapes with hunger without experiencing the other hardships of poverty. This is why programs such as SNAP are so vital to meeting the needs of all families, regardless of the harshness of their environment.

Good nutrition is essential, while hunger and malnutrition before age 2 cause harm that is generally irreversible. In addition to providing foods needed for a healthy pregnancy and early childhood, WIC includes nutrition education and access to health care. The program has been proven to reduce rates of fetal mortality and low birth weight and to enhance the nutritional quality of a baby’s diet.

A landmark study in 1991 showed that every dollar spent on WIC saves the government between $1.77 and $3.13 in Medicaid costs for newborns and their mothers. The findings in the study and the strong support for the program from doctors and other medical professionals contributed to bipartisan support for steady increases in WIC funding to ensure that no family would be denied participation. But 20 years later—in spite of volumes of additional research that confirms the value of WIC—it seems that ideological differences among elected officials threaten funding for a cost-effective program with broad public support (94 percent in a 2010 study).

Cutting WIC, SNAP, and other nutrition programs goes against everything we know about the value of preventive care in saving on long-term healthcare costs.

Nutrition programs are one of the most cost-effective ways to control rising healthcare costs, which in the long run are a much greater threat to the nation’s economy than the cost of nutrition programs. Hunger makes people more vulnerable to chronic health problems. Intermittent hunger also contributes to binge eating and overeating to cope with stress and depression. Hunger in babies wreaks havoc on their metabolism and makes them susceptible to obesity later in life. And hunger among children affects cognitive development and leads to lower academic achievement.

Read more on the issue “Women and Children First” from the 2012 Hunger Report.

+The 2012 Hunger Report is available at www.hungerreport.org.

Kate Hagen is Hunger Report project assistant at Bread for the World Institute.

 

 

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