Poverty Group Tells of Hunger in Central Valley

A survey of low-income families has turned up evidence that more than 66,000 children in California’s Central Valley regularly go hungry, anti-poverty researchers said Tuesday.

Senate President Pro Tem David A. Roberti (D-Los Angeles) called the finding especially disturbing because of the area’s thriving farm industry.

“The Central Valley is in many ways the food basket of the entire country,” Roberti said at a press conference. “For us to have hunger in that part of the state is shocking, it’s criminal.”

The California Rural Legal Assistance Foundation, a nonprofit anti-poverty organization, said it interviewed 335 randomly selected low-income families last year in four counties and found that 36% said they regularly experience food shortages.

It estimated that as many as 65,900 school-age children in the counties--Fresno, Kings, Stanislaus and Tulare--often go hungry.

Nearly all of those who experience shortages said they ran out of money for food an average of seven days a month, foundation officials said.

“The agricultural wealth and explosive real estate development in the Central Valley in recent years belie the existence of a ‘shadow society’ of families who live in caves and cars and of hungry children who work alongside their parents in the fields,” said Marion Standish, the foundation’s executive director.

She said the children often do poorly in school because of their hunger.

“The real tragedy here is not only that we found hungry children, but that the problem is entirely preventable,” said Laurie True, a foundation public health nutritionist who wrote the report. “If federal food programs were fully funded and effectively administered, every hungry child would be fed.”

True said the hunger was a result of inadequate benefit levels and of families failing to know about or take advantage of programs.

“Even with the benefits, even with food stamps, families are still hungry,” she said. “Benefits are clearly inadequate.”

She said Gov. Pete Wilson’ proposal to cut welfare benefits would make the problem worse.

The report, among other things, calls for higher food stamp benefits, reduced paperwork to qualify for food stamps and expansion of food programs for women and children.