Ghirardelli sells wonderful, oversized candy bars – at 4.4 ounces better than two standard Hershey Bars. My favorite is milk chocolate filled with caramel.
Now, the Ghirardelli bars have always been luxury items. For many years they cost $2.99 each. Today, well, you can find them at $4.99 at some stores but at the two supermarkets close to my house they charge $6.69 a bar!
Of course, one does not need chocolate bars to live. Alas, most basic foods have soared over the past year. The half loaf of bread we buy went from $1.89 to $2.34, more than a 20% increase. The prepacked ground chuck (which looks suspiciously like a paving brick) now costs $7.89 a pound, up from $4.99. Vegetables still come on sale for around $1.00 a can, but, the everyday price hovers about $1.69. Oh, bananas still run 54¢ a pound and the gallons of skim milk we buy slid back to $3.79 a gallon (effectively the same price as a year ago) after sneaking up to $4.44 a gallon.
Do your sums and you’ll probably find that the hard cost of everyday items runs around 10% more today than a year ago.
That dime on the dollar hits struggling families and low-income seniors the hardest. On the first of this month food stamp benefits increased by 2.7% – obviously less than the true increase in cost. That means fewer red potatoes at $1.39 a pound, more pressure to stretch each gallon of milk and skipping many nutritious produce items.
Let’s make it more complicated.
Struggling families lack available cash to really stock-up when even essentials are on sale. They can’t buy a dozen cans of corn when it’s a dollar each.
Plus, Missouri – with a pure-red pro-Trump government – now requires food stamp families to complete more detailed recertification paperwork, as well as meeting work requirements. The result is a significant drop in the portion of eligible families getting SNAP in this state.
How many fewer? We don’t know. For decades the Department of Social Services published a Monthly Management Report for the Family Support Division and MO HealthNet. That report listed, among many things, the number of residents of St. Louis County, Worth County and all counties in between receiving benefits – and their average benefit – every month. Missouri doesn’t do that anymore.
That data still gets reported to Washington…they just don’t publish as much info as they used to, preferring now to emphasize year to year comparisons to obscure the recent trend data. We do know that a few months back the Trumpers bragged about getting five million people (a lot of them kids) off the food stamp rolls. What was the total in September in Missouri? That’s not for us to know.
Remember that food stamp participation impacts other government efforts too, such as eligibility for free school meals. If your family gets food stamps it’s less paperwork to get those free meals.
We won’t see Americans starve. We have enough food, this is an economic problem. We will endure a growing number of our neighbors needing more frequent aid from food pantries. Pantries won’t solve the problem but they can reduce the nutrition debt common in low-income households. (This is not new. Many of us in the old St. Louis Metropolitan Food Pantry Association thought of naming Ronald Reagan as our Founder since he caused the dramatic increase in the need for American hunger relief.)
I could take a day of your time but please remember this: Today [10/16] is World Food Day. In Missouri and most of America we are marking the event with less food going to needy families as well as state and federal governments trying to reduce assistance – even if that means more hunger.
Milk and bread ought not be luxury foods.
Glenn Koenen