Suchergebnisse

Food assistance and food charity refer to practices where public, private, or third sector actors provide food (or resources to acquire food) to individuals or households that face hunger or food shortage. The food is provided for free or for a minimal cost and the provision is conducted through varying services like food banks. Domestic food assistance practices are realized in relations between a collective (the provider or donor) and individuals (the recipients of the assistance). For those international practices of food aid that take place between collectives, typically nations or global food aid organizations and recipient countries, see the entry for Food aid. Currently, approximately 800 million people in the world are undernourished and even more lack food security. According to FAO (2015), food security exists when "all people, at all times, have physical, social and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food that meets their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life". The practice of providing food or resources to acquire food to needy individuals or households is probably almost as old as the history of the civilization yet its institutionalized forms are relatively new. Nowadays, the organized forms of food assistance are widespread. Numerous international, national, and regional organizations participate in the food provision activities and there is a great variation in how, where, and by whom the food is provided for those in need. In this entry, food assistance refers more specifically to the social and public policy measures exercised by the public sector, whereas food charity denotes those activities that are conducted by third sector organizations (including religious communities) or business enterprises. The main difference between the two is that the public sector may have obligations that are determined and regulated by eformal, usually democratically negotiated norms related to social security. In contrast, the third sector and business actors decide their practices and norms on their own (within the limits of allowed practices), and the third sector practices are based on voluntary participation. From the ethical viewpoint, the difference between the public and non-public actors is important. Many of the ethical aspects regarding food assistance and food charity are closely related to the fundamental points of morality: the equal dignity of all human beings and the idea of universal human rights that includes the right to food due to its vitality for human life. This entry begins with a characterization of the relation between some general moral principles and the provision of food for hungry people. After that, the entry focuses in more details to the ethical considerations that regard food assistance (provided by the public sector) and food charity (provided by the third and private sector) in its different forms. For further ethical considerations on the latter, see the entry for The Ethics of Food Charity. ; nonPeerReviewed

The Food Assistance Convention (Convention), signed by seven countries and the European Union in April 2012, went into effect on January 1, 2013. The Convention replaces and builds on the 1999 Food Aid Convention (FAC 1999). The use of ''assistance'' instead of ''aid'' in the title signals a change in approach from fixed commodity donations to offering a series of options for assisting communities address their particular food needs and goals. The objectives of the Convention are broad, to ''save lives, reduce hunger, improve food security, and improve the nutritional status'' of the most vulnerable populations. These objectives are in accord with international humanitarian law, which is referred to in the Preamble. The foundation of the Convention is the annual commitment of food, cash, vouchers, equipment, seeds and other assistance by each Party. The flexibility in developing the assistance for each population permits the donor to consider the specific local needs, capabilities and goals, e.g., to avoid interfering with or displacing local production. ''Vulnerable populations'' and the ''most vulnerable populations'' receive special attention throughout the Convention. The text refers to improved coordination of multilateral efforts, authorizes increased involvement of other organizations and stakeholders, and expressly gives priority to obligations under the World Trade Organization.

A report about the U.S. providing foreign aid. A focus is placed on U.S. food assistance allocated by legislative authority for FY 2008.

Bangladesh boasts a wide array of targeted food assistance programs that strive to achieve a number of important developmental objectives. Findings from the 2000 Household Income and Expenditure Survey suggest that these programs are reasonably well-targeted towards the poor. Most of the pro-poor targeting is due to targeting the poor within communities rather than central actions to target poor areas. However, any definitive conclusions about the 'pro-poor' nature of spending on these programs are clouded by the survey findings which suggest that a large share of the total resources devoted to these programs disappear before reaching their intended beneficiaries. If these 'unaccounted-for' benefits are in fact appropriated by the non-poor, the incidence of spending on these programs would likely be pro-rich. Greater efforts to channel a higher share of resources to regions with greater need of assistance and to improve monitoring systems to reduce leakage from the system are likely to yield high dividends.

Evolution of the program, 1960-80; food stamps, reduction in food specificity, work incentives and targeting, centralization of programs.

An estimated 17.6 million American households were food insecure in 2012, meaning they were unable to obtain enough food for an active and healthy life. Programs to augment local access to healthy foods are increasingly widespread, with unclear effects on food security. At the same time, the US government has recently enacted major cuts to federal food assistance programs. In this study, we examined the association between food insecurity (skipping or reducing meal size because of budget), neighborhood food access (self-reported access to fruits and vegetables and quality of grocery stores), and receipt of food assistance using the 2008, 2010, and 2012 waves of the Southeastern Pennsylvania Household Health Survey. Of 11,599 respondents, 16.7 % reported food insecurity; 79.4 % of the food insecure found it easy or very easy to find fruits and vegetables, and 60.6 % reported excellent or good quality neighborhood grocery stores. In our regression models adjusting for individual- and neighborhood-level covariates, compared to those who reported very difficult access to fruits and vegetables, those who reported difficult, easy or very easy access were less likely to report food insecurity (OR 0.62: 95 % CI 0.43–0.90, 0.33: 95 % CI 0.23–0.47, and 0.28: 95 % CI 0.20–0.40). Compared to those who reported poor stores, those who reported fair, good, and excellent quality stores were also less likely to report food insecurity (OR 0.81: 95 % CI 0.60–1.08, 0.58: 95 % CI 0.43–0.78, and 0.43: 95 % CI 0.31–0.59). Compared to individuals not receiving food assistance, those receiving Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits were significantly more likely to be food insecure (OR 1.36: 95 % CI 1.11–1.67), while those receiving benefits from the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) (OR 1.17: 95 % CI 0.77–1.78) and those receiving both SNAP and WIC (OR 0.84: 95 % CI 0.61–1.17) did not have significantly different odds of food insecurity. In conclusion, better neighborhood ...

This project is an analysis of the spatial inequality that exists between rural and urban areas in access to food assistance agencies. I gathered the population of all food pantries and soup kitchens in 24 sample counties in Indiana and mapped the location of these agencies using geographic information system analysis. Using the population center of the census block group, I measured the distance from the population center to the nearest food assistance agency. If the closest agency was more than a mile away, the census block group was considered a food assistance desert, a concept I created that draws on the food desert measurement. I found that rural high‐poverty counties in my sample are the most likely to contain census block groups that are food assistance deserts, and urban high‐poverty counties are the least likely to contain food assistance deserts. From these findings, I determine that access to assistance agencies needs to be increased in rural areas, especially rural areas with high‐poverty rates.