Title: No Reason for Hunger to Exist at Memphis
Proposed by:
Date: 21-March-2018
Thesis Statement: There is hunger, poverty and the hopelessness in the Memphis. Since ancient times, hunger has been accompanied with human, but in the great city like Memphis, hunger still exists.
Today’s Memphis people have all scientific, financial, and the technical resources to eliminate the hunger once, as well as, for the all, but also it seems that the country’s political leaders, moreover, the business geniuses seem unable to solve the hunger that should have been removed years ago. As the superpower, Memphis still has many hungry people. Even in urban areas that experts named as “food deserts,” which describes the logic behind existence of the hunger in this area. In the past few years or even decades, various governments have tried to eliminate the double scourge of poverty and hungers, resulting in many factors that increase, not decrease the hungry population (Goshit).
One thing Memphis leaders (business and political) can also do is to remove agricultural subsidies because subsidies can cause serious economic losses. In any case, these subsidies will in turn are beneficial for some large companies that are engaged in the industrial farming, which produces the wrong foods for the most Memphis people. Industrialized agriculture is a huge business. There are no large agricultural companies that shift’s their production of food from the processed food to more nutritious foods, such as vegetables and fruits, less meat and the cereals. If the subsidies cannot eliminate due to the intensive lobbying of relevant departments, at least subsidies must be the shifted or redirected to produce more nutritious foods. As food experts in film documentaries point out, what happens today is that healthier as well as more nutritious foods are more expensive than foods that are undernourished. By eating all of these high-calories, malnourished foods, and these situations creates obesity and make children unhealthy (Hefner). In retrospect, the Memphis has all available resources to eliminate the hunger in own region. It is ironic that the Memphis provides foods aid to those famine-stricken countries in Africa, but hunger exists in their own backyards. As hunger affects Memphis’s schoolchildren, what is essential is political motivation and bipartisan support. The Memphis can spend expensive federal plans, such as space programs, to send people to space; however, it cannot solve the simple problem of hunger. Feeding single hungry child in the Memphis is very cheap, and it is certainly something the Memphis can afford. Memphis leaders can re-direct their expensive military plans to solve the problems of poverty and hunger because the future of the Memphis is threatened in these regards. If a national budget is also tights due to the reduction of tax revenue, then it only necessary to redistribute some of the priorities in the budget processes. On a whole, solving the problem of hunger and also its alike the issue of poverty is within the resources of the Memphis leaders. This is only the matter of rearranging the priorities for spending. After all, the younger generation today is the country’s future. They are tomorrow’s potential leader and must receive all the bits of help and guidance’s that these poor, young, malnourished and the hungry children are suffered so soon in their lives. Students at the Shelby County School in Memphis get Bologna Sandwich for lunch, If, they forget to carry around 2$for their meal (McFayden). This is why some poor students (80% are eligible for free lunches) would rather sit in cafeterias than can be exposed as “poor children” to the classmate. The kids daily without going through lunch line, thus, they do not want to be recognized as the child who gets the free meal. This stigma is big for these school years, everything will change. School system also provide three meals per student in a district which are the breakfast, lunch and the dinner – all free, no matter how prosperous their families are. This is because the federal plan is changing the cash reimbursement method for the school lunches. The government is now paying attention to the economic conditions of the entire city, instead of judging the individuals’ families who are based on a poverty line. The program, known as “Community Eligibility Provision”, kicks in 40% of school district population is considering the low income (mainly based on registration of food stamps). Now, Memphis’ reimbursements will be based on the number of meals served in the cafeterias, instead of how many poor children going to the schools, forming inducement to serve the extra meal (Kiptinness, and Dharod).
Dietary meals have been associated with the academic performances. A study conducted by a professor at Harvard Medical School (HMS) in 2002 found that “nutrition risk” students missed the many days of the school and showed more aggression and anxiety – All of these areas show improvements after 6 months when the free breakfast plan was implemented. This may sound simple, but a lasagna or chicken might the difference between the children who concentrate on their unfilled stomach, and this gap mainly falls on the economic line. The Memphis’s subsidized schools lunch plans dates back to the World War 2 when the many young people were excluded because of the continuing physical consequences of the childhood malnutrition. “National School Lunch Act” in 1946 was passed as a national security measure which got a main update in 1998 when congress agreed to start buying snacks for young people after certain extra-curricular activities (Varghese). Launch experimentally in 2010, latest expansions go one step further and ensures the availability of food in every child’s cutlery. This is the signature of the First women Michelle Obama’s “Let’s Move!” part of the campaigns to ends childhood obesities (Quist-Adade). The supporter also says that the latest plans are crucial for preventing the hunger in a classroom in the Memphis and also across a country in a Boston, Chicago, Baltimore, in some parts of the New York, and elsewhere. “Community Qualifications” can not only eliminate the stigma of children who are eligible for the free or the reduced lunches, but also ensure that the other students – who have not submitted annual paperwork, may be more than the poverty cutoff or some increasing number of young homeless people don’t fall into these gaps. For some children, not eating the healthy food at the school indicate not intake of food at all. The children will not go home and say they are hungry, in addition, their mothers say that they don’t have anything for you to eat and not much money to going to market,” Baltimore student Adriana Johnson told regional news station when her area qualified. Overall, nearly 6.4$ million students in 13,800 regions are now accepting expanded standards (Popielarski, and Cotugna). In the Memphis alone, the parents will keep the $1.8 million which they had previously separated for lunch.
For many young people in Memphis and across the country, one of their most exciting days is the last day before the school holidays. But for other people like the unfortunate children in our country’s schools, the more negative consequence is: hunger. More than 16 million children in the United States, or children in the world’s richest countries, are at risk of starvation. That’s wrong. One of the richest countries in the world should not let children be hungry. The Summer Food Tee Program provides free nutritional meals and snacks, helps children get the nutrition they need, learn, play, and don’t provide them with free school lunches throughout the summer months. I am happy to tell you that the House passed on Wednesday. My amendment to the FY 2015 Agricultural Appropriation Act adds $3 million to the Summer Child Electronic Welfare Transfer Program, enabling the U.S. Department of Agriculture to study alternative methods to provide food assistance to urban and urban low-income children in rural areas in summer month. Experts said that the country’s economic recession has exacerbated the region’s economic difficulties. These difficulties have come from the continuous reduction of family farms, the shortage of skilled workers and the lack of major employers. In the case of unemployment, many middle class families such as Carless find themselves forced to choose whether to pay for housing, cars, utilities and medical expenses – or to buy groceries.
At some point we need to grow, but we have never seen a national economy like this. “Susan Sanford, who served as Memphis Food Bank South-South during the past two decades, said:” We have never seen so many employees unemployed and have to rely on emergency Food aid. ”
According to the Food Bank, about 186,500 people in 31 states in Arkansas, Mississippi and Tennessee last year relied on institutions to accept the next meal, an increase of 28% from four years ago. Paradoxically, the region also suffers from a high rate of obesity, which experts believe is the result of households eating less expensive and less nutritious food. Memphis has many well-qualified small business owners. They are the core of the Memphis economy and play an important role in the economic recovery of our country. After years of hard work, when the U.S. Department of Commerce awarded $1 million in grants to launch the MBDA Business Center in Memphis, my persistence paid off. MBDA is the only federal agency set up specifically to promote the establishment and development of businesses owned by ethnic minorities. The Memphis Business Center helps our ethnic minority companies get loans and expansion. Earlier this year, I was pleased to announce that the Memphis MBDA Business Center has won an additional $250,000 in federal funds.
The problem of hunger in the Memphis is that their leaders are in the state of rejection. They also pay the lip service to allocate funds for the school’s lunch plans; however, the meals provided are seriously inadequate. Of course, there is money to help/get the hungry child to eat the three meals in a day because feeding children who need them are not expensive. Even though there are the several private charities that do their best to help solve the problem of poverty and hunger, the government has the most resources to solve this double problem. The Memphis must further strengthen its security network to help people in trouble and be excluded from the vouchers when they want it really. In fact, Memphis people feel insecurity regarding food if this should not happen at first place at all (Okawa).
References
Goshit, ZD. “Alleviating Poverty And Hunger In Nigeria: Lessons From The United States Of America”. Lwati: A Journal Of Contemporary Research, vol 4, no. 1, 2007. African Journals Online (AJOL), doi:10.4314/lwati.v4i1.36832.
Hefner, Philip. “Poverty In The United States: Ministry And Protest”. Dialog, vol 52, no. 1, 2013, pp. 6-8. Wiley-Blackwell, doi:10.1111/dial.12003.
Kiptinness, Catherine, and Jigna Dharod. “Bhutanese Refugees In The United States: Their Dietary Habits And Food Shopping Practices Upon Resettlement”. Journal Of Hunger & Environmental Nutrition, vol 6, no. 1, 2011, pp. 75-85. Informa UK Limited, doi:10.1080/19320248.2011.551034.
McFayden, Elgie. “Contemporary United States Presidents: Impact On American Poverty”. SSRN Electronic Journal, 2008. Elsevier BV, doi:10.2139/ssrn.1200182.
Okawa, Ryuho. Spiritual World 101. IRH Press USA Inc., 2015.
Popielarski, Jo Anna, and Nancy Cotugna. “Fighting Hunger Through Innovation: Evaluation Of A Food Bank’s Social Enterprise Venture”. Journal Of Hunger & Environmental Nutrition, vol 5, no. 1, 2010, pp. 56-69. Informa UK Limited, doi:10.1080/19320240903575160.
Quist-Adade, Charles. From The Local To The Global. Sensepublishers, 2017.
Varghese, Shabu Abraham. “Poverty In The United States: A Review Of Relevant Programs”. Poverty & Public Policy, vol 8, no. 3, 2016, pp. 228-247. Wiley-Blackwell, doi:10.1002/pop4.148.