COMMENTARY Hunger in a “Land of Plenty”: A Renewed Call for Social Work Action Kathryn Libal, Stephen Monroe Tomczak, Robin Spath, and Scott Harding Over the past three decades levels of pov-erty in the United States have remainedlargely stagnant and various forms of social inequality have increased. Simultaneously, social welfare programs to ensure social protec- tion have contracted through conservative political mobilization to “downsize big government.” When the economic recession hit in 2007, Food Stamps (renamed the Supplemental Nutrition Action Pro- gram, or SNAP, in 2009) became one of the most important social benefits available to affected indi- viduals and families. By 2009, when President Barack Obama took office, some 32 million indi- viduals used SNAP to meet basic food needs. High unemployment, underemployment, instability in the housing market, and widespread home loan foreclosures have led to unprecedented participa- tion in food assistance programs by low-income or poor individuals and families (Hoefer & Curry, 2012). The rate of households affected by food insecurity in 2012 was 14.5 percent, a significant increase from an average of 11 percent in years immediately prior to the recession (Coleman- Jensen, Nord, & Singh, 2013; Nord, Andrews, & Carlson, 2008).SNAP usage and expenditures have grown rapidly since 2009 to meet this increased demand. In 2013 more than 47 million individuals, approximately one in six people in the United States, received SNAP benefits, reflecting ongoing economic hardship (Food Research and Action Center, n.d.). Moreover, a deeper crisis of food insecurity is suggested by low participation rates in SNAP—only 79 percent of those eligible received benefits in 2011 (the latest date for which data are available; note also that only 39 percent of elderly and 42 percent of eligible individuals with incomes above the poverty level participated; Food and Nutrition Service, Office of Policy Support, 2014). In this context, rising opposition to the SNAP program and other vital social supports should be cause for action by social work educators and prac- titioners. In 2013, one member of Congress argued for substantial cuts to SNAP on biblical grounds, citing 2 Thessalonians: “The one who is unwilling to work shall not eat” (Fincher, 2013). Stereotyping of food aid recipients as loafers or undeserving of government assistance occurs not only in the halls of Congress, but also in conservative news outlets, in which it has reached a fever pitch. And, with little organized advocacy by social work professional organizations, many in Congress aim to transform the federal SNAP program to a block grant, follow- ing the model that dismantled Aid to Families with Dependent Children, popularly known as AFDC, in the 1990s. The Agricultural Act of 2014 (P.L. 113-79), popularly known as the Farm Bill, included changes in the SNAP application process that may result in up to $8.5 billion in cuts to the SNAP program ...

1. COMMENTARY
Hunger in a “Land of Plenty”: A Renewed Call for
Social Work Action
Kathryn Libal, Stephen Monroe Tomczak, Robin Spath, and
Scott Harding
Over the past three decades levels of pov-erty in the United
States have remainedlargely stagnant and various forms of
social inequality have increased. Simultaneously,
social welfare programs to ensure social protec-
tion have contracted through conservative political
mobilization to “downsize big government.” When
the economic recession hit in 2007, Food Stamps
(renamed the Supplemental Nutrition Action Pro-
gram, or SNAP, in 2009) became one of the most
important social benefits available to affected indi-
viduals and families. By 2009, when President
Barack Obama took office, some 32 million indi-
viduals used SNAP to meet basic food needs. High
unemployment, underemployment, instability in
the housing market, and widespread home loan
foreclosures have led to unprecedented participa-
tion in food assistance programs by low-income
or poor individuals and families (Hoefer & Curry,
2012). The rate of households affected by food
insecurity in 2012 was 14.5 percent, a significant
increase from an average of 11 percent in years
immediately prior to the recession (Coleman-
Jensen, Nord, & Singh, 2013; Nord, Andrews, &
Carlson, 2008).SNAP usage and expenditures have

2. grown rapidly since 2009 to meet this increased
demand. In 2013 more than 47 million individuals,
approximately one in six people in the United
States, received SNAP benefits, reflecting ongoing
economic hardship (Food Research and Action
Center, n.d.). Moreover, a deeper crisis of food
insecurity is suggested by low participation rates in
SNAP—only 79 percent of those eligible received
benefits in 2011 (the latest date for which data are
available; note also that only 39 percent of elderly
and 42 percent of eligible individuals with incomes
above the poverty level participated; Food and
Nutrition Service, Office of Policy Support, 2014).
In this context, rising opposition to the SNAP
program and other vital social supports should be
cause for action by social work educators and prac-
titioners. In 2013, one member of Congress argued
for substantial cuts to SNAP on biblical grounds,
citing 2 Thessalonians: “The one who is unwilling
to work shall not eat” (Fincher, 2013). Stereotyping
of food aid recipients as loafers or undeserving of
government assistance occurs not only in the halls
of Congress, but also in conservative news outlets,
in which it has reached a fever pitch. And, with little
organized advocacy by social work professional
organizations, many in Congress aim to transform
the federal SNAP program to a block grant, follow-
ing the model that dismantled Aid to Families with
Dependent Children, popularly known as AFDC,
in the 1990s.
The Agricultural Act of 2014 (P.L. 113-79),
popularly known as the Farm Bill, included changes
in the SNAP application process that may result in

3. up to $8.5 billion in cuts to the SNAP program over
10 years, while securing increased benefits to agri-
business (Bolen, Rosenbaum, & Dean, 2014). Thanks
to organizing by food justice advocates, some of
the harshest proposed changes to who can receive
SNAP were not included in the final legislation.
Still, there is mounting support in Congress to
weaken SNAP and incorporate work requirements
and drug testing (already in place in a number of
states) as a way “to encourage self-sufficiency and
independence” (Sheffield, 2013).
The muted response of the social work profes-
sion to the mounting assault on food security is dis-
turbing. Little visible advocacy on this issue has
been carried out by NASW at state or federal levels.
Efforts to strengthen resources for SNAP and other
food assistance programs can mean more than
ensuring adequate nutrition for millions of Ameri-
cans. Indeed, sustained activism also would under-
mine the ongoing assault on public efforts to address
key social problems. In short, this is a critical time
for social workers to challenge those who portray
doi: 10.1093/sw/swu029 © 2014 National Association of Social
Workers 366
SNAP as little more than a drain on the country’s
resources.
Since the Great Recession began in 2007, only a
handful of presentations have been made at the
annual program meetings of the Council on Social
Work Education about food insecurity, hunger,

4. and food assistance programs. Professional publica-
tions also include few works reflecting research on
this topic. Yet, the current lack of attention by social
work to hunger issues is no historical anomaly. For
decades there has been little focus in social work
literature or advocacy on these critical issues. In
debates over how to respond to hunger and food
insecurity in the United States, the profession has
an uneven history at best.
High-profile statements regarding hunger issues
in the social work profession have been relatively rare
and have most frequently arisen during economic
crises. At the 1937 National Conference of Social
Work, Faith Williams of the Bureau of Labor Statis-
tics contended that “some form of consumer subsidy
is needed if children and adults in the marginal-
incomegroupsarenot to suffer that most serious form
of hunger, the hunger of malnutrition” (Williams,
1937,p. 541). Speaking to the 1961 National Con-
ference, then New York Commissioner of Welfare,
and later dean of the Fordham University Graduate
School of Social Service, James R. Dumpson
(1961) asserted, “There are children in our country
who do go to bed hungry; [and] there are many
more whose fundamental nutritional needs are
not met” (p. 89).
Concern over hunger seems to have generated a
professional response only when it became a major
political issue. In 1988, after nearly eight years of
cutbacks in social welfare programs instituted under
the Reagan administration, hunger again received
recognition in an editorial in Social Work by a public
health expert, J. Larry Brown. Brown (1988) wrote
that the United States was “on the way to eliminat-

5. ing the problem of hunger in the 1970s through a
combination of economic growth and expanded
government programs” (p. 99). However, in the
1980s “America has changed greatly” and now
had millions more hungry (Brown, 1988). Brown
(1988) presciently wrote, “America is at a cross-
roads. We will either continue down the road of
growing disparity and increasing inequality, or we
will change course to rectify the unfairness”
(p. 100). Sadly, it is the former prediction that has
come true.
It is our contention that how the profession
defines the problem of hunger and food insecurity
matters significantly. Hunger received renewed
attention in the early 1980s due to the recession
and simultaneous Reagan administration budget
cuts in food aid and public assistance programs. A
concern with increasing hunger led to the forma-
tion of a Presidential Task Force on Food Assis-
tance, which issued a report indicating the need
to better define and measure hunger in the United
States (Task Force on Food Assistance, 1984). Fur-
ther efforts to assess hunger led to a report issued by
the Life Sciences Research Office, which included
the conceptual definitions of terms widely accepted
and used today: “food security,” “food insecurity,”
and “hunger” (Anderson, 1990). Food security is
defined as “access by all people at all times to
enough food for an active, healthy life and includes
at a minimum: a) the ready availability of nutrition-
ally adequate and safe foods, and b) the assured abil-
ity to acquire acceptable foods in socially acceptable
ways” (Anderson, 1990, p. 1560). Food insecurity
occurs “whenever the availability of nutritionally
adequate and safe foods or the ability to acquire

6. foods in socially acceptable ways is limited or uncer-
tain” (Anderson, 1990, p. 1560). Hunger is defined
as “the uneasy or painful sensation caused by a lack
of food [and] the recurrent and involuntary lack of
access to food . . . which may produce malnutrition
over time” (Anderson, 1990, p. 1598). Anderson
(1990) made the case for this new conceptual
framework, indicating that “examining hunger
problems in the United States in terms of food
security may allow both researchers and policy-
makers to confront this issue on a more objective
basis” (p. 1575); these measures were adopted and
remain in place today. The federal government col-
lects annual survey data on food insecurity using
these concepts.
Although this framework is useful from an aca-
demic and policy perspective, the use of the term
“food insecurity” in public discourse arguably
diminishes the urgency of this issue. Not only does
the social work profession need to play a more
prominent role in public policy debates, we must
have a central voice in the broader discourse—
placing an emphasis on hunger as a major social
problem.
As Biggerstaff, Morris, and Nichols-Casebolt
(2002) noted more than a decade ago, “the social
work profession directs little attention to the issues
Libal, Tomczak, Spath, and Harding / Hunger in a “Land of
Plenty” 367
of hunger and food assistance programs” (p. 275).

7. This assessment remains true today, with few excep-
tions (for example, Hoefer & Curry, 2012; Jacobsen,
2007; Kaiser, 2013; Kaye, Lee, & Chen, 2013). It is
in this context that the profession should participate
in promoting rights-based organizing to address
food insecurity and hunger within urban, suburban,
and rural communities across the United States
(Chilton & Rose, 2009). In the past decade social
workers have played key roles in administering
the patchwork of 10 federally funded programs
that make up the food “safety net.” But the profes-
sion’s advocacy on this issue has been limited. One
significant action would be to join the small but
growing alliance of advocates calling for a national
plan to end hunger and food insecurity (New York
University School of Law International Human
Rights Clinic, 2013). This national strategy would
entail creative rights-based policy analysis and ef-
forts to translate findings to broader publics that
stress participation of those experiencing hunger
and food insecurity. Other steps could include inte-
grating food justice, food policy, and rights-based
notions of food and food security into the social
work curriculum and to foster research at local,
state, and federal levels on the adequacy of current
policies and approaches to secure the basic human
right to food for all in the United States. Social
workers, both as individuals and through their
associations, could work more effectively with
state- and national-level organizations, such as the
Food Research and Action Center. To ensure pro-
fessional social work involvement in policy evalua-
tion, monitoring, and rights-based reform efforts,
social work educational institutions must also initi-
ate innovative field learning opportunities for stu-
dents, as well as collaborations across professions

8. and with local and state organizations to build
capacity for policy change. Community organizers
can assist in raising awareness about the reality
of hunger and food insecurity in all communities.
At the forefront of this effort should be the desire
to address hunger and food insecurity, not as a mat-
ter of charity, but as a fundamental human right
necessary to ensure the dignity and well-being of
all individuals.
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Kathryn Libal, PhD, is associate professor of policy practice,
School of Social Work, and associate director, Human Rights

14. Institute, University of Connecticut, 1798 Asylum Avenue,
West Hartford, CT 06117; e-mail: [email protected]
Stephen Monroe Tomczak, PhD, is assistant professor of social
welfare policy and community organization, Department of
Social
Work, Southern Connecticut State University, New Haven.
Robin Spath, PhD, is associate professor in the administration
concentration and Scott Harding, PhD, is associate dean for
academic affairs and associate professor of community
organization,
University of Connecticut, West Hartford.
Original manuscript received November 10, 2013
Accepted November 18, 2013
Advance Access Publication July 29, 2014
Libal, Tomczak, Spath, and Harding / Hunger in a “Land of
Plenty” 369
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