DISPATCHES: Iowa, The 'World's Food Capital,' Is Hungry

West Des Moines, IA Patch:

If hunger is an invisible problem in Iowa, blame it on people like Kim Olsem, a mother and a fighter, whose two jobs -- one working with the elderly, the other working with schoolchildren -- don't pay enough to feed her properly.

Read the whole story: West Des Moines, IA Patch

Comments

[ttsgw]

04:44 PM on 12/21/2011

According to the GOP candidates, it is her own fault that she has not become an executive that lives on others work and the tax payers money paid to the corporations as they pay campaign contributions (bribes) to the politicians.

[ALECTRO]

01:05 PM on 12/21/2011

This is why we need labor Unions. An individual cannot negotiate a fair wage with an employer, a Union of workers can.

Expand the ability of labor to organize! Stop hunger in America.

[NJP1]

11:10 AM on 12/21/2011

Our food supplies, at least in the context of developed western economies, have been delivered to us by constant inputs of cheap oil…tractors, fertilizers, foodtrucks, supermarkets.
Also, cheap oil provided the jobs that paid for that food. It was a one way, go-forward system. Everybody made and sold ‘stuff’ to each other, next year’s payrise always funded last year’s debts, and everyone who wanted a job could have one. Doing what seemed irrelevant, we all got wages, we didn’t realize that we were just passing money around, the only real ‘prosperity’ came from energy input: oil coal and gas. and it was finite.
But we demanded more, so the government borrowed more to support the American Dream, and prolong the illusion that the American lifestyle really was non-negotiable.
Maintaining that illusion has resulted in colossal debt, and still more borrowing to service that debt. Just like a home in sub-prime, the kids are starting to go hungry because the family income is being used to fend off creditors, leaving less to buy food heat gas and luxuries we got used to.
With 40 million on food aid any nation with such an imbalance of wealth is inherently unstable, infinite demand has hit the wall of finite resources but few believe it. The illusion of prosperity cannot withstand the onset of hunger and privation. http://www.yourmedievalfuture.com/

[stang1985]

09:12 AM on 12/21/2011

Have they tried prayer?

[Beth Dalbey]

10:52 AM on 12/21/2011

@RationalityPlease: Thanks for keeping your eye on the ball.

[born 2b different]

10:27 AM on 12/24/2011

They tried that in Texas to get more rain. Didn't work out to well.

[RationalityPlease]

06:40 AM on 12/21/2011

This a story about one of the many millions of our neighbors who are working TWO jobs and who still cannot afford the basics of food and medicine--the many millions in ADDITION to the many millions of our WORKING neighbors who are eligible for SNAP (foodstamps) because their employers are paying them non-living wages.

And yet, I see only one comment, so far, written in direct response to that hideous reality.

Some posters deflect to other serious problems, like the hold Big Agra now has on our food supply; others deflect to making ignorant comments about weight; others deflect to making strange generalized judgments about people not cooking healthy food; etc....

C'mon, folks. Stop deflecting and let yourself seriously think about this insane reality for at least a few seconds before jettisoning off onto other topics, stop trying to protect yourself from the cold reality that this might next be YOU by engaging in whatever weird form of denial game is your particular predeliction:

In addition to our unemployed, elders, and disabled, we now have many millions of WORKING people--many who are toiling away at MORE THAN ONE job--who are being so exploited by their employers that they still cannot afford the basics for themselves and their families.

This may be YOUR future, the future of YOUR loved ones, and it most certainly IS the future of many more millions of YOUR neighbors, if we allow such exploitation to continue.

[tj3usa]

05:59 AM on 12/21/2011

It really is time for a revolutionary change in the United States.

Electing Obama again is not enough. Electing Romney? Why not bring Herman Cain back and make him President anyway.

Our politics and business leadership have become irrelevant to the future if not a detriment and obstacle to decency and progress. No?

Occupy Wall Street was simply not enough. It was far too normal and polite considering the provocation like the hunger issue in Iowa and things similar.

As other commentators here have noted, something is wrong! Indeed something is wrong. The entire purpose of civilization is being thrown away for exactly what? So that a handful of despicable people can become insanely rich and then buy out the political system to be their servants.

I am not against the wealthy. Wealthy is good. Insanely wealthy is not!

Perversion of the democracy is also not OK. Elect who you want in Iowa or Florida and you get the same set of lame stooges for crooked business interests. Business is not the enemy, crooked business is. Our politics is over as it stands. Time for a change and a big change not dreary election (re-election) of pretenders.

[Ronju01]

05:34 AM on 12/21/2011

The Archer Daniels Midland Corporation (ADM) has been the most prominent recipient of corporate welfare in recent U.S. history. ADM and its chairman Dwayne Andreas have lavishly fertilized both political parties with millions of dollars in handouts and in return have reaped billion-dollar windfalls from taxpayers and consumers. - The Cato Institute.

[mirabay]

04:11 AM on 12/21/2011

when farmers are paid not to grow to keep prices up something is wrong..........when farmers can't use seeds from previous years something is wrong.............when farmers put the worst pesticides on their fields to get the biggest yield without caring for environmental concerns and health concerns something is really wrong...........

[micwar]

07:40 AM on 12/21/2011

think about this...what happens if you don't use pesticides on your crops...you don;t have any or you half a crop...and when their is no harvest how many people will go hungry....you can import your food where their is no controls on what pesticides are used.... if the people in this world are going to be fed it will require the use of pesticides...who's going to decide which people of this world starves. ..it will be a challenge for agriculture to feed the ever growing population

[mirabay]

06:13 PM on 12/22/2011

you should look up monsanto and see how they are destroying the seed industry........maybe this can all be done organically and still feed the world..........you have no facts to sustain your moronic statement............

[SitandStay]

03:07 AM on 12/21/2011

What is ADM's stock market symbol. 666?

This fraud is happening everywhere. We need to be "picking our own" from the big agri fields.

http://www.peoplestandup.ca/videos.htm

[Herkybird]

02:31 AM on 12/21/2011

People cannot afford food, medicine, and shoes in Iowa yet their #1 industry is not farming it is casinos. If people want to gamble what little money they have then fine. But don't come crying you have no money for food because you just blew your paycheck at Ameristar or Harrah's. States who have high unemployment and foreclosures should not even be allowed to have gambling in their state.

[born 2b different]

10:29 AM on 12/24/2011

Can't decide if you're a Scrooge or a Grinch. I already know you're not very sharp with a post like that.

[TsaniLK]

01:34 AM on 12/21/2011

Couple of things. Used to be the closer you were to the source of a products production, the cheaper is was. Not anymore. Used to be all agriculture was networked locally with all facets of farming, livestock, industrial supply for production needs, and so on. Big business has turned this on it's head. Chicken producers, for example, atleast in the southeast, have literally cornered the market, in little feifdoms, purdue in the mid-atlantic, tysons in the mid-south, and so on. Every farm in their areas supply just them, and they advertise it, on the farms. Dairy is very similar. In the mid-atlantic, it got so bad, you could drive along country roads and see signs in famers yards asking folks to boycot Highs Dairy Stores, as they had crippled the market in the region, just like Walmart has with so many industries. This nothing yet another aspect of wall street run amuck!

[Bigspot]

01:11 AM on 12/21/2011

Testing farm comments

[ErnestineBass]

12:50 AM on 12/21/2011

We can now add a new term to the lexicon of upside-down America.

"Food Creators".

[trish333]

12:36 AM on 12/21/2011

Gee, maybe they should stop using our food as fuel.

[blackwind]

03:16 AM on 12/21/2011

Can't.
The ethanol subsidy is in the form of a tax break, so to end it would technically be a tax increase, and too many of the current batch of politicians have sworn to The Grover himself not to raise taxes. You're going to have to wait for a better quality of politician to come along.

[lowbeam]

12:32 AM on 12/21/2011

For years I thought it was a weight watchers clinic or something. It was the welfare office. The people coming and going were huge.

[ErnestineBass]

12:56 AM on 12/21/2011

So you finally admit to hanging out at the welfare office.

I suspected as much.

[Zenith1959]

01:16 AM on 12/21/2011

That's because cheap food is full of fat.