MacroScope

The longest recession since the Great Depression has taken an exacting toll on Americans and their ability to put food on the table. Families who once considered themselves solidly middle class are now signing up for food stamps or turning to food banks to feed themselves in the face of lost jobs or cut wages.

"These are our neighbors, our friends, the people we go to church with," said Margaret McKenna, president of the Walmart Foundation, of the number of Americans who are going hungry. "This is not like this is the other, people we don't know. These are people we do know."

Food stamp enrollment has reached record numbers, while a  survey by Feeding America, the nation's largest domestic hunger relief organization, found that 99 percent of participating food banks reported a surge in demand for emergency food assistance in the past year. Ninety-eight percent of food banks said that demand is being driven by first time users.

Jean Osborn, 61, who lives in Bluffton, Indiana with her 76-year-old husband, knows what it means to lose her footing in this economy. Osborn can no longer work due to health issues and her husband supports them with a factory job that pays $33,000 a year -- an income level that means the couple does not qualify for many government benefits.

So Osborn, who used to volunteer at food banks to help the needy, now relies on them to feed herself and her husband. She tries to extend the hand-outs of bread, peanut butter or meat as long as possible.

The Becker-Posner Blog has an interesting debate posted on the question of  food shortages and their accompanying price rises. As usual, it is a to-and-fro between economist and Nobel laureate Gary Becker and his University of Chicago colleague Richard Posner, a U.S. appellate judge.

Becker reckons that some commodity prices will rise as the global economy recovers but that food is different.

“Rapid growth in future world GDP is likely to greatly raise the prices of oil and other fossil fuels, unless concerns about global warming induce major steps to reduce the demand for these fuels. Rapid growth in world output is also likely to sharply raise the demand for cereals, meat, and other foods in developing countries. However, I have tried to show why food is different from fossil fuels and minerals, like copper, in that the supply of food is not limited by natural bounds on overall quantity. Rather, the efforts and ingenuity of farmers and researchers are able to greatly increase world food supply to meet even very large increases in the world demand for food.”