Today, approximately 333.3 million people live in the United States, and the nation’s official poverty rate for 2022 recorded 37.9 million people (11.5%)-the same proportion as the previous year. However, the Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM), which takes into account the actual cost of living and the complex implementation of social welfare structures, found that “poverty rate increased by 60% from 25.6 million people (7.8 percent) in 2021 to 40.9 million people (12.4 percent) in 2022”. This massive change is, no doubt, one of the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic and expiring aid programs.

The Food Research & Action Center published that, overall, 1 in 8 households (or 12.8%) in the United States “experienced food insecurity, or lack of access to an affordable, nutritious diet. An estimated 44.2 million Americans lived in these households.” Further analyzing this troubling statistic finds that 1 in 20 (5.1%) households experienced “very low food security, a more severe form of food insecurity, where households report regularly skipping meals or reducing intake because they could not afford more food” and 1 in 6 households with children (17.3%) experienced food insecurity, “an increase of 40% compared to 2021”.

Concerning race and ethnicity, Black (22.4%) and Latinx (20.8%) households are “disproportionately impacted by food insecurity, with food insecurity rates more than double the rate of White non-Latinx households” (9.3%). This is the case because of systemic racism which pervades neighborhood divestment, occupational distribution, and wage rates. Notably, households in rural regions endured more severe struggles with food insecurity than those in cities and suburban areas, being 14.7% and 12.5% of households in 2022, respectively. The Food Research & Action Center also reported that across America, the South (14.5%) had the highest food insecurity rate, followed by the Midwest (12.4%), the Northeast (11.6%), and the West (11.2%), with the prevalence of food insecurity varying considerably on a state-by-state basis, ranging from 6.2% in New Hampshire to 16.6% in Arkansas.

While dozens of millions of residents across the United States experience impoverishment and food insecurity, the federal government’s SNAP programs aid only “3.7 million people out of poverty, 1.4 million of whom were children, school meals lifted 1.5 million people out of poverty, 830,000 of which were children, and WIC lifted 164,000 people out of poverty, 98,000 of whom were children”. Clearly, this is not even close to supporting every single household or solving the root causes of food insecurity throughout the country. The United States local, state, regional, and federal governments must make large-scale systemic reforms to actually serve their people.

Food Research & Action Center explains that “hunger and poverty are driven by economic and social hardships-including insufficient wages, lack of affordable housing, inadequate health care, and more-and by systemic discrimination. These factors, referred to as root causes, are complex and interdependent. They must be addressed if our nation is to end hunger.”

Having access to enough healthy food is a human right, so every single person-no matter who they are, what they have done, where they live, or what they believe in-deserves access to sustenance so that they may live a healthy and fulfilling life. To achieve this necessary goal, the United States will have to see massive overhauls of current social, cultural, economic, educational, political, environmental, and other systems.

Scholars, activists, and policymakers have already researched ideas for long-term viable solutions to food insecurity, and they continue to brainstorm ways to improve our current reality. Patrick Webb, Director of USAID's Feed the Future Nutrition Innovation Lab and former Chief of Nutrition at the World Food Program identifies serious structural issues with current food systems that make them so weak saying, "we need to be thinking we policymakers what we want our food system to look like in 20, 60, 70, even 80 years, and then work backwards to figure out what on earth is it going to need to get us there?".

The following are some of the most commonly proposed solutions to food insecurity:

Addressing Food Waste

• Independent Food Network shares that "surplus food redistribution further entrenches food banks as a response to food poverty...Instead, we need to reverse the normali[z]ation of food banks"

• Food waste cannot and should not be the solution to food insecurity in the United States

• People cannot afford to choose the foods they consume

• We task volunteers with filling in the gaps in America's broken social welfare programs and chronically low wages

• "To unnecessarily transport surplus food from a wasteful system when food should be affordable to all"

Eliminating Poverty as a Direct Cause of Food Insecurity

• Neither federal nutrition programs nor private charitable food organizations will be capable of solving food insecurity. The U.S. must enact new, well-researched, people-first policies that focus on reducing poverty to achieve nationwide food security.

• Increasing the federal minimum wage

• Offering workers paid family and medical leave

• Providing health care benefits to employees

• Constructing "affordable housing and transportation as well as quality child care and educational settings"

Community-Based Food Systems

• "Pass financing initiatives or zoning regulation changes to incentivize building supermarkets and local grocery stores in food deserts and underserved areas"

• "Create food hubs by partnering with schools, community colleges, hotels, and other food-related businesses that can act as community food kitchens to provide storage and distribution capacity in communities that lack such infrastructure"

• "Incentivize food companies to sell to smaller, local grocers in addition to supermarket chains and corporations"

• "Connect federal food programs with local family farms, community gardens, and community-supported agriculture"

• "Incentivize local grocers to accept food benefits such as SNAP"

• "Pass a universal free school meals program so that all school-aged children have access to food"

• "Enable eligible participants to use their SNAP and WIC funds for online grocery delivery to make food more easily accessible"

Corporations and Employers

• "Research shows that more than half of food-insecure adults would experience a major positive impact on their household finances if they had access to higher-quality jobs."

• Business owners can individually help fortify "economic stability through workplace strategies"

• Paying workers livable wages

• Providing flexible schedules and paid leave

• Offer affordable higher education and other types of opportunities that facilitate upward movement

USDA's Capabilities

• The Center for American Progress claims that "fortunately, the United States has tools to address hunger. The USDA has a range of hunger and nutrition programs designed to meet the needs of the most vulnerable and underserved, including infants and toddlers in child care, school-aged children, mothers and their infants, older adults, people with disabilities, Native communities, rural communities, and more"

• USDA programs' main goals are to improve access to healthy foods and decrease rates of food insecurity as much as possible

• Their Food and Nutrition programs can support households struggling to get by and guide them through to financial stability. Federal food and nutrition benefits provide civilians with the funds for food as well as other necessities such as utilities, housing, child care, and transportation.

• USDA has room to improve in terms of access and service delivery. Their programs are limited in that they "target the consequences of hunger, rather than its root causes. Policymakers must do more to confront the choices that have led to poverty and food insecurity in the United States"

Tackling Bureaucratic Obstacles in Accessing Welfare

• Food insecurity in the U.S. is exacerbated by "policy decisions that reduce funding, restrict eligibility, put time limits on participation, and create other onerous burdens that force low-income people to prove need"

• These cumbersome rules and practices undermine the effectiveness of any food and nutrition security programs often failing to support people in desperate situations

Income Supplement and Cash Assistance Programs

• These "can go a long way toward helping low-income Americans increase labor force participation, build economic security, and better manage their family's needs"

• There have been multiple instances of these kinds of programs that benefitted millions of people, yet policies such as the Child Tax Credit (CTC) program, have been reduced or ceased. The Center for American Progress argues that "