Rise in food stamp cases shows that many more New Mexicans are going hungry

Photo by Mills Baker

Here’s another sign of how the poor economy is affecting New Mexico: state data show that 70,000 more New Mexicans are using food stamps than just a year ago.

According to data from the New Mexico Human Services Department, individual use of the federal Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program, formerly known as food stamps, rose by 28 percent in New Mexico from September 2008 to September 2009, when nearly 325,000 New Mexicans were collecting benefits that help them buy food.

Food stamps help individuals and families living around the poverty level — roughly $22,000 for a family of four. And the increase in food stamps usage in New Mexico has coincided with a similar rise in the state’s unemployment rate, which has risen dramatically over the past year. The rate reached  7.9 percent in October, up from 4.5 percent in October 2008, according to the New Mexico Department of Workforce Solutions.

As bad as the numbers are, they may not capture the full picture of how widespread hunger is in New Mexico, officials said Monday.

“Not are we only seeing low-income people who need food,” said Sonya Warwick of Albuquerque-based Road Runner Food Bank, which distributes foodstuffs to pantries and soup kitchens across the state, “[but] we’re seeing people whose hours are cut. They may make too much money to qualify for food stamps.”

But they are having trouble putting food on the table, she said.

In the past, the Road Runner Food Bank has estimated that 100,000 New Mexicans who are not on assistance go hungry at some time or another, Warwick said.

The rise in food stamp cases, which is almost entirely federally funded, offers a glimpse into how the recession is hitting New Mexicans. And the picture isn’t pretty.

Over the past year, nearly 40,000 adults joined the program’s rolls, compared to nearly 30,000 children, data show. Adults make up just over 50 percent of the food stamp recipients in New Mexico.

Food stamp usage rose nearly everywhere in New Mexico, in urban and rural areas.

Bernalillo County saw an increase of nearly 40 percent from September 2008 to September 2009 as the caseload grew by more than 12,000 cases, state data show.

Santa Fe County, meanwhile, recorded a 33 percent increase in food stamp cases while Dona Ana County, which includes Las Cruces, saw the caseload rise by 24 percent.

Rural areas were equally hard it, if not harder hit by the economic troubles.

Lea County, in southeastern New Mexico, saw food stamp cases rise by more than half, jumping to 3,459 this September, up from 2,263 cases a year before. Colfax County, up north, saw its caseload rise by nearly 40 percent, jumping from 533 cases last year to 745 cases this September.

The rise in New Mexico’s food stamp cases has led to increased costs, which jumped from $23 million in September 2008 to more than $41 million in September 2009, data show. The federal government foots the bill for the program.

Hunger of course is not confined to New Mexico. More and more Americans are going hungry, according to recent reports.

According to a research report issued earlier this month from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, more and more Americans are struggling with where to find their next meal. The report, authored by Mark Nord, Margaret Andrews, and Steven Carlson, said that 17 million households across the nation at some time during the year had difficulty providing enough food for all their members due to a lack of resources.

The prevalence of food insecurity was up from 11.1 percent (13 million households) in 2007 and was the highest observed since nationally representative food security surveys were initiated in 1995.

Meanwhile, the New York Times published a story over the weekend detailing how the federal program, has increased dramatically during the recession.

An interactive map that ran with the Times story showed how many people in each county use the program.

Torrance County was the worst off county in New Mexico, according to the Times’ interactive map. According to the graphic, nearly 25 percent of all Torrance County’s 17,000 residents, and 50 percent of its children, were on food stamps in 2009, an 11 percent rise from 2007.

But Torrance County was nowhere near the top of the list of worst-off counties across the country as measured by the number of food stamp cases compared to population, the graphic showed.

According to the graphic, Wade Hampton County in Alaska earned that dubious honor. Nearly 50 percent of that county’s residents, and 62 percent of its children, were on food stamps.