The White House Food Summit, Five Decades On
Photo Credit © Tabrez Syed on Unsplash.The 1960s was a decade of great change within the United States – both culturally and politically. Everything, from the start of the counterculture revolution, through the second wave of feminism and on into the stirrings of modern environmentalism, started then.
However, another movement was springing up – one that was unnoticed by the general public, but whose consequences were probably the most far-reaching: the war to put an end to hunger within the United States. A monumental change.
It all started on December 2, 1969 when President Nixon convened the first and only White House Conference on Food, Nutrition and Health.[FN2] This article looks into the forces that were at play and led President Nixon to do something none of his predecessors had done.
Food Insecurity in Pre-60s America
By the start of the 1900s, food production in the United States had reached exponential levels of growth. In the 1920s, food prices were so cheap that food insecurity among even the most vulnerable members of society was at an all-time low. The United States was so secure in its ability to provide for their citizens that it was able to donate 20 million pounds of food relief to Europe during the First World War.
However, the tragedy of the Great Depression (1929-1941) sparked renewed interest in food insecurity within the US government and civil society. Key responses included various social welfare programs sponsored by the government, widespread mass media campaigns and several non-governmental efforts to set up soup kitchens, food banks and food drives. Over time, the programs, coupled with steady economic improvement and the entry of the US into WW2 in 1941, lead to a significant reduction in food insecurity within the country.
Food Insecurity in Post-60s America
By the early 1960s, many in the US government considered hunger to be a problem of a distant era. That was until Senators Joseph S. Clark and Robert F. Kennedy made a tour of the Mississippi Delta. Their tour exposed the harsh truth of extensive pockets of food insecurity within the country – to both the general public and the government.
Mounting public outcry was spurred on by a particularly damaging report first published in 1969 by the Citizens' Board of Inquiry into Hunger and Malnutrition in the United States. This board was set up to determine the scope of starvation and hunger in selected poverty areas throughout the country; to assess the extent of nutritional knowledge at medical schools, among medical practitioners, and within the United States Public Health Service. They were also asked to do research on the extent and quality of public and private programs then underway. Finally, the Board was asked to make immediately workable strategy recommendations as well as longer-term recommendations to identify and deal with the root causes of the problem. [FN1] While this work was being pursued, CBS in May 1968 broadcast a special documentary entitled "CBS Reports: Hunger In America”.[FN5] This documentary claimed that more than 10 million Americans were suffering from varying degrees of hunger and malnutrition.
The President was facing strong pressure from within and outside Washington D.C concerning the food insecurity crisis. There was a consensus that something needed to be done concerning the situation that highlighted Third-World conditions in what was at the time considered to be the most developed nation in the world.
On May 6, 1969, Nixon sent a letter to Congress listing the objectives concerning food insecurity as well as guidelines on how he expected to tackle it. This included the expansion of existing social welfare programs, an overhaul of failed programs and the creation of new programs to replace the old inadequate ones. [FN3] He also announced to Congress that he would host a White House Conference on Food, Nutrition and Health.
The conference began on December 2, 1969, and was attended by more than 5,000 experts, delegates, stakeholders, titans of industry and journalists. [FN5] It was designed to be divided into two separate conferences – one on hunger and the other on nutrition. President Nixon opened the program by effectively declaring a War on Hunger at all levels within the United States. The government listed a powerful set of recommendations, including:
● Expanding food stamp spending from $350 million to $2.5 billion,[FN3]
● Efforts to eliminate malnutrition in children and pregnant women through the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (or WIC),
● The Meals on Wheels initiative, and expanding existing school lunch programs.
At the next election of 1972, Nixon won the election in a landslide, taking 60.7% of the popular vote and carrying 49 states. He was the first Republican president to win the votes of the South. Not all suggestions from stakeholders were accepted: a $5,500 guaranteed basic income program was not accepted; neither was the call for nutrition education in schools, or the removal of all food programs from under the United States Department of Agriculture. Demands for better food safety regulations and further improvement on existing food safety regulations were also left on the floor.
Though the convention did not achieve all the objectives it set out, it did have lasting effects on food security and safety within the United States, and woke decision makers up to both the need for a more effective social welfare net and also the discriminatory nature of existing policies. Though much has been achieved in the country in terms of food production, hunger and malnutrition remain serious issues in our society.
Is It Time for Another White House Food Summit?
According to information from the United States Department of Agriculture, food security within the country peaked at 14.9 percent in 2011 and has been declining ever since. However, the events of the pandemic saw this downtrend stagnate at 10.5 percent. 5.1 million households (3.9 percent) had very low food security and this was most pronounced among single-mother households and households with incomes below the poverty line.
All this is despite the government spending a total of $122.1 billion on food assistance programs during the 2020 fiscal year. [FN8] Is it time to have a deeper conversation about food security within the country? Though malnutrition and hunger may seem to be issues of the last century, recent statistics show that it is a battle that we are far, far from winning. Maybe it is time for another White House Food Summit? All that this author knows is that 11.7 million US children struggled with food insecurity in 2020, an unforgivable number.[FN6]
Resources
[1] Michael H. Dessent, "Hunger U.S.A.", A Report by the Citizens' Board of Inquiry into Hunger and Malnutrition in the United States, With An Introductory Comment By Robert F. Kennedy, 8 San Diego L. Rev. 180 (1971). See link at https://digital.sandiego.edu/sdlr/vol8/iss1/19/
[2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_House_Conference_on_Food,_Nutrition,_and_Health
[3] https://www.google.com/amp/s/time.com/4477157/hunger-america-history/%3famp=true?espv=1
[4] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunger_in_the_United_States
[6] https://whyhunger.org/just-the-facts/
[7] https://www.childrensdefense.org/state-of-americas-children/soac-2021-child-hunger/
[8] https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/chart-gallery/gallery/chart-detail/?chartId=100976