A number of state and local anti-hunger advocates have been able to get their utility companies to help with summer food outreach. They work directly with their utility companies to get them to include the information in the bills they send out. If you are thinking about taking this approach, you should contact the utility company as soon as possible.

Food prices are way up – more than 5% in the past 3 months alone. For many of the 28 million people on food stamps, that means empty fridges. Advocates say Washington needs to step in.

CNN

Food inflation hit 4 percent last year, up from 2.4 percent in 2006. While beef prices already were high, chicken and pork prices didn’t reflect record costs for feed and fuel. That’s poised to change as chicken and pig producers who have been losing money slaughter more animals.

High prices for American food are likely here to stay, but the worrisome rate of inflation is expected to level off over the next few years, a top Department of Agriculture economist told lawmakers yesterday.

“My own view is this will moderate,” the agency’s chief economist, Joseph Glauber, said at a hearing called by Senator Schumer to examine the rising cost of food.

Because of the current economics of food, and changes in federal farm subsidy programs designed to make farmers rely more on the markets, large U.S. reserves may be gone for a long time.

The upshot: USDA has almost no extra food to supplement the billions in cash payments it spends to combat hunger at home and in developing nations.

For the first time in its 35-year history, the federal Women, Infants and Children (WIC) Supplemental Nutrition Program — which provides food vouchers to millions of households nationwide — will, starting October 2009, allow participants to buy fresh fruits and vegetables, whole grains and soy-based products.

LATIMES

The roughly $280 billion legislation expands agricultural and nutrition programs.

A key breakthrough came Friday when senior lawmakers agreed to add $800 million for nutrition programs, to be paid for with cuts in direct subsidies and disaster payments for farmers.

North Dakota Democrat Kent Conrad says the shift is “urgently needed because of the run-up in food costs and food prices.”

For millions of American families, the rising food prices and the recession we are seeing unfortunately do not come as a sudden change in fortune. Instead, they come as an exacerbation of an already difficult situation.

As the world faces its first global food crisis since World War II, even American consumers are starting to fret.

Media reports are starting to trickle in about grocers limiting some food purchases, while Costco Wholesale Corp. is seeing higher-than-usual demand for staple foods such as rice and flour as consumers appear to be stocking up.