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Invasion of maize-eating caterpillars worsens hunger crisis in Africa

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Crops that feed 200 million people at risk from destructive march of fall armyworm, as agriculture experts call for urgent action

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Read: When a college takes on American poverty
"[The report] put it very clearly for us that we can see that especially first-time students, first-gen students, students who are raising children, single parents, face increasing obstacles to be able to complete that critical college degree," Senator Patty Murray, the top Democrat on the Senate's education committee, told me. The report was in response to a letter sent to the GAO on behalf of Murray, Senator Debbie Stabenow, Senator Edward Markey, and Senator Elizabeth Warren last year.

One chief way that campuses have been addressing hunger is by building food pantries on campus, but Sara Goldrick-Rab, a higher-education professor at Temple University and a leading scholar on campus hunger, told me that those only scratch the surface of the issue. "When there's a food pantry, there's somebody who is acknowledging the problem," she says, but advocates have been fighting for a more systemic response.

The government can address this issue systemically through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, commonly known as food stamps), the report says, but it adds that "almost 2 million at-risk students"-defined as students who are low income or first generation, are raising children, or have another, similar risk factor-didn't receive SNAP benefits in 2016, even though they potentially could have.

That could be because those students didn't know they were eligible: The government restricts students who attend college at least half-time from receiving the benefits, but certain students are exempt from that restriction. The information that most schools and SNAP offices provide students about the program is shoddy, says Samuel Chu, a national organizer for Mazon, an advocacy organization focused on eradicating hunger. "There are very specific ways and accessible ways that students can access SNAP," he says, but even local SNAP offices are often unaware. For example, students who meet the basic criteria for SNAP eligibility and are younger than 18 or older than 50, or who have children, or who work a minimum of 20 hours a week are also eligible to receive the benefit. The GAO implored the Food and Nutrition Service, which administers SNAP, to improve information about student eligibility and share that information with its local offices.

Of course, the SNAP program is dependent on government funding, which makes it subject to budget cuts or unforeseen events such as the ongoing partial government shutdown. If the shutdown continues for a couple more weeks, SNAP may run out of funds for the 38 million Americans who receive its benefits.

Naturally, the report focuses heavily on low-income students, as they are perhaps those most likely to experience food insecurity. But Goldrick-Rab notes that they aren't the only students who are going hungry. Middle-class students, those who are "too rich for Pell and too poor to afford college," struggle as well. And they may not be as likely to use things such as the food pantry.

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direct estimates of the prevalence of food insecurity

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Millions of College Students Are Going Hungry

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Read: When a college takes on American poverty "[The report] put it very clearly for us that we can see that especially first-time students, first-gen students, students who are raising children, single parents, face increasing obstacles to be able to complete that critical college degree," Senator Patty Murray, the top Democrat on the Senate's education committee, told me.

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The famine in Yemen could become the worst the world has seen in a generation.

ADEN, Yemen - He is an 8-year-old boy who is starving and has limbs like sticks, but Yaqoob Walid doesn't cry or complain. He gazes stolidly ahead, tuning out everything, for in late stages of starvation the human body focuses every calorie simply on keeping the organs functioning.

Yaqoob arrived unconscious at Al Sadaqa Hospital here, weighing just over 30 pounds. He has suffered complications, and doctors say that it is unclear he will survive and that if he does he may suffer permanent brain damage.

Some 85,000 children may have already died here in Yemen, and 12 million more people may be on the brink of starvation, casualties in part of the three-year-old American-backed Saudi war in Yemen. United Nations officials and aid experts warn that this could become the worst famine the world has seen in a generation.

"The risk of a major catastrophe is very high," Mark Lowcock, the United Nations humanitarian chief, told me. "In the worst case, what we have in Yemen now has the potential to be worse than anything any professional in this field has seen during their working lives."

Both the Obama and Trump administrations have supported the Saudi war in Yemen with a military partnership, arms sales, intelligence sharing and until recently air-to-air refueling. The United States is thus complicit in what some human rights experts believe are war crimes.

The bottom line: Our tax dollars are going to starve children.

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I fell in love with Yemen's beauty and friendliness on my first visit, in 2002, but this enchanting country is now in convulsions. When people hear an airplane today in much of Yemen, they flinch and wonder if they are about to be bombed, and I had interviews interrupted by automatic weapons fire overhead.

After witnessing the human toll and interviewing officials on both sides, including the president of the Houthi rebels who control much of Yemen, I find the American and Saudi role in this conflict to be unconscionable. The Houthis are repressive and untrustworthy, but this is not a reason to bomb and starve Yemeni children.

What is most infuriating is that the hunger is caused not by drought or extreme weather, but by cynical and failed policies in Riyadh and Washington. The starvation does not seem to be an accidental byproduct of war, but rather a weapon in it. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, backed by the United States, are trying to inflict pain to gain leverage over and destabilize the Houthi rebels. The reason: The Houthis are allied with Iran.

The governments of Saudi Arabia and the United States don't want you to see pictures like Yaqoob's or reflect on the suffering in Yemen. The Saudis impose a partial blockade on Houthi areas, banning commercial flights and barring journalists from special United Nations planes there. I've been trying for more than two years to get through the Saudi blockade, and I finally was able to by tagging onto Lowcock's United Nations delegation.

After a major famine, there is always soul-searching about how the world could have allowed this to happen. What's needed this time is not soul-searching a few years from now, but action today to end the war and prevent a cataclysm.

READ MORE about the war in yemen

The problem in Yemen is not so much a shortage of food as it is an economic collapse - GDP has fallen in half since the war started - that has left people unable to afford food.

Yaqoob was especially vulnerable. He is the second of eight children in a poor household with a father who has mental health problems and can't work steadily. Moreover, the father, like many Yemenis, chews qat - a narcotic leaf that is very widely used in Yemen and offers an easy high. This consumes about $1 a day, reducing the budget available for food. The family sold some land to pay for Yaqoob's care, so its situation is now even more precarious.

A few rooms down from Yaqoob was Fawaz Abdullah, 18 months old, his skin mottled and discolored with sores. Fawaz is so malnourished that he has never been able to walk or say more than "Ma" or "Ba."
[For readers wondering how they can help, aid groups doing excellent work in Yemen include the International Rescue Committee, CARE and Save the Children.]
Fawaz's mother, Ruqaya Saleh, explained that life fell apart after her home in the port city of Hudaydah was destroyed by a bomb (probably an American one, as many are). Her family fled to Aden, and her husband is struggling to find occasional work as a day laborer.

"I used to be able to buy whatever I wanted, including meat and fish," she told me. Since fleeing, she said, war-induced poverty has meant that she hasn't been able to buy a single fish or egg - and that is why Fawaz suffers severe protein deficiency.

"They asked me to buy milk for Fawaz, but we can't afford it now," she said.

We think of war casualties as men with their legs blown off. But in Yemen the most common war casualties are children like Fawaz who suffer malnutrition.

Some will die. Even the survivors may suffer lifelong brain damage. A majority of Yemen children are now believed to be physically stunted from malnutrition ( 46 percent were stunted even before the war), and physical stunting is frequently accompanied by diminished brain development.

"These children are the future of Yemen," Dr. Aida Hussein, a nutrition specialist, told me, looking at Fawaz. "He will be stunted. How will he do in school?"

The war and lack of health care facilities have also led to outbreaks of deadly diseases like diphtheria and cholera. Half of the country's clinics and hospitals are closed.

In the capital, Sana, I met a child who was suffering both malnutrition and cholera. The boy was Saddam Hussein (he was named for the Iraqi leader), eight years old, and the parents repeat the mantra I hear from everyone: Life is much worse now because of the war.

"We don't know what we will eat tomorrow," Saddam's mother told me.

Yemen began to disintegrate in the aftermath of the Arab Spring, and then the Houthis, a traditional clan in the north, swept down on Sana and seized much of the country. The Houthis follow Zaydi Islam, which is related to the Shiite branch dominant in Iran, and the Saudis and some Americans see them as Iranian stooges.

In some ways, the Houthis have been successful. They have imposed order and crushed Al Qaeda and the Islamic State in the parts of Yemen they control, and in Sana I felt secure and didn't fear kidnapping.

However, the Houthis operate a police state and are hostile to uncovered women, gays and anyone bold enough to criticize them. They recruit child soldiers from the age of about 12 (the Saudi- and American-backed forces wait until boys are about 15), interfere with food aid, and have engaged in torture and attacks on civilians.

Still, the civilian loss of life has overwhelmingly been caused not by the Houthis but by Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and America, through both bombings and starvation. It's ridiculous for the Trump administration to be exploring naming the Houthis a terrorist organization. And while the Houthis are allies of Iran, I think the Saudis exaggerate when they suggest that the Houthis are Iranian pawns.

The foreign minister on the Houthi side is Hisham Sharaf Abdalla, a congenial American-educated official.

"I love the U.S.," Mr. Sharaf told me. "We look to the U.S. as the only force that can stop this war."

Peace talks are now beginning in Sweden - few people expect them to solve the crisis soon - and he insisted that his side was eager to reach a peace deal and improve relations with America.

After our conversation, he brought me over to his desk and showed me his assault rifle and two handguns. "When I was in the U.S., I was a member of the N.R.A.," he told me. "I would like to have an N.R.A. chapter in Yemen."

Mr. Sharaf talks a good game but is not himself a Houthi, just an ally, so I wondered if he was a figurehead trotted out to impress foreigners. Later I interviewed a man whose power is unquestioned: Muhammad Ali al-Houthi, the president of the Supreme Revolutionary Committee. As his name signifies, he is a member of the Houthi clan.

An aide picked me up and ferried me to him, for President Houthi changes locations daily to avoid being bombed by the Saudis.

President Houthi, a large, confident man with a traditional dagger at his belly, was friendly to me but also suspicious of the United States and full of conspiracy theories. He suggested that Washington was secretly arming Al Qaeda and that the United States was calling the shots for Saudi Arabia in Yemen, at the behest of Israel.

Still, he said that he wanted peace and that although the Houthis have fired missiles at Saudi Arabia, his side would pose no threat to Saudi Arabia if the Saudis would only end their assault on Yemen.

"There's no need for enmity with the United States," he told me in Arabic, and that seemed a message he wanted me to convey to Washington and the American people.

I asked President Houthi about the sarkha, the group's slogan: "God is great! Death to America! Death to Israel! Curses on the Jews! Victory to Islam!" That didn't seem so friendly, I said.

"It's nothing against the American people," he replied. "It's directed toward the system."

When I asked about Saudi and American suggestions that the Houthis are Iranian pawns, he laughed.

"That's just propaganda," he said. "I ask you: Have you ever seen one Iranian in Yemen? Do we speak Farsi?" This was all a trick, he said, analogous to the allegations of weapons of mass destruction used to justify war with Iraq.

While the Houthis are called "rebels," they clearly rule their territory. In contrast, the Saudi- and American-backed "internationally recognized government" of Yemen is a shell that controls almost no territory - hence it is based in Riyadh. The "president" of this exile government, Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi, is said to be gravely ill, and when he is gone it will be even more difficult to sustain the fiction that this is a real government.

More broadly, I don't see any hint of a Saudi or American strategy. There's little sign that bombing and starvation will actually dislodge the Houthis, while the Saudi military action and resulting chaos has benefited the Yemeni branches of Al Qaeda and the Islamic State. In that sense, America's conduct in Yemen has hurt our own national security.

In one sign of the ineffectiveness of the Western-backed government, the hunger is now as severe in its areas as in the rebel-held north. I saw worse starvation in Aden, the lovely seaside city in the south that is nominally run by the internationally recognized government, than in Houthi-controlled Sana.

And while I felt reasonably secure in Houthi-controlled areas, I was perpetually nervous in Aden. Abductions and murders occur regularly there, and my guesthouse offered not a mint on the pillow, but a bulletproof vest; at night, sleep was interrupted by nearby fighting among unknown gunmen.

What limited order exists in Aden is provided by soldiers from the United Arab Emirates and allied militias, and I worry that the U.A.E. is getting fed up with the war and may pull them out without alternative arrangements for security. If that happens, Aden may soon plunge into Somalia-like chaos.

Mohamed Zemam, the governor of the central bank, believes that there are ways to shore up the economy and prevent starvation. But he cautions that the risk of another Somalia is real, and he estimates that there may be two million Yemenis in one fighting force or another.

"What they have is the way of the gun," he said. "If we don't solve that, we will have problems for 100 years."

Another danger is that the Saudi coalition will press ahead so that fighting closes the port of Hudaydah, through which most food and fuel come.

I stopped in Saudi Arabia to speak to senior officials there about Yemen, and we had some tough exchanges. I showed them photos on my phone of starving children, and they said that this was unfortunate and undesired. "We are not devils," one said indignantly. They insisted that they would welcome peace - but that they must confront the Houthis.

"The most important thing for us is national security," the Saudi ambassador to Yemen, Mohammed Al-Jabir, told me. Dr. Abdullah Al Rabeeah, an adviser to the royal court and director of a fund that provides aid to Yemen, told me that Saudis don't want to see hunger in Yemen but added: "We will continue to do what it takes to fight terrorism. It's not an easy decision."

Saudi and U.A.E. officials note that they provide an enormous amount of humanitarian aid to Yemen. This is true, and it mitigates the suffering there. But it's difficult to give the Saudis much credit for relieving the suffering of a country that they are bombing and starving.

To avert a catastrophe in Yemen, the world needs to provide more humanitarian aid. But above all, the war has to end.

"You're not going to solve this long-term until the war is ended," said David Beasley, the executive director of the World Food Program. "It's a man-made problem, and it needs a man-made solution."

That solution will entail strong American backing for a difficult United Nations-backed peace process involving Yemeni factions and outsiders, aiming for a measure of power sharing. This diplomatic process requires engaging the Houthis, not just bombing them. It also means a cease-fire and pressure on all sides to ensure humanitarian access and the passage of food and fuel. The best leverage America has to make the Saudis part of the solution is to suspend arms sales to Riyadh so long as the Saudis continue the war.

In conference rooms in Riyadh and Washington, officials simply don't fathom the human toll of their policies.

In a makeshift camp for displaced people in Aden, I met a couple who lost two daughters - Bayan, 11, and Bonyan, 8 - in a bombing in a crowded market.

"I heard the bomb and I went running after them," the dad, Ahmed Abdullah, told me with an ache in his voice. "They were dead. One had her skull burst open, and the other had no arms or legs left."

He told me that the family then fled, and he married off a 15-year-old daughter so that someone else would be responsible for feeding her. This is common: The share of girls married by age 18 has increased from 50 percent before the war to two-thirds today, according to Unicef.

Another son died of fever when the family could not afford to take the boy to a hospital. There are several other children, and none of them are going to school any more; a 10-year-old daughter, Baraa, who is next in line to be married, couldn't tell me what seven plus eight equals.

A bit hesitantly, I told Ahmed that I thought that my country, America, had probably provided the bomb that had killed his daughters. He was not angry, just resigned.

"I am not an educated person," he told me earnestly. "I am a simple parent." And then he offered more wisdom than I heard from the sophisticated policy architects in America and Saudi Arabia: "My message is that I want the war to stop."
Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram.

Nicholas Kristof has been a columnist for The Times since 2001. He has won two Pulitzer Prizes, for his coverage of China and of the genocide in Darfur. You can sign up for his free, twice-weekly email newsletter and follow him on Instagram. @NickKristof * Facebook

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page SR1 of the New York edition with the headline: Your Tax Dollars Help Starve Children . Order Reprints | Today's Paper | Subscribe

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Opinion | Your Tax Dollars Help Starve Children

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The famine in Yemen could become the worst the world has seen in a generation. ADEN, Yemen - He is an 8-year-old boy who is starving and has limbs like sticks, but Yaqoob Walid doesn't cry or complain.

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BAIDOA, Somalia - First the trees dried up and cracked apart.

Then the goats keeled over.

Then the water in the village well began to disappear, turning cloudy, then red, then slime-green, but the villagers kept drinking it. That was all they had.

Now on a hot, flat, stony plateau outside Baidoa, thousands of people pack into destitute camps, many clutching their stomachs, some defecating in the open, others already dead from a cholera epidemic.

"Even if you can get food, there is no water," said one mother, Sangabo Moalin, who held her head with a left hand as thin as a leaf and spoke of her body "burning."

Another famine is about to tighten its grip on Somalia. And it's not the only crisis that aid agencies are scrambling to address. For the first time since anyone can remember, there is a very real possibility of four famines - in Somalia, South Sudan, Nigeria and Yemen - breaking out at once, endangering more than 20 million lives.

International aid officials say they are facing one of the biggest humanitarian disasters since World War II. And they are determined not to repeat the mistakes of the past.

One powerful lesson from the last famine in Somalia, just six years ago, was that famines were not simply about food. They are about something even more elemental: water.

Once again, a lack of clean water and proper hygiene is setting off an outbreak of killer diseases in displaced persons camps. So the race is on to dig more latrines, get swimming-pool quantities of clean water into the camps, and pass out more soap, more water-treatment tablets and more plastic buckets - decidedly low-tech supplies that could save many lives.

"We underestimated the role of water and its contribution to mortality in the last famine," said Ann Thomas, a water, sanitation and hygiene specialist for Unicef. "It gets overshadowed by the food."

The famines are coming as a drought sweeps across Africa and several different wars seal off extremely needy areas. United Nations officials say they need a huge infusion of cash to respond. So far, they are not just millions of dollars short, but billions.

At the same time, President Trump is urging Congress to cut foreign aid and assistance to the United Nations, which aid officials fear could multiply the deaths. The United States traditionally provides more disaster relief than anyone else.

"The international humanitarian system is at its breaking point," said Dominic MacSorley, chief executive of Concern Worldwide, a large private aid group.

Aid officials say all the needed food and water exist on this planet in abundance - even within these hard-hit countries. But armed conflict that is often created by personal rivalries between a few men turns life upside down for millions, destroying markets and making the price of necessities go berserk.

In some areas of central Somalia, a 20-liter jerry can of water, about five and a quarter gallons, used to cost 4 cents. In recent weeks, that price has shot up to 42 cents. That may not sound like a lot. But when you make less than a dollar a day and your flock of animals - your family's pride and wealth - has been reduced to a stack of bleached bones and your farm to dust, you may not have 42 cents.

"There is no such thing as free water," said Isaac Nur Abdi, a nomad, who sat in the dusky gloom of a cholera treatment center in Baidoa this month. He fanned his elderly mother, whose cavernous eye sockets and protruding cheekbones bore the telltale signature of famine.

Scenes like this are unfolding across the region. In Yemen, relentless aerial bombings by Saudi Arabia and a trade blockade have mutilated the economy, sending food prices spiraling and pushing hundreds of thousands of children to the brink of starvation.

In northeastern Nigeria, thousands of displaced people have become sick from diseases spread by dirty water and poor hygiene as the battle grinds on between Islamist militants and the Nigerian military, which, when it comes to protecting the vulnerable, does not have the most stellar record. The Nigerian Air Force bombed a displaced persons camp in January, killing scores, saying it was an accident.

In South Sudan, both rebel forces and government soldiers are intentionally blocking emergency food and hijacking food trucks, aid officials say. On Saturday, six aid workers were killed, complicating relief efforts even further. Entire communities are marooned in malarial swamps trying to survive off barely chewable lotus plants and worm-infested swamp water.

While the other countries are technically on the brink of famine, the United Nations has already declared parts of South Sudan a famine zone.

Scientists have been saying for years that climate change will increase the frequency of droughts. The hardest-hit countries, though, produce almost none of the carbon emissions that are widely believed to cause climate change.

South Sudan and Somalia, for instance, have relatively few vehicles and almost no industry. But their fields are drying up and their pastureland is vanishing, scientists say, partly because of the global effects of pollution. People in these countries suffer from other people's driving, other people's manufacturing and other people's attachment to things like flat-screen TVs and iPads that most Somalis and South Sudanese will touch only in their dreams.

It's not simple to get food and clean water into these areas where everything is dried out, yellow and dead.

Baidoa itself is controlled by Somalia's fledging government and African Union troops. But just a few miles outside the town, it is Shabab country, belonging to the Shabab militant Islamist group that has banned Western aid agencies.

"The fact that people are dying near Baidoa and we can't get there, it makes me crazy," said Patrick Laurent, a water and sanitation coordinator hired by Unicef in Somalia.

After Somalia's last famine, the multibillion-dollar aid industry thought it had come up with an answer to prevent the next one: resilience. It was the new buzzword in aid circles, bandied about at workshops and among high-powered officials.

Aid officials defined resilience as the ability to adapt to sudden environmental or political shocks. Resilience programs included livestock insurance and better water management, especially in Africa.

Some aid officials never liked this term, saying it seemed patronizing, as if Africans were built to suffer. Still, the resilience subindustry roared on.

But just as many of the new resilience programs were being funded, these latest crises hit, one after the other.

"The environment didn't give time for these resilience efforts to bear fruit," Mr. Laurent said.

Ms. Thomas, the Unicef water and hygiene specialist, said that during Somalia's last famine, the deadliest areas were not the empty deserts where there was little food but the displaced-persons camps near urban areas where, comparatively speaking, there was plenty of food.

The reason was that the crowded camps became hotbeds of communicable diseases like cholera, a bacterial infection that can lead to very painful intestinal cramps, diarrhea and fatal dehydration. Cholera is often caused by dirty water and spread by exposure to contaminated feces through fingers, food and flies.

Malnutrition certainly played its part; famine victims, especially children, were compromised by a lack of nutrients. They arrived in the camps from wasted areas of the interior with their immune systems already shot.

But in the end it was poor hygiene and dirty water, Ms. Thomas said, that tugged many down.

If rivers and other relatively clean water sources start drying up, as they are right now in Somalia, this sets off an interlocking cycle of death. People start to get sick at their stomachs from the slimy or cloudy water they are forced to drink. They start fleeing their villages, hoping to get help in the towns.

Camps form. But the camps do not have enough water either, and it is hard to find a latrine or enough water for people to wash their hands. Shockingly fast, the camps become disease factories.

Water, of course, is less negotiable than food. A human being can survive weeks with nothing to eat. Five days without water means death.

Different strategies are being emphasized this time around to parry the famine. One is simply giving out cash.

United Nations agencies and private aid groups in Somalia are scaling up efforts to dole out money through a new electronic card system and by mobile phone.

This allows poor people to get a monthly allowance and shop for staples like fresh vegetables, powdered milk, pasta, dates, sugar, salt and camel meat.

Cash payments are often better for the local economy than importing sacks of food, and the people get help fast.

Many more Africans may soon need it. Sweltering days and poor rains so far this year have left Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, Uganda, Ethiopia and Tanzania parched and on the edge of a major food crisis.

At the cholera treatment center in Baidoa, which logged in more than 30 cases on a recent day, many people had little inkling of what caused cholera.

When Mr. Abdi, whose mother was nearly dead from the disease, was asked what had made his mother sick, he said the cause was simple.

It was the hot season.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A4 of the New York edition with the headline: Drought and War Deepen Risk of Not Just One Famine, but Four. Order Reprints | Today's Paper | Subscribe

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Drought and War Heighten Threat of Not Just 1 Famine, but 4

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BAIDOA, Somalia - First the trees dried up and cracked apart. Then the goats keeled over. Then the water in the village well began to disappear, turning cloudy, then red, then slime-green, but the villagers kept drinking it. That was all they had.

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'Alarm bells we cannot ignore': world hunger rising for first time this century

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UN agencies warn conflict and climate change are undermining food security, causing chronic undernourishment and threatening to reverse years of progress

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AUSTIN - When Rep. Diego Bernal visited school campuses across his district, he heard a story that shook him to his core.

The topic was hunger, and the story was this one:

"I didn't always know what to do with the hungry students who came to see me later in the day because we're not allowed to give them cafeteria food after the lunch period. There was one young man who came to see me more than a few times a week, so with him, I took to us walking back and forth between the main campus and one of the portables in the back. There was a pecan tree there, so we'd walk back and forth and stop so he could pick and eat a few until he felt better."

Bernal, a Democrat who represents San Antonio's District 123, promised not to identify educators or their campuses as he compiled a report on school issues. He wanted to ensure they could speak frankly. But he said the school in question was in one of his district's more affluent areas.

"It was the one time in all of my visits where I almost lost my composure," Bernal told me. "It struck me as being immoral. We have food on campus to give the kid, and we were unable to, and so then the students and the teachers and the staff resort to picking pecans... It haunts you."

It wasn't the only story that struck Bernal. He also heard about a 7-year-old girl who walked by herself four blocks to school every Monday morning before the doors opened, waiting for breakfast.

Bernal's report said that on a daily basis, campuses throw away "untouched, unopened, ripe, perfectly edible food." He blamed the "complexities of overlapping district, state, and federal policies, along with a collection of myths and cautionary tales."

At the same time, 25.6 percent of Texas children were food insecure in 2014, according to a Feeding America analysis of census data provided by the Center for Public Policy Priorities.

So Bernal did something about it.

He championed legislation in the regular session to allow schools to set up food pantries using good cafeteria items that otherwise would be thrown away - such as unopened, packaged food and unpeeled fruit. The schools also can use items collected in food drives. They can distribute it at any time during the day. The measure, carried by Bernal and Sen. Borris Miles, D-Houston, was signed into law by Gov. Greg Abbott.

A number of schools already partner with nonprofits to provide food for students to take home for the weekend, but that doesn't address waste. Some schools have set up "sharing tables" to make available leftover good food, but according to testimony when the bill was considered in committee, it's only available during mealtimes - and in some areas, health authorities have shut them down.

Under the new state law, school pantries will fall under a law that protects those who donate food, and non-profit organizations that distribute it, from liability as long as they act in good faith. Health and safety standards still have to be followed.

Schools can implement their food programs "in any way they see fit," Bernal said. Some may want to have refrigerated items, while others may offer bottled water, wrapped granola bars and cereal in peel-top containers.

People who oversee nutrition services in San Antonio school districts testified in favor of the proposal when it was considered in a House committee.

Sharon Glosson, executive director of school nutrition services at North East Independent School District, said her district serves breakfast, lunch and supper. Some food is wasted at every meal, she said, despite officials' efforts to minimize waste. The amount is too small for the food bank to come pick up, but it would be enough to help students.

Jenny Arredondo - senior executive director of child nutrition services with San Antonio ISD, where 92 percent of students are economically disadvantaged - said her district does a good job of feeding students while they are in school. She said the law would allow them to extend that into the evening.

"When we talk about feeding a child, it should not end when the school bell rings," Arredondo said.

The interfaith social justice network Texas Impact is enthusiastic about the new law

"Our people love it," said the group's executive director Bee Moorhead.

She praised Bernal for coming up with a "super-practical" idea to deal with a part of Texas' "terrible" hunger problem.

"It's a small piece of the total picture of hunger in Texas, but everybody who advocated for and supported this bill can walk away from the 85th session confident in the knowledge that although it is small, it really will fill some empty tummies," Moorhead said. "And that is more than a lot of people get to say in their legislative career - that they filled hungry tummies."

pfikac@express-news.net

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Schools can do more to feed hungry kids under new law

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AUSTIN - When Rep. Diego Bernal visited school campuses across his district, he heard a story that shook him to his core. The topic was hunger, and the story was this one: "I didn't always know what to do with the hungry students who came to see me later in the day because we're not allowed to give them cafeteria food after the lunch period.

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Many humans suffer from hunger, in this article it mentions how global hunger affects millions of people. In the Irish potato famine article it mentions how it was led to starvation which caused the population of Ireland to drop down to 4 million when it was raised to 8 million with the production of the potato. In the article ‘’ Alarm bells we can not ignore’: world hunger rising for first time this century ‘’ has a video explaining that 1 in 9 people around the world don’t have enough to eat which causes death because they die of starvation , this can be compared to the Irish potato famine article because it mentions how people died begging for food. Also climates are a problem because they wipe out crops that are being produced & causes the food to go up in price and causes people to move to other lands and won’t have the materials to grow or produce any type of food to survive. The increase of deaths bring diseases and you can’t really help anyone because you might catch the disease that is making them closer to death.

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In this article Nicholas Kristof emphasizes the negative impact of the Trump and Obama organization's support of the Saudi war, from weapons to intelligence sharing, and even air-to-air refueling . Thanks to the continued support from the United States Saudi Arabia has been able to bomb and starve Yemeni children due to the repressive ways of Houthis rebels. According to Kristof, the hunger is caused by cynical and failed policies in Riyadh and Washington. He also concludes that the starvation does not seem to be a byproduct of war, but rather a weapon in it. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, backed by the United States, are trying to inflict pain to gain leverage over and destabilize the Houthis rebels, and sadly the most affected are poor families and the children. It's depressing, but it's the truth, children are literally starved and or bombed. The war in Saudi Arabia and Yemen is actually pretty similar in perspective to the Irish potato famine, in that the people in charge, the "superior" people, make the decisions and each have issues, and sadly in both of these situations the lower class residents were the most affected.

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The hunger crisis in Africa has affected around 28 nations in Africa, because of the fall armyworm's strong appetite for maize. This famine is growing from this worm's population, eating most of what people in these African countries eat. This is similar to the Irish potato famine, because of the crops that are growing, not being able to be eaten, likely to spread to Sub-Saharan Africa. In addition, the climate of these areas are causing the worm to be present often to eat the crops.

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The fall armyworm is threatening African crops. It eats maize and is predicted to consume up to 50% of the produced crop.  However, since the insect has been present in North America, there is knowledge about how to contain them, and scientists are developing new methods for handling the threat. This situation is similar to the Irish Potato Famine because the attacked crop is one that is heavily depended on. These situations are different because the world is addressing the fall armyworm threat right now whereas the British government looked over the potato issue without lending aid.

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In this article, the author talks about how there is enough food to feed the entire world, but due to uneven distribution of resources in developed and undeveloped countries, there is still hunger in the world. They then go on to talk about how  the UN has set goals for ending world hunger. The author works with a team of researchers looking to reduce global hunger by reducing food waste and redistributing the food that would have been thrown away.

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In Nigeria, as well as other parts of Africa, and other countries across the world, the increasing amount of fall armyworms, are destroying the livelihood of these people in eating corn. Similarly to the Irish Potato Famine, as the Irish were more than dependent on the starchy crop, the potato. The climate in Africa has increased the thrive of these worms as they are able to more easily grow in humid, and wet areas. However, in contrast, even though it is occurring more in Nigeria, this famine is spreading across the continent of Africa. Also, while the other was more in terms of political and economic, or biological cause. So, some could say that because of this factor, that the famine is more deadly.

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A new law was passed to help feed kids during all hours of school (not just mealtimes), and after the bell rings. Schools in Texas waste tons of food each day by throwing away unopened, untouched, unused products. They want to start giving these products out to students. This can sometimes be an issue with the department of health and safety.

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The main point is that Venezuelans are being forced to try to grow their own food since prices are over inflated.
This is different from the Irish potato famine because the food crisis in Venezuela was caused by an economic collapse while the irish potato famine was caused by a blight.

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In this article, the author talks about when Diego Bernal visited schools in San Antonio. The article expresses how he felt when he heard the stories of how children would come to or leave school hungry. It also talks about what he did to help that issue. This article and this issue is different from the potato famine because the people involved did not lose their MAIN food source, the either didn't have one or had a rather small one. It's also different in the sense that not nearly as many people died, whereas millions died in the potato famine.

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The article elaborates upon the saudi war in Yemen and how our soldiers are causing mass poverty and famine in yemenese cities. The article elaborates on several specific stories of child hunger and stunted children. The article sites shocking data: numbers of deaths and numbers of stunted children.

The similarity between the article and the potato famine are the side causes. Both were caused by elite peoples having troubles of their own, and the middle and lower class get caught in the crossfire.

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This article is talking about children who go home or to school hungry and how laws choice be implemented to help these starving children

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A lot of children are not being fed enough than what is being provided for them. So a law was passed that allowed schools to feed children more food during and after school

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In this article there is a problematic bug called an armyworm that is eating maize, a crop that the lives of many people throughout sub-Saharan depend on. Similar to the Irish potato famine, maize, is what a large portion of the population, around 200 million, depend on for the majority of their nutrition. Another similarity is the climate, both Ireland and The parts of Africa in which the armyworm  is invading are damp areas, this makes sense considering they are both crops originated in the Americas.

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This article talks about the how the people of Yemen have been dealing with a multitude of issues, such as, hunger, malnutrition,bombings, and violence. The author talks about how the US and other outside forces have had a negative impact on the people of Yemen.
This is similar to the Irish potato famine, as many people (mostly children) who are affected are suffering from malnutrition. As well as the similarity of outside forces negatively affecting a situation (British Empire in the Irish potato famine).

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This article discusses how the funding for the Saudi War negatively impacts Yemen families in need of aid, medication and food. As it discusses this problem it puts large emphasis on how Yemen once was a colorful thriving place full of nature, nurture and effective growth as a result of it's people but was now only a shell of its once bright beauty. Following this we see various images of children in a ill state of manner as a result of starvation and malnutrition but cannot get needed help due to lack of medicine and financial funding from families. Which similarly seems much like the Irish Potato Famine because both issues were caused by governments the people had no say in and housing being too close to one another. This is seen in the Irish Potato Famine through the British controlling Ireland and  managing its decisions on the famine, much like the US and Saudi Arabia controlling the entire situation, and in proximity housing led to potatoes being easily accessible to the infectious pathogen along with the Irish people catching numerous disease. Which is also seen in the situation in Yemen because much of the war destroyed the housing and evacuation along with grouping of survivors left many families and children ill and scavenging for food.

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Hungry kids would go to school starving everyday and morning and at first the cafeterias could not do anything to help them until it was a argument that students throw away good untouched food that they haven’t ate and that’s not good because other students could have those left over foods. Overtime, people set up tables that had good edible food on them after lunch and breakfast. Finally, a new law for students were invented and that is to protect those who donate food, and non-profit organizations that distribute it. Health and safety standards of the food will continue to be followed by law.

The causes of the new law for hungry students were that the children would continuously starve and that lead to them being able to have more healthy food when going to school and also, food to take home over the weekend. During the 1800s there was a potato bright outbreak that lead to widespread starvation and this ruined the Irish economy. 1 million people died and 2 million emigrated to the United States. The Irish potato came along in the period of 1780-1845. This potato helped double the Irish population from 4 million to 8 million and this lead to the potato being the only solution of people eating because it produced large amounts of food that the Irish needed. The Irish lived off of potatoes on their family lands, and by the time of the potato famine, Ireland’s population was dangerously dependent on the potato for 60 percent of its nourishment.

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Hungry kids would go to school starving everyday and morning and at first the cafeterias could not do anything to help them until it was a argument that students throw away good untouched food that they haven’t ate and that’s not good because other students could have those left over foods. Overtime, people set up tables that had good edible food on them after lunch and breakfast. Finally, a new law for students were invented and that is to protect those who donate food, and non-profit organizations that distribute it. Health and safety standards of the food will continue to be followed by law.


A Comparison of the article to the Causes and Consequences of Irish Potato Famine: The causes of the new law for hungry students were that the children would continuously starve and that lead to them being able to have more healthy food when going to school and also, food to take home over the weekend. During the 1800s there was a potato bright outbreak that lead to widespread starvation and this ruined the Irish economy. 1 million people died and 2 million emigrated to the United States. The Irish potato came along in the period of 1780-1845. This potato helped double the Irish population from 4 million to 8 million and this lead to the potato being the only solution of people eating because it produced large amounts of food that the Irish needed. The Irish lived off of potatoes on their family lands, and by the time of the potato famine, Ireland’s population was dangerously dependent on the potato for 60 percent of its nourishment.

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Instead of throwing away food at the end of the day, we can save that food and serve it. This would feed a lot more people, but it is also considered a health issue.