This is another reason why Whitworth sometimes really pisses me off.
Today, in my class on Political Change in the 3rd World, we had a conversation about a good book about poverty in India. Good discussion. Good learning. etc etc.
Until people started talking about how in the US when a crop fails its not that big of a deal. We have enough diversity of resources; we have enough government support, etc. etc.
But I don't think that applies to the Central Valley.
Like when ALL the oranges froze two winters ago. I said in class that people starved. I don't know that that is true. They died. I'm 90% sure of that. It could have been from the cold. lack of heat. lack of work. thus lack of money.

John Yoder said that people in Somalia or Ethiopia would have been jealous of the "starvation" in California.
I don't know though.
in 2001, 12.8% of " Low-Income Immigrant Households With Children" (granted, that is a lot of qualifiers) were Hungry; only about half were considered "stable" or secure in their food sources. Even low income families where the parents were born in the United States had a hunger rate of over 10%. Half of low-income families could not eat "balanced meals"

when crops fail and thus there are no jobs harvesting...
when no one comes into your restaurant or store because almost the entire town works in the fields...
when the food banks run out of food the second day of the week...
when so many kids qualify for free/reduced lunches that certain schools don't even require the paperwork anymore... (including the city high schools that my bro and I attended... not even just the ones in the countryside, which are poorer.)
when illegal immigrants don't qualify for Food Stamps...
when those statistics are over 7 years old, and the economic situation has only worsened since then...

what the hell do you think happens?
they bask in the nutrients of the American air?


http://www.csufresno.edu/ccchhs/documents/childrens_institute/Immigrant_Children_brief.pdf
Hunger and Food Insecurity Among San Joaquin Valley Children in Immigrant Families
Petra Sutton, Virginia Rondero Hernandez, and Kathleen Curtis
A Publication of the Central California Childrens Institute, California State University, Fresno