Rich enough nation to feed our hungry, support our farmers

Five years ago I stopped a long tradition of turning this space over to readers who disagreed with me. Most of those columns, offered twice a year, featured correspondents who verbally took me to the woodshed.

I did it, as I explained in each of those “readers-write” columns, out of a sense of fairness; “I’ve had my say, you can have yours,” I’d note.

The practice stopped after several readers urged me to drop any pretense of being fair. You write an opinion column, one explained, there’s no expectation of fairness.

“Accuracy and honesty are what you’re offering,” he explained, “keep doing that.”

Excellent advice, but readers still write. I respond to most, but I rarely reply to shouters.

Some reader questions, however, are too informed to handle on the side. Those questions spur columns because they raise important public issues.

For instance, last week’s column on how our deeply partisan Congress removed all limits on federal farm subsidies while slashing U.S. Department of Agriculture’s food assistance programs moved a reader to ask: “What fraction of the food assistance to low-income families has been spent in red districts in the past and what fraction of the population is in red districts?”

Both answers can be found in the mountain of data gathered, stacked and crunched by USDA.

According to USDA, 97% of the nation is geographically considered “rural” and 20% of all Americans, or about 68.4 million, live in rural areas.

That means that 80% of the nation’s population, or about 275.5 million Americans, live on just 3% of the nation’s land mass — cities.

More to the point, 16% of the rural population, or about 11 million people, now use USDA’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program to purchase food. In metro America, 11%, or about 30 million people, use SNAP.

On the political side, 93% of geographic “rural America” voted for Donald J. Trump last November. At the same time, Democrats won 13 seats in congressional districts taken by Trump while Republicans claimed just three congressional seats in House districts won by then-Vice President Kamala Harris.

SNAP, however, is not used by every hungry American. Many who qualify may choose not to take government assistance while others perhaps believe they don’t qualify and never sign up. Still others simply won’t or can’t do the hefty — and growing — paperwork.

It’s not a small number. For example, AARP, the group that caters to senior Americans, estimates at least 16 million citizens aged 50 and older qualify for SNAP, but never sign up.

If accurate — and no one disagrees with AARP’s estimate — SNAP’s overall numbers would explode 40% if just those 50-plus-year-olds actually received their benefits.

It also means that at least 3.2 million of these unsigned SNAP recipients live in rural America and many are “red,” or Trump, voters.

Interestingly, however, seniors are the least numerous age group receiving SNAP benefits. According to USDA, 39% of all SNAP recipients are children under the age 18 and 42% of all beneficiaries are between the ages of 18 and 59. The remainder, 19%, are 60 years old or more.

Here are two more USDA numbers to keep in mind when judging SNAP’s new “red” reality: Congress cut SNAP’s budget by $195 billion over the next 10 years while increasing farm program benefits by $66 billion over the same period.

If that doesn’t seem fair, it isn’t. We’re a rich enough nation to both feed our hungry and support our farmers.

That’s not an opinion. That’s the honest truth.