Has anyone else here or is anyone else now using food stamps? If so, I want to talk with you. Interview/vent.

In Maryland, I currently get $60 per month. The USDA considers the cost of food as of February 2007, on national average, for a female 20-50 years of age, to cost $165.84 per month for a single individual living alone. That\’s considered their \”thrifty plan,\” which requires that all food be purchased for preparation and eating at home. Their \”liberal plan\” (which food stamps are not given toward) allows $324.12 per month for a single female individual living alone.

So riddle me this…

My monthly balance sheet
+$623.00 (SSI disability income)
-$177.00 (rent – the rest is paid by Section 8)
-$ 56.00 (gas bill – average over 12 months)
-$ 35.00 (electric bill – average over 12 months)
-$ 39.00 (land line + dsl)
-$ 64.00 (cell phone; cheapest monthly plan; contract expires in November)
-$100.00 (monthly doctor appt not covered by Medicaid)
-$ 25.00 (YMCA; gives access to the pool I need for rehabilitative therapy)
-$ 5.00 (co-pays on monthly prescriptions; varies)
-$ 62.00 (monthly gas for my car at the current price)
-$ 50.00 (monthly amount given to former school to pay off old tuition bill — $850/17 months remaining)
——–
$ 10.00 left for cat food, toilet paper and other needed hygienic disposable cotton products (I\’ve done away with paper towels, paper napkins, and disposable women\’s sanitary products, leaving only store brand cotton balls and swabs), all-purpose household cleansers and multi-purpose body/skin/shave cleansers. Don\’t have any make-up anymore. Been over a year since I bought clothes, barring the two purchases other people made for me in the fall. Extra money I scrape together goes to stuff like fixing the hole in the kitchen wall and current school fees and books (tuition is waived because I\’m on SSI).

So seeing as how I end up with scant money after my needed expenses are paid (no, the cell phone isn\’t needed, but I definitely can\’t afford to buy out of the contract), how I am supposed to eat on the USDA\’s recommended minimum \”thrifty plan\” of $165.84 to get my needed daily nutrition when I can only afford $60 of that?

And $165.84 for a single person to eat for a month? I asked some of my single friends they spend on food for themselves, and even though they mostly prepare food at home and eat at home alone, they averaged about $60 per week — $240 per month. That\’s somewhere between the USDA\’s \”low-cost\” and \”moderate\” plans. To eat on the \”thrifty plan\” for two weeks, the USDA recommends meals like these. As Oregon Governor Theodore Kulongoski and his wife, Mary Oberst, discovered last week by eating on a food stamp budget in an attempt to raise awareness to additional proposed cuts to the food stamp program by the Bush administration, these meals — $1 per meal, $3 per day, $21 per week per individual — leave people feeling tired at the end of the day. They\’re not enough to get by on.

——

An ex of mine that I\’ve known since I was 12 was in town over the weekend. Due to still being in pain from moving, I only hung out with him for two hours. One of things we shot the shit about was the Farm Bill. (I swear, we\’re not overeducated elitist bastards; I don\’t even have a high school diploma.)

(As a side note, oh my god, on one hand, I feel good that attention is being brought to issues that need fixing, but on the other hand, the way things are approached and branded by people once they pay attention pisses me the fuck off. Like \”the food stamp challenge\” Oooooh, so now people of means are doing it as a CHALLENGE like fucking Fear Factor or a magician in a glass box over London, when thousands of real people have to do this every day? WHY NOT TALK TO THE REAL PEOPLE? Assholes.)

Last year I gave the former pseudo-sprog\’s Michael Pollan\’s \”The Omnivore\’s Dilemma,\” and \”Fast Food Nation\” was one of our read-aloud books for the summer. She\’s interested in that sort of thing, so I got to share some what I know with someone other than a brick wall (ie, her dad). So imagine my surprise when my ex started talking about Pollan\’s recent NY Times\’ Magazine article You Are What You Grow. I admit, I choked on my jack and black cherry, causing it to dribble down my shirt, when he said how shocked and angry he was about the link between obesity and poverty. \”P-funk! That\’s the same shit I\’ve been telling you for years!\” \”I know, but you know we never listen to you. We\’re not that smart and you sound like a pinko conspiracy-theorist.\”

I am glad all this is getting out there, albeit slowly. But I feel like a chump. I\’ve been told my friends, therapists, and boyfriends that I should be a lawyer, a lobbyist, a journalist, or work for some sort of angry non-profit. All ideas down the line, should a diploma end up in my hands one day. Until then, I just want to steamroll the USDA so I can eat…

My ex and I were talking about how farmer\’s markets have become increasingly trendy, and how particularly with recent scares over food poisoning from processed food that\’s been shipped long distances, they are a good resource to shop at. In some places, the food at farmer\’s markets can be cheaper than in the grocery stores, and it is often of higher quality. But most (with Takoma Park being the only exception I could find, and they only started this year thanks to a $60k grant from the Project for Public Spaces) local farmers markets don\’t accept food stamps, though others in Montgomery County accept WIC (Women with/and Infants, Children) and Senior FMNP (Farmer\’s Market Nutrition Plan). Why accept those and not food stamps? Why can I use my paltry food stamps to buy seeds but can\’t find a landlord that will let me grow them, can\’t find a community plot without several years on their waiting list, and then can\’t use my food stamps to buy fresh foods from my local farmers? I have to wait until I either get knocked up and spit out and child or hit retirement age before I can enjoy those things?

In other words, the government is going to dump their money into the farm bill that will grow more potatoes and soy crops; give the frail geriatrics, women who aren\’t working, and children (not that I begrudge any of them healthy food — I don\’t) the ability to hike out of their way (see, it\’s a lot less feasible) to the farmers markets and out to the farms during the hours when day care is closed and churches/temples/etc are in session to get fresh food — an opportunity which I would really like to see the usage numbers for per state, per urban area, per rural region; and then the people the government doesn\’t even want on food stamps in the first place, the people the government thinks should get their shit together pronto and get off state assistance and get back to work — those people, the government isn\’t going to give access to fresh farm food to, isn\’t going to give the extra money that WIC and FMNP recipients get in addition to EBT, but will expect the EBT dollars alone to put together a healthy meal out of the soy and potatoes that have been made affordable (5 lb bag of Idaho Russets just $3.49 at my local grocer) by the Farm Bill.

I guess I am bitter, yeah, cos where other people look at the tabloids while waiting in the lines at the grocery store, this is what I\’m thinking about.

P.S. I steal toilet paper to get by.