Philip Sherill got laid off last month after the painting company he worked for lost a major contract. Now, as food prices rise at their highest rate in 18 years, he's looking for a job and stretching a buck as far as it can go to put food on the table for his wife and three grown children.
He drinks a lot of water after meals, he said, not just because he's thirsty, but to fill up. Luxury items such as ice cream are out and he's buying groceries at stores that sell everything for a dollar. The home-cooked chicken dinners are baked, not fried, because cooking oil costs too much.
"What else can you do?" he asked.
So Sherill did what thousands of people in Forsyth County have done to cover the cost of home-cooked meals.
Last month, Sherill, 48, went down to the county Department of Social Services on Highland Avenue to apply for financial assistance to buy food through the federally financed Food Nutrition Program. It's better known as food stamps.
About 27,000 people in the county get food assistance; 56 percent are either younger than 18 or older than 59.
Sherill's trip to Highland Avenue underscores some of the effects that rising food prices have had on people struggling to buy groceries, and it highlights what some food-policy experts say is a weakness in the food-assistance program.
Even if Sherill were to qualify, his food-stamp allotment would not buy as much food as it did a year ago because the buying power of food stamps is lagging behind this year's extraordinary rise in food prices.
Over the past year, prices for chicken, bread and eggs have risen 6.8 percent, 14.9 percent and 28.3 percent, respectively. Average food and beverage prices in U.S. cities rose 5 percent, more than any yearly increase since 1990, according to data collected from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
But the maximum allotment that a family of four, for example, can receive -- $542 a month -- has been the same for nearly a year.
That amount is how much it costs for the Thrifty Food Plan, a basket of foods that the U.S. Department of Agriculture says a family of four can live on to cover their minimum nutritional needs. In other words, the agriculture department estimates that a family of four can spend $542 a month for basic nutrition.
The actual allotment is based on the difference between that amount and a qualifying applicant's net income. If the net income is $300 a month, then the allotment is $242.
Although the maximum monthly allotment is set at $542 for a year, the USDA's latest statistics show that the same basket of foods in the Thrifty Food Plan now costs 6.3 percent more -- $576. "By definition, they (allotments) are not adequate for people to afford a healthy food plan," said Dorothy Rosenbaum, a senior policy analyst in the food-assistance division of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a nonprofit group in Washington that focuses on issues involving the poor.
"This year, it happened to be a much bigger issue because food prices have spiked."
In Forsyth County, the fallout from food prices can be seen at the social-services department on Highland Avenue, as the number of applications for food assistance has risen to its highest level in at least five years.
The department is on course to get nearly 18,000 food-stamp applications in 2008, a 9 percent increase from last year and a 29 percent increase over the past five years, according to data collected from the department. The past six months have been extraordinarily heavy for applications, with 90 to 100 people coming in daily to fill them out, said Joe Raymond, the director of social services.
"I'm guessing the bottom part of the economy is very fragile, and people in low-income jobs, people in minimum-wage jobs, and people in seasonal jobs are always the first to feel it," he said.
The 2008 Farm Bill passed by Congress last month is expected to help alleviate some of the burden, Rosenbaum said. Among the changes to the food-stamp program included in that bill:
□ The standard deduction people can take from their income when applying has gone up. That will produce lower net incomes, which lead to a higher amount of food assistance. Deductions had been frozen and didn't take into account inflation.
□ The cap on child-care deductions from gross income has been removed. There had been a $200 cap on the amount an applicant could deduct for child care.
□ People who lose jobs won't be penalized for their savings. The assets they roll over from their employer's savings plan upon being laid off won't count against them on their application, as it had before.
The changes are a step in the right direction, but there's a lot more that the food-stamp program could do, said Peggy Moore, the marketing and community-relations director for the Second Harvest Food Bank of Northwest N.C.
Officials for the nonprofit organization, which has 390 partner agencies in 18 counties from Boone to Burlington, say they have seen more working poor come in for help.
"The point is, it's not enough," Moore said. "And what does that mean? Even for a healthy middle-aged adult, you cannot perform to your full potential because you're not getting enough to eat. Parents skip meals so kids can eat. That is real."
For Sherill, who continues to look for a job, what's real is that he was denied assistance last week. He said that because he had earned $1,100 in gross income last month before being laid off, he did not qualify.
"It's been no picnic. The mortgage still has to be paid. The light and gas still has to be paid. We just have to keep doing what we know to do," Sherill said. "If I sit down and worry, it's not going to do anything."
■ Bertrand M. Gutierrez can be reached at 727-7283 or at bgutierrez@wsjournal.com.
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