Butte County Economy Out $56,092,200.00
Thursday, December 10 2009 @ 09:50 PM MST
Contributed by: richardhroth
Butte County is missing out in over 50 million dollars in economic activity this year due to less than full enrollment in Child Nutrition Program. Dr. Cindy Wolff's presented this information at the Organic and Sustainable Agricultural Conference in November.
24,427 Butte County residents are eligible, but not participating in the Food Stamp Program.
24,427 x $104, the average amount per recipient.
Result? $2,540,408/month in federal funds is lost due to under participation.
But that is not all. For every Food Stamp $1.00, an additional $1.84 is generated in other spending. Equals $4,674,350 a month of lost economic activity.
That is $56,092,200.00 per year.
And it is just the outer skin of the onion. Better fed kids achieve better academically, are healthier, and are less likely to become delinquent - all conditions that reduce the burden of public service programs and those conditions that reflect poorly on our county.
It is my feeling that no other economic program could so dramatically improve the local economy than a program in charge of seeing that every eligible family has access to this child nutrition program.
Furthermore, money spent locally at farmers markets more than doubles the money recycled in the community over those food dollars spend in large grocery outlets - potentially adding another $2,500,000.00 a month to the local economy. Not to mention that the Leopold Center study comparing local to non-local food prices found a savings of over 10% to those purchasing produce at Farmers Markets over Supermarket prices for the same items. (Click on the graph above to be taken to the press release.) Extrapolating
cChaos
http://www.cchaos.org/news/update/article.php?story=20091210215001117