Can bigger food stamp benefits alleviate child hunger in rural Kentucky? U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack announced Monday that the Obama administration wants to find out.
The Department of Agriculture will spend $27 million on five demonstration projects in rural areas "to see whether new and creative ways work more effectively in trying to deal with child poverty and the hunger that’s associated with it," Vilsack told HuffPost before the announcement.
Two of the programs, one in Nevada and the other in Kentucky, will spend $6.7 million for expanded Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits for families with children, according to a summary. Two projects focus on Indian country, with one delivering food to households with children who qualify for free school meals in Oklahoma's Chickasaw Nation and the other evaluating food access in the Navajo Nation. And the Virginia Department of Education will try giving some students three meals per day and also sending them home with extra food on the weekends.
[For more of this story, written by Arthur Delaney, go to http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...unger_n_6784690.html]
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