Iowa feeds its hungry with venison - Wall Street Journal

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Here is a real "only in America" story. Readers in Europe and Asia will probably find this as exotic as Americans would find Tibetan funeral rituals. What I find hard to understand is that over ten percent of the population of Iowa goes hungry. It has the best farmland in the world. Oh well, let them eat cake.DS
Abstract: (...) Iowa's Help Us Stop Hunger program targets two troubling trends: rising populations of deer with too much to eat, and hungry people with too little. Through HUSH, which was concocted by the state three years ago to control the exploding deer population, more than 250,000 pounds of venison are expected to be donated by hunters to local food banks. That should result in more than 1 million meals of chili, stew and sloppy Joes.(...) Last hunting season, Iowa hunters shot more than 210,000 deer and donated 5,608 to food banks. Reports from meat lockers and butcher shops indicate donations are increasing this year. "You can only eat so much deer," said Kevin Bradley.(...)Beef is rare at soup kitchens and pantries."We never get donated hamburger," says Ms. Bergen. So the Food Bank of Iowa in Des Moines collects venison recipes, some of which come from nutrition students at Iowa State University. (...)"In Iowa, there's so much food for the deer with all the corn," says Fred Haskins, executive director and legislative counsel of the Iowa Insurance Institute, an association of property-casualty companies. At the same time, the number of people in Iowa without enough food was also increasing. In 1999, about 7.6% of households couldn't afford to feed their families at some point during the year. In 2005, it was 10.9%, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. (emphasis mine) READ IT ALL