By SARAH THOMACK
St. Joseph Post
Results from a yearly study by Feeding America help Second Harvest Community Food Bank and others know how to better serve food insecure families.
“It is probably one of the most important studies that we utilize here at the food bank, it drives a lot of our decisions,” said Michelle Fagerstone, Chief Development Officer at Second Harvest.
Fagerstone said Second Harvest, along with over 200 other food banks, belong to Feeding America, a national hunger relief organization. The organization’s study, released recently, called Map the Meal Gap, shows over 40 million people were food insecure in the United States in 2017.
“If we go directly just to Second Harvest and our service territory, our new numbers state that there are over 46,000 people in our 19 counties that are food insecure and that’s a 13.4% rate,” Fagerstone said.
According to Fagerstone, food insecurity is defined as “the state of being without reliable access to sufficient quantity of affordable nutritious food.”
There was a change in the numbers from 2016 to 2017. Fagerstone said, according to the study, in 2016, it was estimated 49,000 people were food insecure in the Second Harvest service area compared to the over 46,000 in the most recent 2017 study.
“Part of that could be because the economy is doing much better. The unemployment rate is the lowest it’s been in many, many years, so people have the cash flow to be able to purchase that nutritious food on a regular basis, so they’re not falling into that food insecurity category,” Fagerstone said. “The other thing is, we have to look at the fact that the population might have also declined.”
According to a press release from Second Harvest, despite the drop locally, the study revealed that 97% of counties include families facing hunger who are likely ineligible for federal nutrition assistance and have to rely on food banks to help put meals on their tables. While many families and individuals the Feeding America network serves qualify for SNAP, there remains a gap between people over the federal poverty line, who do not qualify for federal food assistance based on their meager earnings, and families with enough income to meet their food needs.
Fagerstone said Second Harvest looks at the Map the Meal Gap numbers on a yearly basis per county and the break down into the number of meals lacking in an area.
“We set a goal of reaching at least 50% of that gap, we break that, then, down into pounds and we look at the pounds per county that needs to be distributed to reach 50% of that meal gap,” Fagerstone said. “That’s when we start strategizing about where do we need to take a Fresh Mobile Pantry and distribute fresh produce and lean proteins, what partner agencies do we need to build capacity with so that they can distribute more food to those that are food insecure in their area.”
For more information about Second Harvest Community Food Bank, go to shcfb.org.