At Heart Reach Neighborhood Ministries in Youngstown, chief program officer April Alexander has seen countless people struggle to feed their families. According to Feeding America, Mahoning County, where Youngstown is located, had a food insecurity rate of 13.4% in 2021, meaning 30,670 people were without "access, at times, to enough food for a healthy, active life." And Alexander said the problem seems to be getting worse.
"Families can call and schedule and come to get a food box any time," she said. "And so with the decrease in SNAP benefits, coupled with the increase in food costs, we have seen a significant increase in the number of families who are seeking food assistance from us. And I'm hearing that from some of our partner agencies as well."
SNAP, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, is a federal program that provides monthly financial assistance to low-income families to buy food. In March, pandemic-era funding to SNAP was cut in 35 states, including Ohio. This effectively lowered the amount of food families on SNAP could afford by an average of about $90 per person per month.
According to the most recent study conducted by the USDA in 2020, 10.5% of the U.S. population live with food insecurity. More than one million people live with food insecurity in Ohio. Experts say food insecurity is growing because of cuts in funding to SNAP benefits and rising food prices.
In April, the Ohio Association of Food Banks surveyed 2,000 individuals who use local food banks to determine the reasons for their food insecurity. Three out of four households receiving SNAP benefits ran out within the first two weeks of the month since the cutbacks, said Lisa Hamler-Fugitt, who has served as director of the Ohio Association of Food Banks since 2001.
"It's disproportionately hit seniors and households with children the hardest," she said.
Food prices were also a factor.
"Eight in 10 of the respondents said they were seeking emergency food because of higher overall food costs," she said.
Hamler-Fugitt said the recent surge in food prices combined with the reduction in SNAP benefits are also affecting food banks all over the state.
"We have been struggling for quite some time," she said. "We've been dealing with the same thing that the consumers that we serve are dealing with, which is just higher food costs, inflation. Donations are down significantly while we're spending more to purchase food to try to help our customers have food. We're lightening the bags, providing fewer meals than we've done in the past because there's not enough food."
Pat Bebo, registered dietician and assistant director of an extension of Ohio State University's College of Family and Consumer Sciences, said food deserts can be in the city or in rural areas.
According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), food deserts are places with both low incomes and low access to healthy, affordable food.
"You might have food in a food desert, but it might not be the food that will sustain life and prevent chronic disease," Bebo said. "It might be higher fat, higher sugar. Food of low nutritional quality that may also cost a lot more. And the healthier foods, let's say just milk, a gallon of milk or eggs, might cost more in these food deserts might cost more because there is such a limited availability."
Bebo said the study of food deserts is relatively new, with the USDA only beginning research in the 1980s. It's not that food deserts didn't exist in the past, she said, but they may have become more obvious in recent years. She expects the ending of pandemic-era changes for those receiving food benefits to have a negative effect on their lives.
"Think of any one of us that lost $400 a month out of our food budget," she said "That's going to have a huge impact. There's lots of things that the pandemic did, and we did good things during the pandemic, but now they're being rolled back."
Bebo cited the pandemic policy that no longer required students to fill out an application for free and reduced school meals. Now, she said, that went away.
"People got out of the habit of submitting the application," she said. "And so there was a hard time getting up to that habit of submitting that application so that their kids could access free and reduced priced meals."
Bebo said those on SNAP benefits or those not on benefits at all "just don't have the money" to buy food. Bebo also cited the lack of public transportation as a reason many people face food insecurity.
"Whether you're talking mid-sized communities, inner cities. Look at Columbus," Bebo, a resident of Westerville, Ohio, said. "If I didn't have a car, I couldn't get to a grocery store because there's no buses."
Treva Williams, an extension educator with Family and Consumer Sciences at Ohio State University, works in food safety and preservation in Southern Ohio. Williams, who has worked in Scioto County for 27 years, said there is little access to chain grocery stores outside of Portsmouth, Scioto County's largest city. Many people must go to discount stores for food, and those stores sell mostly canned and packaged food.
"The problem there isn't so much that the food doesn't exist," Williams said. "There is no public transportation system. So, while the food may be there, getting to the food can sometimes be the bigger issue. Particularly when you don't have a vehicle."
In Youngstown, Alexander said transportation also poses a barrier to access for many people her organization serves.
"While we have public transportation, families are still limited with how much they can then bring home," she said. "So, if mom is trying to care for a few children and then maybe she catches the bus to Walmart or even to Save-A-Lot, whatever is closest to her, there is still that challenge of only carrying enough that she can manage."
Alexander said that while stores like Dollar General have increased access to frozen and processed food, this still leaves families without access to fresh fruits and vegetables.
"A lot of times, in trying to manage a budget, they are choosing foods that are lower in cost but higher in sodium and some of the other, less desirable nutrients, if I can even call them that," Alexander said. "So that's a challenge."
Source: publicnewsservice.org
Photo Credit: gettyimages-fatcamera
Categories: Ohio, General