Food Scarcity and COVID-19 (2)

Bailee Whitley

Introduction

As of my last post, global rollout of the COVID-19 vaccine was well underway with the exception of the United States’ progress who had just begun to gain momentum in distributing to at-risk populations. Thankfully, as of finalizing this post vaccines have become available to all Hoosiers over the age of 16. Americans with underlying health complications can now rest easier and begin to attempt a return to normalcy while still complying with federal guidelines. After more than a year of turmoil with nearly three million deaths worldwide and more than five-hundred thousand deaths in the United States, the citizens of the world will be reeling from COVID’s presence for the foreseeable future; one of the glaring problems that the virus exacerbated especially in the U.S was the availability of food and food anxiety. One study published in the latter part of last year conducted five surveys on recipients of nutritional assistance programs and, “measured, perceived and realized housing insecurity, food scarcity, new debt accrual, and recent job loss… Food insecurity and debt accrual grew more prevalent between from April to June 2020, and job losses compounded,” (Enriquez et. al). My own personal research focused specifically on food security in Bloomington as I was curious how local Hoosiers have been battling with the availability of food and while my more quantifiable methods have faced some troubles I was able to obtain testimonies from individuals in both Bloomington and Indianapolis in order to gain differing perspectives from varying locations.

 

As stated in my first post, the purpose of this blog and investigation will focus mainly on qualitative research based in a journalistic approach rather than hard quantifiable statistics. The reason for this is that I feel that a majority of those reading this blog or those that have a stake in the progression of COVID will have a good understanding about the statistics surrounding the virus. I felt that approaching this issue of food security on the basis of experiences by individuals and organizations would afford readers a fresh perspective that they otherwise would not encounter.  While I still have a survey in the works that will function as the main avenue of quantifiable results, I ran into some issues regarding distribution and I haven’t yet collected enough responses to definitively arrive at a reasonable conclusion. This is an unfortunate outcome because statistical models serve as good indicators of food crises. Interestingly, one study published just a year before the COVID pandemic found that, “Currently, international food crisis assessments are not based on statistical models. Instead, assessments use a convergence-of-evidence methodology, in which local stakeholders make infrequent projections based on available data,” (Lentz, et. al). This fact drove home the importance of statistical data as it relates to food security, and my next post will have an in-depth analysis of the data I collected from my survey so a concrete picture pertaining to food security for Hoosiers can be painted. In order to supplement the survey in this post, I acquired an extra piece of testimony which will be touched on in the next section.

Interviews & Testimony

In the time between my last post and this one, I went about searching for testimony both online and around Bloomington to inquire about individual perspectives on COVID’s impact on food security in recent months. In my efforts I was able to snag two interviews from organizations pertaining to food: Hoosier Hills Food Bank in Indianapolis and the Community Kitchen of Monroe County. Both interviews were conducted over Zoom over the last couple of weeks and while both representatives couldn’t talk for long as they were very busy serving the community, I was able to gather two perspectives that will hopefully paint a picture for you the reader. Before delving into the contents of these interviews I want to include the personal testimony of one ‘Jake Hernandez’, a local Bloomington resident who asked me for money to buy food when I was out getting myself dinner last week. I realized his perspective on my research could be valuable, so the two of us shared a meal on Kirkwood and I got to hear Jake’s story; he’s a veteran of Iraq who had been homeless for several months since losing his job this past fall. He told me various stories about his winter in Bloomington (which is another current issue entirely) but he told me that recently it had been very difficult to acquire meals as the local food shelter in Bloomington he attended only offered one meal a day. Jake’s story hopefully offers a window into situations faced by many Bloomington residents in a post-COVID world.

 

The Community Kitchen of Monroe executive director Vicki Pierce was very nice and in my interview with her she painted a picture of what the last year has looked like. She told me that while the first few months of COVID (late March to late summer) were extremely strenuous on the facility’s resources and staff, complications had mostly stabilized except for around Thanksgiving time which saw a spike in cases around the same time. Since then, the Kitchen had been running smoothly for the most part but Ms. Pierce emphasized that they have been seeing more people since COVID became problematic for people.

 

Upon first contacting the Hoosier Hills Food Bank in Indianapolis, I was referred to an excellent video on their website which did a good job explaining the past year for the organization which will be posted below but I wanted to ask a few more questions related to COVID specifically. Jake Bruner, director of development and administration did not have much time for me as the organization has been extremely busy these last few months. He told me that for most of the year, the organization pushed out over 23,000 meals daily to local Hoosiers in need across their various branches in Indiana. There were periods of intensity which echoed spikes in case numbers but I was told that the organization was never in serious danger of being unable to serve the community. A major complaint from a lot of the needy was the government’s dragging of feet in pushing out relief money to citizens to compensate for COVID’s disruption but I was told that an overwhelming majority of those who visited the Food Bank were extremely grateful and accepted the help without complaints. It is my hope that for my next post I can include the testimony from at least one more local organization to form a more complete picture.

Conclusions / Looking Ahead

While my findings for this post lack substance in quantitative data, it is my hope that through the various first-hand testimony I’ve gathered that readers can understand the impact that COVID has had on the availability of food for Hoosiers. For my next post I hope to have responses from students of Bloomington as they are most likely the bulk of my audience. One study conducted this past December at Salem State University used a survey to seek students’ opinion on school-funded meal plans and food pantries. The results found that, “most students preferred fresh produce and to be notified on social media when food is delivered. By accommodating student needs, it is more likely that students will utilize the on-campus pantry and address issues of food insecurity,” (Sweeney). By focusing more on students in my next post it is my hope that I can illuminate possible solutions for any fellow Hoosier reading this and facing food troubles.

 

Sources:

Diana Enriquez, A. (n.d.). COVID-19’s socioeconomic impact on Low-Income Benefit Recipients: Early evidence from tracking surveys – Diana ENRIQUEZ, Adam GOLDSTEIN, 2020. Retrieved March 28, 2021, from https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2378023120970794

Lentz, E., Michelson, H., Baylis, K., & Zhou, Y. (2019, June 20). A data-driven approach improves food insecurity crisis prediction. Retrieved March 30, 2021, from https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305750X19301603?casa_token=3luPe6EEbNIAAAAA%3AG2tGBy7RRGGPC-z8xYRfhcobMHsfPi-T3gzf6Twtc674dVeNVNLX4H0F-DV90BdOk3L8o4kMKw

Thistle, J. (n.d.). Food scarcity ON Salem State Campus: Promoting student use of campus food pantry. Retrieved March 31, 2021, from https://digitalcommons.salemstate.edu/hsppd/2020/fall/8/

https://www.youtube.com/watch=1iLNThvVw0Y&ab_channel=DuaneBusick

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/