By Kyrie Yaccarino, Landscape Architecture
Emily Pia is a very busy student. Despite her 22-credit course load as a senior in Biobehavioral Health, she is deeply invested in the Community Food Security Club and its activities, including January’s Hunger Banquet. To say that she is busy is an understatement. Regardless, she took some time to sit down with me one Friday afternoon to talk about her efforts with the Community Food Security Club and how they might tie in with the Student Farm Initiative.
Community Food Security Club members taught youth workshops at this year’s PASA conference.
According to Emily, “the Hunger Banquet kicked off our semester. One of the club’s other activities—teaching a healthy living class at a local elementary school—also began in January. This semester we have 33 kids! On our first day we made healthy smoothies with the students to get them excited about the class and to get them thinking about healthy eating.”
Between the Hunger Banquet and talking with Emily, I learned that the issue of food security is an issue closer to State College than one may think.
Emily: “Every time I say that 1 in 6 Americans are hungry, and the rate of food insecurity in Centre County is the highest in Pennsylvania, [I find that] people are blown away.”
Kyrie: Right! It doesn’t have to do with the student population, here, does it?
E: “I think there is a larger percentage of food insecure college students than we realize here. I know that Lion Pantry, which is a student food bank that just started at the end of last semester, is trying to eliminate some of those inequities. I don’t know how frequently it’s been visited. Also, one of the barriers is that it can be embarrassing to students to admit that they can’t afford to buy food every month. So I hope it gets utilized but I don’t know because they just started it.
As far as Centre County, you drive 20 minutes north up into the mountains to Phillipsburg and what you see looks a lot like a developing country. Houses without heat in the middle of Pennsylvania mountain winters, houses without running water—I was completely shocked when I first visited Phillipsburg and the surrounding areas. I think Penn State likes to put a shield around itself—I’m sure that PSU doesn’t want the publicity that we have poverty surrounding us, but we really do and I think it needs to be called to attention. So we work out in Phillipsburg when we do stuff like food drives, instead of working in the State College area. The State College area gets the support of the grocery stores in State College and there are so many organizations on campus that raise money for the State College food bank. They tend to receive more support than any of the surrounding area’s food banks.”
CFS members selling tickets for the Hunger Banquet in the HUB
Emily has not always known about the situation in Phillipsburg, and it was only through her experience working in a childhood obesity research lab that she found out about the food insecurity situation in Centre County. While urban food deserts are what people usually think of when one mentions food insecurity in America, there is an underrepresented rural population that has the same issues. These problems might seem too big for some people, but Emily thinks otherwise.
“I think as college students we are at an age where we can really make a difference. So, I think it’s important to host things like the Hunger Banquet so that those messages are heard. [But] donations can only go so far. We’ll do fundraisers, but raising awareness is almost more important than what we’re donating. If we can get students to care about these issues, write to our policy makers, galvanize support, and not be apathetic, I think that is most important. Finding a forum where students can talk and advocate for food security policy is the most important thing we can do. Our efforts are also geared towards assuaging the inequities that are out there. The hardest thing for me, though, is that when you do fundraisers and food drives it’s mostly packaged goods and empty calories—you’re donating things like crackers and mac and cheese.
In this way, sometimes food banks can create a wider gap between the haves and have-nots. You’re getting calories but they are empty calories that continue the cycle of poverty and obesity. It’s things like Dr. Blair’s initiative with the farmers’ market program that really have the power to make a difference in eating patterns and behaviors, because a lot of times low-income families can‘t get fruits and vegetables—they’re too expensive because our farm bill subsidizes corn and wheat and soy, which are all in those boxed and bagged foods!”
Dr. Dorothy Blair presented on her food security work in Africa during the Hunger Banquet in January, held on Penn State’s campus
Another major issue is a lack of available health and nutrition education, and certain skills.
“I think that [the] lack of access to nutrition education is really important to understanding why these issues of food insecurity, hunger and obesity are all concurrent. In my research lab, our PI (principal investigator) has gone out to families where mothers have told her, ‘my son gets all his fruits and vegetables—he drinks grape and orange soda’. So there’s a huge lack of knowledge. Combine that with the fact that in Centre County, we have a 13 percent adult illiteracy rate. So not only do you have this problem of not understanding where your food comes from, not being able to afford healthy food, not having time to dedicate to growing your own food, and combine that with ‘I can’t read a nutrition label’: it’s just the perfect storm. And there’s not much being done about it. I don’t think the problem can go on for much longer. This is an epidemic. It’s going on across the country. I think there is going to be action soon. We need to talk about it; we need to reverse this problem that has been getting worse over the years.”
K: And how do you think these issues and the Community Food Security Club at Penn State can benefit from the Student Farm Initiative?
E: “I love the idea of the Student Farm because I see it as a collaborative effort among people across different disciplines. None of the students in CFS are familiar with agriculture. None of us have lived or worked on farms. I see the Student Farm as an opportunity for people who are in agriculture to talk to people who are in nutrition, in Biology and Biobehavorial Health, in Sustainability and Ecology. It can be a place where we can all talk with each other and think about problems like food insecurity and sustainable agriculture from multiple angles. I think the Student Farm would attract people from a lot of disciplines and be able to talk about these issues and come up with comprehensive, interdisciplinary solutions. Or at least try to. And so, I think CFS would really benefit by bringing attention to the community food insecurity aspect of things. Once the farm gets up and running, CFS would be interested in talking about having some of the produce donated to the Phillipsburg food bank, or coming up with ways that we can support local agriculture up there.”
CFS members picking tomatoes on a local farm
K: Thinking about these solutions, do you think there is a possibility to have a partnership with food insecure places and the Student Farm in a more direct way?
E: “I guess it would depend on where the Student Farm would like to expand their reach, and if the initiative will want to partner with food insecure communities. Because these foods are perishable, it’s hard to merely provide, say, tomatoes when they might rot before they can reach food insecure households. And as we’ve realized in the research lab, it’s hard to bring individuals from surrounding communities into Penn State because of transportation issues, and people working long hours. So I’m not sure how that would work. But I think students who are passionate about farming could take fruits and vegetables and be like—‘here are fruits and vegetables that can be grown in PA, and here are the dishes you can make with them, and here is the cost of this dish,’ showing people that can be feasible, especially if you start from the seed.”
K: It’s all about learning.
E: “Right. And I think that the Student Farm might have the knowledge to give to places like Phillipsburg—and to me too, because I don’t even know how to grow fruits and vegetables.”
