Hunger Hits the Hill
by John Carroll ’20, News Editor
The United States Department of Agriculture defines food insecurity as the state of being without reliable access to a sufficient quantity of affordable, nutritious food. When discussion arises about poverty, programs like food stamps and welfare, other forms of public assistance often come into the conversation. In recent times, there has been a rise in social awareness for issues such as this. People and politicians are choosing sides in the debate, either for or against different forms of welfare for low- or no-income families. The main questions that come into play when discussing food insecurity in particular is: Is food a human right? Is the government, or are the people for that matter, responsible for providing food to people who do not have access to it? One of the main concerns for people who are against welfare is that these programs are funded by tax money.
While many citizens are more than willing to pay taxes to provide for public services, others feel as though their personal money is being given to someone else who has not genuinely earned it. This brings up the question of who deserves assistance and who does not, and how we derive who should receive things like food stamps and with what qualification. Food has been commercialized to such an extent that many restaurants and food chains have now become household name brands. We as a nation have exposed our children to the harmful effect of uneducated eating.
Chestnut Hill College tried to combat the growing issue from right here in their own neighborhood. Partnering with Wawa and local retailers, the school opened an on-campus food pantry back in May. Chestnut Hill College has been gradually advertising the space throughout the residence halls and lounge centers. The school even sent two students to a food security summit run by Tom Wolf, the state governor.
In her article “The Food Security Solution,” Kimberly Flowers adamantly suggests that through The Global Food Security Act and foreign assistance, that food insecurity can be greatly diminished. Flowers outlines the current risks of food insecurity, which involve national security risks and child developmental behaviors that may arise from malnutrition. She is motivating political leaders to support efforts in depleting the spreading pandemic of food deprivation and insecurity. Flowers’ tone is serious, even though she is pointing out solutions to this dire problem. Flowers claims that “There is a causal relationship between food insecurity and political instability, as escalating and volatile food prices have resulted in urban riots, toppled governments, and regional unrest from the Caribbean to the Middle East.”
We are living in the 21st century but, it is still the old world when it comes to many issues — food insecurity is just one of possibly thousands of issues we need to deal with today.
Higher education institutions can’t fix what they aren’t aware of. Being in full contact with the student body (and staff) would be a huge benefit, and would help to find solutions to this on-going problem.. Just because right now, no one is discussing food insecurity does not mean that they are not enduring it. Also advertising the services that programs and organizations offer is beneficial. Many students scroll past numerous emails daily because they are getting so much information, it is easy to miss the few emails the school might send out about programs like these.
A major obstacle to overcome is to stop thinking of food insecurity as some foreign concept. Food insecurity is not the issue — our societal make-up is. Wealth disparity is as bad today as it was during the great depression. The issue is affordable food (that is somewhat nutritious), discrimination, and low wages. Underfunded public services may be the key to combatting these issues. Unequal distribution of wealth, or wealth disparity (people having extreme wealth and people living in severe poverty) is also an unwavering issue. While acknowledgement of the pandemic is difficult on its own, Flowers warns that “Aligning foreign assistance with country-led strategies for agricultural growth is the most effective approach to achieving results for vulnerable smallholder farmers, their families, and their communities. Government ownership is critical to sustaining development investments and to ensuring a sound policy environment for private-sector engagement. In order for agriculture to reach its potential to generate employment, raise smallholder incomes, and catalyze markets, both the will of country leadership to dedicate resources and the ability of local and international private companies to invest along the value chain are required. In some cases, this translates into tough policy reforms that take time to understand, to implement, and to enforce”. When giving activists and programs the support that they need to succeed and thrive is the only true way for the government to successfully eradicate food insecurity. Food will take more than having students with minimum resources attempt to carry out large-scale aid, whether it be in the form of a food pantry or self-sustaining community gardens by themselves. Dedicate manpower, and time into these projects — make sure they flourish and not fall by the wayside. The Pennsylvania government has been keeping up with statistics of how these facilities operate and give us new insight on how we can improve or expand and reach more of those in need. Constantly challenge yourselves to think of better alternatives and new solutions. Food insecurity is not only at the college level and we need to stop dealing with it like it is.
