How many food banks are there in the united states -
323.234.3030
Blogs
Your gift counts TWICE as much this
While life may seem to be getting back to normal, there are still millions of people in Los Angeles County that depend on the Los Angeles Regional Food Bank for food assistance. You can help provide meals for those struggling with hunger in our community by making your generous gift today.
Give now and the first $100,000 will be matched by the Herb Alpert Foundation.
251,995 Meals
GIVE NOW
One in five people in LA County faces food insecurity.
You can help provide meals for those struggling with hunger in our community by making your generous gift today.
EVERY $75 = 300 600 MEALS
GIVE NOW
THE LOS ANGELES REGIONAL FOOD BANK
provides meals for families and children struggling with hunger in the community.
DOUBLE MY GIFT
Los Angeles Regional Food Bank
1734 East 41st Street
The coronavirus is a rapidly developing news story, so some of the content in this article might be out of date. Check out our most recent coverage of the coronavirus crisis, and subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily newsletter.
Food banks across the United States are struggling amid droves of hungry Americans in need of a meal. And images from photographers around the country show the horrifying number of Americans lining up to receive food assistance.
“We’re looking at an increase of 17.1 million people over the course of the next six months,” Claire Babineaux-Fontenot, CEO of Feeding America, one of the country’s largest hunger-relief organizations, told NBC News. Babineaux-Fontenot highlighted a 98 percent increase in demand for free food and Feeding America, expects to lose $1.4 billion trying to survive.
In San Antonio, ten thousand cars waited at a food distribution point run by the San Antonio Food Bank. CEO Eric Cooper told NBC’s Hoda Kotb on the Today Show that the bank typically feeds about 60,000 people a week—it’s now about 120,000 people a week.
According to the Guardian, the number of people lining up in Phoenix, Arizona has tripled. Across southern Arizona, it doubled. In Las Vegas, where demand is up by 30 percent, one of the largest food pantries has shuttered 170 out of 180 locations. In Massachusetts, food pantries increased distribution by 849 percent.
Sheila Christopher, director of Hunger-Free Pennsylvania, told the Guardian that she’s “been in this business over 30 years, and nothing compares to what we’re seeing now.” Jennifer McLean, the CEO of NYC’s City Harvest, told the New York Times that the need they’re seeing now dwarfs other crises like Hurricane Sandy and even September 11th.
But as more Americans find themselves relying on these organizations, those running these programs are facing the pandemic too. Dependent on volunteers, food banks across the country are coming up short on labor while people hunker down. In places like Washington state and Louisiana the National Guard has been called in to help with labor shortages. The Washington Post reported that many volunteer shifts have been canceled, because much of the labor that food banks rely on is comprised of retirees and senior citizens. To top it all off, Feeding America reported that they’ve seen a 64 percent decrease in donations.
The images are almost apocalyptic, flashing by in the collage of pictures that populate the intro to a sci-fi film. They’re also becoming frighteningly common.
Food banks are shuttering as they struggle to contend with the coronavirus and provide food relief to millions of people.
Volunteer help has dwindled because of social distancing and a fear of contracting and spreading the disease.
To deal with the challenges brought on by the outbreak, food banks have put in place new protocols for handling and delivering food and maintaining a steady supply. But these challenges have shifted much of the burden onto food banks themselves, leading to skyrocketing operating costs and uncertainty about how long they'll be able to respond.
"There's never enough money," said philanthropist Jean Shafiroff, a board member of the New York City Mission Society, which serves children and families living at or below the poverty level.
Hunger, a persistent problem in the United States, affected more than 37 million people in 2018, according to a report from the Department of Agriculture. Households with children are more likely to experience food insecurity, according to Feeding America, the country's largest network of food banks. Often, food-insecure households rely on local food banks and other hunger relief organizations for support.
But front-line workers are preparing for more dire circumstances, as the government continues to push shelter-in-place warnings and as unemployment rates continue to rise. Several food banks told CNBC they anticipate an increase in the coming months in the number of people seeking sufficient food supply for themselves and their families.
The outbreak has spread to dozens of countries globally, with more than 3 million confirmed cases worldwide and over 211,522 deaths, according to data from Johns Hopkins University on Tuesday. The U.S. has had at least 988,000 cases, including more than 56,000 deaths.
This story is based on conversations with six food banks in New York, New Jersey, California, Texas, and Washington, D.C., five areas that have seen some of the highest numbers of confirmed cases in the country.
Unexpected challenges
Nearly a third of food pantries nationally have closed in recent weeks, according to the New York City Mission Society.
Small food banks in New York City, which has become the epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak, have closed down because "they haven't gotten food to distribute or they don't have the volunteers to man them," Shafiroff told CNBC. She added that many volunteers who have stopped their service are in their 60s and 70s, making them high-risk candidates to contract the most severe form of the virus.
As small food banks shut down, people seek out help from larger organizations, like Food Bank for New York City, which gives out about 58 million meals a year. But even with its larger network of resources, the organization is still struggling, and "a number of its food pantries have closed," Shafiroff said.
Around the country, other food banks have also reported closing pantries, which often help larger banks distribute food directly to communities in need. Food banks in California, New Jersey, Texas, and Washington, D.C., told CNBC they've witnessed the closure of food pantries or other distribution agencies and nonprofits they partner with to deliver food.
Some food banks are seeing a decrease in the amount of food donated. The Capital Area Food Bank in Washington saw a 75% dip in donated food supply, CEO Radha Muthiah told CNBC. "It was just over the course of a week or so that we started to see these changes," Muthiah said. "There wasn't enough time to plan and anticipate this dramatic fall."
Additionally, the D.C. food bank is going longer periods of time without receiving food.
"What typically would take us eight to 12 days once we placed an order for a truckload of food can take up to eight weeks for our food supply to arrive," Muthiah said. Shelf-stable products that can be stored at room temperature like canned tuna, canned chicken and peanut butter can take the longest to arrive.
Demand has never been higher
Despite closures and shortages in staff and supply, the demand for food has never been higher, forcing food banks to quickly learn how to ramp up their efforts with fewer resources on hand than normal.
"Our agencies have reported increases that range anywhere between 40 and 100% increase in individuals accessing emergency food service," said Natalie Caples, chief operations officer at the Central California Food Bank, which serves about 70,000 families a month.
"We are really pushing our operations to the max right now. Every truck is going out full, essentially overweight," Caples said.
The Central Texas Food Bank served about 50,000 people a week before social distancing guidelines were encouraged. As the virus gained traction in the United States in late winter, the food bank began serving an additional 22,000 new individuals. "And we're starting to see those numbers increase during the first few weeks of April," CEO Derrick Chubbs told CNBC.
"What we normally see is a large number of the working poor — individuals who would be working in restaurants, bars, hotels, service workers — who depend on us to help them get through the last week of the month when they're typically trying to decide whether to pay for medicine for their kids, pay for utilities, or purchase food," Chubbs said. "Today, the likelihood of unemployment is higher. Those people who needed us once a month now need us every week."
Getting by
Food donations are down, which means food banks have to find alternate ways to procure the same stream of supply. They've turned to purchasing food themselves using larger portions of their budgets to make it happen.
The Community Food Bank of New Jersey, the state's largest, lost about 800,000 pounds of donated food in March and April, CEO Carlos Rodriguez told CNBC. To make up the difference, the New Jersey food bank started buying food, spending an additional $945,000 a month since March.
Monetary donations are on the rise. Multiple food banks told CNBC that financial donations from corporate supporters and foundations have been more generous lately, and individual monetary donations have not stopped despite an nationwide economic slowdown.
"I think it's a testament to the generosity of the community," Rodriguez said. "Those that can donate clearly are."
Some food banks have found other revenue streams and opportunities that help make ends meet.
The Capital Area Food Bank has formed partnerships with Bank of America and Mars Foundation, each donating $500,000 to help with the organization's efforts to provide food to the "newly food-insecure," Muthiah said.
The Central California Food Bank has partnered with a local tech company to facilitate delivery for home-bound individuals like seniors and people with disabilities, according to Caples.
Customers who can pick up their food are also on the receiving end of major changes. To minimize contact with food, volunteers and staff members at food banks across the United States have begun boxing produce and shelf-stable items like pasta, rice and canned foods.
Before the pandemic, pantries and banks often distributed their food following what is called the "client choice model," in which an individual can select from a wide variety of products. Typically, "it's set up like a farmers market," Muthiah said. "People would walk through, pick up what they like, linger a little bit, ask for a recipe card. All of that has come to an end to minimize exposures."
Other food banks now follow a similar model. The Central Texas Food Bank has staff and remaining volunteers build emergency food boxes that hold about 28 pounds of food. Families and individuals drive down to a distribution site and open their car trunks, allowing a worker to place one of the boxes with food in it while avoiding all unnecessary contact.
Looking ahead
This unusual demand will persist even when the coronavirus dies down, representatives from multiple food banks said.
Food banks are foreseeing people struggling financially for a long time and hope to be able to continue to respond to their food needs as time goes on.
"We're now moving into what we call a new normal," Muthiah said.
"Even if there's a vaccine and the corona effects will start to tail off, the economic effects are here for some time to come. So we're looking at this as a situation we have to contend with, respond to in the next year."
So in recent weeks, food banks have had to balance double duty: rapidly adjust to new food distribution protocols to prioritize safety and avoid contamination while at the same time create a sustainable operation that lasts well beyond the coronavirus.
In the near future, some larger food banks will likely not host or be a part of large fundraising events, said Shafiroff, a board member of seven nonprofit organizations in New York.
"It's just too chancey," she said.
Aside from raising money, there are lingering concerns on where the food will come from in the near future.
Chubbs is worried about "what this is going to look like 45 to 60 days from now, when we are all — not just the retail grocers but all 200 food banks in the country — trying to procure food from the same vendors."
If those vendors cease to exist, this would add another yet another major hurdle.
Americans join miles-long queues at food banks across the US as thousands face hunger during pandemic
Americans across the United States have lined up in miles-long queues at food banks after thousands lost their jobs amid the coronavirus pandemic.
The rise in food insecurities among the public comes as the unemployment rate from Covid-19 has risen faster in three months compared to what it did in two years of the Great Recession, according to the Pew Research Centre.
In response, those impacted have turned to charities like food banks in order to put food on the table.
Feeding America, a national food bank nonprofit, reported about 35 million Americans were impacted with food poverty in 2019. The nonprofit estimated that number could grow an additional 17 million from the pandemic, meaning more than 50 million Americans could need food assistance by the end of 2020.
“About 40 per cent of the people who are turning to us for help have never before relied upon the charitable food system,” said Claire Babineaux-Fontenot, CEO of Feeding America. “Unfortunately, the food crisis persists.”
States like California, New York, Wisconsin, Texas, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and South Carolina, as well as others, have reported long lines at their food banks with people waiting hours to pick up items.
In Los Angeles, volunteers estimated more than 1,000 people lined up on Saturday outside one food bank alone to pick up items, CNN reports. CityTeam, a charity that serves the Santa Clara area of California, reported families in need rose from the organisation helping 1,400 households a month in February to 4,400 households a month in November.
Similarly food banks have reported increased lines and need across New York State. In response, New York City launched GetFoodNYC to address the increased need from residents for a free meal. The $170m plan will include opening more than 400 food hubs where New Yorkers could pick up food or for-hire delivery drivers can deliver directly to them.
In Austin, Texas, about 1,400 cars lined up outside one food bank on Monday morning during the last major handout prior to the Thanksgiving holiday.
Car lines also formed in Coloma, Michigan, on Monday as hundreds waited to pick up a free meal for Thanksgiving.
The US unemployment rate rose to a record high of 14.7 per cent in April, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That number has since declined to 6.9 per cent unemployed in October, but the level still causes concern about the potential “food cliff” charities are bracing for this year.
Most food given out to people is donated, but organisations like the Boy Scouts of America were forced to postpone their food drives due to the pandemic.
Instead, charities like City Harvest, a New York-based organisation, have turned to purchasing food in order to address the overwhelming need. Between the months of March and November, the organisation spent $10m on food, CNBC reports. That number, which was significantly larger than the $208,000 the organisation typically spent per fiscal year, was only expected to increase.
“We don’t see the numbers diminishing,” CEO Jilly Stephens told the publication. “When the days get colder and shorter, people need that food.”
If demand were to continue without the necessary funding and resources, organisations like City Harvest will face a “food cliff” where they will have to cut back on supplies.
Ms Stephens said the organisation was expecting its biggest surge in demand to happen in January after federal assistance programmes expire at the end of this year.
'A perfect storm': US facing hunger crisis as demand for food banks soars
An unprecedented number of Americans have resorted to food banks for emergency supplies since the coronavirus pandemic triggered widespread layoffs.
The demand for food aid has increased as much as eightfold in some areas, according to an investigation by the Guardian, which gives a nationwide snapshot of the hunger crisis facing the US as millions become unemployed.
About one in three people seeking groceries at not-for-profit pantries last month have never previously needed emergency food aid, according to interviews with a dozen providers across the country.
The national guard has been deployed to help food banks cope with rising demand in cities including Cleveland, Pittsburgh and Phoenix amid growing concerns that supplies may run low as the crisis evolves. Overstretched food pantries are switching to drive-thrus and home deliveries to minimize the spread of Covid-19 as almost 300 million Americans are urged to stay at home.
“I’ve been in this business over 30 years, and nothing compares to what we’re seeing now. Not even when the steel mills closed down did we see increased demand like this,” said Sheila Christopher, director of Hunger-Free Pennsylvania, which represents 18 food banks across 67 counties.
Last year, 4.3bn meals were distributed to more than 40 million Americans through a network of 200 food banks and 60,000 pantries, schools, soup kitchens and shelters, according to Feeding America, the national food bank network. The working poor, elderly and disabled and infirm accounted for the vast majority of food bank users.
This week, the Guardian contacted food banks and pantries in nine states, which all reported unprecedented demand, plummeting donations from retailers, and a fall in personnel due to the coronavirus crisis.
In Amherst, home to the University of Massachusetts’ largest campus, the pantry distributed 849% more food in March compared with the previous year. The second-largest increase in western Massachusetts was 748% at the Pittsfield Salvation Army pantry.
The Grace Klein community food pantry in Jefferson county, which has the largest number of confirmed Covid-19 cases in Alabama, provided 5,076 individuals with food boxes last week – a 90% increase on the previous week.
In southern Arizona, demand has doubled, with pantries supplying groceries to 4,000 households every day – double the number supplied in March 2019. “We saw an increase during the federal government shutdown but nothing as rapid, massive or overwhelming as this,” said Michael McDonald, CEO of the Community Food Bank of South Arizona.
A helpline set up by the Greater Pittsburgh community food bank has received more than a thousand calls in the past two weeks, 90% of which came from newly unemployed people. Here, pantries ordered 50% to 60% more food for March and April than usual.
The Lakeview pantry in Chicago is on track to provide food for as ally debit card international fees as 2,000 individuals this week – compared with 1,100 before the coronavirus crisis.
The north Florida food bank, which relied heavily on contributions from retailers, has seen donations drop by 85% to 90% as shoppers bulk-buy, leaving shelves empty. But donations from restaurants, golf tournaments and even Disney World have increased, so the food bank is switching to ready meals, paying furloughed chefs to cook for thousands of senior citizens in housing facilities.
In Las Vegas, the Three Square food bank has increased weekly food distribution by 30%, from 1m to 1.3m lbs of food. New drive-thru distribution centres have been set up across the valley as 170 of its 180 distribution outlets have been forced to temporarily close due to CDC social distancing guidelines. “Every line at every distribution centre exceeds the amount of food in our trucks,” said chief operating officer Larry Scott.
The Kansas City-based Harvesters food bank, which serves 16 counties in north-east Kansas and 10 in north-west Missouri, sent out 12,000 boxes to pantries on Monday 23 March – a 140% rise on the 5,000 boxes typically ordered. “It was the largest distribution day in our 40-year history,” said its communications manager, Gene Hallinan.
This snapshot is representative of the national picture, according to Feeding America. “This is a perfect storm impacting food banking as we know it,” said a spokeswoman, Zuani Villarreal.
On Tuesday, Cleveland police and the Ohio national guard helped load boxes of groceries into cars at a new drive-thru pick-up service located in the huge downtown municipal car park.
At least 2,765 families were provided with a week’s groceries – 36% of them first-timers – compared with 1,500 at a similar event last week, when the queue stretched almost three miles. A cab driver, single mother who worked in hospitality and freelance photographer were among those requesting help for the first time.
The rust belt states are among the hardest hit by the coronavirus economic crisis. More than 187,000 Ohioans filed for unemployment benefits during the third week of March when businesses were closed by the governor – an extraordinary increase on the 7,046 claims filed the previous week, according to the Department of Labor.
The Greater Cleveland food bank received 800 calls to its helpline during one day last week – eight times the usual number. “I’ve never seen anything like it in over 20 years of service. We’re seeing people from every socio-economic level because the majority of Americans live paycheck to paycheck,” said the food bank’s CEO, Kristin Warzocha.
Half of American adults have either no emergency savings or not enough to cover three months of living expenses, according to Bankrate’s 2019 Financial Security Index.
Demand tripled
There was a similar dramatic scene in Phoenix, Arizona, where 1,500 people queued up for food boxes at the St Mary’s main office – compared with 450 just two weeks ago. Here, the national guard is also pitching in at the makeshift drive-thru centre as volunteer numbers have plummeted from 250 a day to less than 50, as the vast majority are senior citizens advised to stay home to minimize the risk of Covid-19.
In total, St Mary’s – the oldest known food bank in the world – supplies 700 pantries, shelters, churches and social service centres in seven counties where one in five children struggle with hunger.
“First we saw people who lived paycheck to paycheck, got laid off and didn’t know where the next meal was coming from, followed by those who had a couple of weeks of savings. Now, people who knew about us because they donated or volunteered are coming in for food,” said Jerry Brown, media spokesman for St Mary’s. “The 2008 recession doesn’t touch this. It’s a different ballgame.”
Before the coronavirus pandemic, about 37 million, or one in eight, Americans could not always access enough nutritional food to lead healthy, active lives. Food insecurity forces families to make tradeoffs between basic needs such as housing, medical bills and food, and many do not qualify for federal nutrition programs.
The government rescue packages include some measures to help alleviate food insecurity such as expanding eligibility for food stamps, increasing commodities donations from the Department of Agriculture (USDA) and providing $1,200 to every American earning under $99,000.
But experts warn that help has been slow, patchy and inadequate so far.
“Philanthropy and not-for-profits are not going to be able to meet food demands. The government needs to step in,” said Kellie O’Connell, chief executive of the Lakeview pantry in Chicago.
Caitlin Welsh, director of global food security at the Washington based Center for Strategic and International Studies, said: “The supply chain is strong but as the number of food insecure people increases continuously, we’ll perhaps need a new wave of federal legislation directed specifically at household food security.
“These numbers show that the pandemic is causing economic shocks never experienced in our lifetime.”
Locations
Oregon Food Bank facilities
From Oregon Food Bank’s five main locations, we distribute food to partners in communities all across Oregon and Southwest Washington. Our facilities are also where the Oregon Food Bank team works on policies and programs to address the root causes of hunger.
Our five facilities serving the region
Metro Services
Location: Portland, Oregon
Area served: Multnomah and Clackamas Counties
Address:
7900 NE 33rd Drive
Portland, OR 97211
Phone: 503-282-0555 or 1-800-777-7427
Food assistance hotline: 503-505-7061
Washington County Services
Location: Beaverton, Oregon
Area served: Washington County
Address:
1870 NW 173rd Avenue
Beaverton, OR 97006
Phone: 503-439-6510
Southeast Oregon Services
Location: Ontario, Oregon
Area served: Malheur and Harney counties
Address:
773 S Oregon St.
Ontario, OR 97914
Phone: 541-889-9206
Contact:
Sheila Hiatt
Southeast Oregon Services Manager
[email protected]
Tillamook County Food Bank
Location: Tillamook, Oregon
Area served: Tillamook County
Address:
1760 Wilson River Loop
Tillamook, OR 97141
Phone: 503-842-3154
Contact:
Mis Carlson-Swanson
Tillamook County Food Bank Manager
[email protected]
Columbia Gorge Food Bank
Location: The Dalles, Oregon
Area served: Hood River, Wasco and Sherman counties
Address:
3610 Crates Way
The Dalles, OR 97058
Phone: 541-370-2333
Contact:
Sharon Thornberry
Columbia Gorge Food Bank Manager
[email protected]
Our partner network
The Oregon Food Bank Network brings together 21 regional food banks and more than 1,400 food assistance sites to provide free food to anyone and everyone. Learn more about our network and find opportunities to get involved with Oregon Food Bank partners near you.
Learn moreLearn more
Cheryl, Rufus, OregonRunning the food pantry is rewarding, and there is a definite need. As long as there’s a need, we hope to be here.
The 40 Best Food Banks in America
Special Report
Josie Green
May 9, 2019 4:12 pm
Last Updated: January 6, 2020 4:48 am
Not a single person in the United States needs to go hungry — enough food is produced in this country to feed the entire population. Yet according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, 40 million people in the United States lived in food insecure households in 2017. A food insecure household is one that is unable to provide enough food for every member to live a healthy life. Factors such as low wages and medical bills often contribute to people’s inability to purchase adequate food, and these factors combined can keep people trapped in poverty.
Meanwhile, 72 how many food banks are there in the united states pounds of edible food goes to waste every year. It’s estimated that 25%-40% of the food grown in the United States for domestic consumption will never be eaten, according to the nonprofit organization Feeding America.
Children and seniors on fixed incomes are particularly susceptible to food insecurity. Over 12 million children in the United States live in food insecure households, many relying on school lunch as their sole stable source of nutrition.
In response, Feeding America, a national hunger relief organization, has initiated multiple nationwide programs to feed children, including BackPack, a service where kids in need are sent home from school on Fridays with a backpack of food to last them the weekend, Kids Cafe, an after school meal service for children who may not receive dinner, and Summer Food service programs, which bring food to neighborhoods where children in need may face hunger during the summer when school lunch is not available.
Federal programs like SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, also known as food stamps) and WIC (Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children) can provide monthly help to families in need, but for families and individuals who do not qualify or who have trouble applying for benefits, food banks provide a necessary and consistent source of nutritious food.
Many food banks, while relying partially on donations and government commodities to feed their clients, are intercepting the food waste stream to prevent edible food from ending up in landfills and instead they try to get it into the hands of people in need.
24/7 Wall St. compiled a list of the best food banks in America, and across the board, the vast majority of these food banks serve as massive hubs that salvage food from grocery stores, restaurants, manufacturers, distributors, and farms and store it in warehouse facilities from which they distribute it through their own food relief programs and through dozens of different channels in their area, such as food pantries, churches, homeless shelters, and after-school programs. Although these organizations provide necessary support to millions of people, they are by no means the largest charities in their states.
Most of the best organizations are members of the Feeding America network and participate in the BackPack, Kids Cafe, and Summer Food programs in addition to mobile pantry services, senior grocery delivery, and providing food for a vast network of nonprofit relief organizations in their area, often serving the hungriest counties in their state.
Click here to read about the 40 best food banks in America.
Click here to see our methodology.
Read more: Special Report
The rise of food banks and the challenge of matching food assistance with potential need: towards a spatially specific, rapid how many food banks are there in the united states approach
Abstract
In the United States, food banks served an estimated 46 million people in 2015. A combination of government policy reforms and political economic trends contributed to the rising numbers of individuals relying on private food assistance in the US, the United Kingdom and other high-income countries. Although researchers frequently map urban food environments, this project is one of the first to map private food assistance and potential need at the census-tract scale. We utilize Geographic Information Systems, demographic data, and food assistance locations to develop a rapid assessment tool that could support food banks, pantries, soup kitchens, and government agencies that seek to answer the question of whether people with the greatest need have food distribution sites in close proximity. We define access based on distance and then calculate potential food insecurity using either poverty rates or a food insecurity index. We what is an online id bank of america these methods in a case study analysis of Santa Clara County, California. Our findings suggest that food assistance distribution locations match the areas of potential need in more than 80% of urban census tracts. However, there are several potentially underserved locations and populations that could benefit from new food assistance operations. The poverty and index-based approaches show significant spatial overlap in mapped areas of high food insecurity and low access. The poverty only approach produces a higher estimate of food insecurity rates, is easier to calculate, and draws attention to the need to address poverty as a root cause of hunger.
Introduction
Although the vast majority of food insecure people live in the developing world, food insecurity remains a vexing problem in the United States (US) and many other industrialized countries, including Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom (UK) (McIntyre et al. 2016). The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) classifies a household as food insecure when “access to adequate food is limited by a lack of money and other resources” (Coleman-Jensen et al. 2014). Jensen wrote that despite “ample aggregate food supplies and relatively low food prices, many households do not have assured access to enough food to meet their dietary needs to lead active and healthy lives” (Jensen 2002, p. 1215). Households facing risks to their ability to access sufficient food rely on a wide range of coping strategies, which can include: the use of credit to buy food, eating less, skipping meals and participating in government or private food assistance programs. Although government food programs have historically assumed the primary role in attempting to alleviate food insecurity, in the last decade private food assistance led by food banks and/or local food pantries and soup kitchens emerged as a key source of food assistance in the US, Australia, UK, and elsewhere. Thus far, research analyzing food banks’ management decisions and strategies used to reach those most in need have not kept up with this rapid expansion (González-Torre and Coque 2016).
The number of food insecure households in the US continues to remain high despite economic growth following the Great Recession of 2008. In 2014, 48.1 million Americans, representing 14.0% of US households, were classified as food insecure (Coleman-Jensen et al. 2014). This compares to 36.2 million Americans (11.1% of the households) in 2007, the year preceding the Great Recession (Coleman-Jensen et al. 2014). The percentage of households classified as food insecure has declined only slightly from a high of 14.9% in 2011 (Coleman-Jensen et al. 2014). Perhaps more disturbing is the number of food-insecure households with children. In 2014, almost one in five households with children (19.2%) was classified as food insecure as compared to 15.8% of households in 2007 (Coleman-Jensen et al. 2014). This trend is troublesome due to the negative health effects associated with food insecurity in households with children, including birth defects, cognitive problems, poor general health, and complications from oral health issues (Jyoti et al. 2005). These statistics remind us “No rich democracy matches the United States in the depth and expanse of its poverty. As of 2015, almost 50 million Americans lived below the federal poverty line” (Desmond 2015, p. 3).
Food banks operate very differently across the globe. In the US, Canada, and Australia, food banks largely operate to source food and funds so that they can distribute to food pantries and soup kitchens. In the UK, the Trussell Trust is the largest food bank. It sources food and directly distributes it through over 400 community food banks, which are similar to food pantries that operate in the US. To simplify terminology, specific reference to UK food banks will be called emergency food aid providers. Unlike in the US system, Trussell Trust emergency food aid providers operate a voucher and referral system prior to providing clients with access to nonperishable food distribution. This approach risks excluding certain individuals and reinforcing constructions of the deserving and undeserving poor (Williams et al. 2016).
In the US, food banks served an estimated one in seven people (more than 46 million) in 2014 (Feeding America 2014). As of 2013, the “4743 organizations included in Food Banks Canada’s annual ‘HungerCount’ provided groceries to 833,098 people through food banks and local distribution centers, and 4,341,659 meals through soup kitchens, shelters, school breakfast programs, and other venues” (Food Banks Canada 2013 cited in Tarasuk et al. 2014, p. 1409). An analysis of trends over time shows that the reliance on food banks has expanded rapidly in Canada. In the UK, Oxfam reports that one in five people live below the poverty line, and rising costs of food and energy coupled with stagnant wages has contributed to the rapidly expanding presence of food banks. “In 2009–2010 Trussell Trust food banks [or emergency food assistance distribution centers] were operating in 29 local authorities across the UK; by 2013–2014, the number had jumped to 251 and food banks are now found in nearly every district of the UK” (Loopstra et al. 2015, p. 1).
The motivation for this research arose out of a discussion with local food bank managers regarding how well the food insecure population was served by food distribution agencies. Accessibility remains a challenge to many clients, especially when food assistance is difficult to obtain because of location, hours of operation, and/or transportation options (Tsang et al. 2011). People who go to food assistance sites must have the necessary time, energy, and knowledge to “know where to go and when, within a complex and constantly changing landscape of providers and other resources” (Miewald and McCann 2014, p. 544). Disability, age, illness, children, and the social stigma associated with welfare present additional barriers to access. Those without cars must find alternative ways to transport themselves to sites and carry food back from these locations. Such assessments are difficult for food banks in the US, since they act similar to a food wholesaler; they solicit donations of money and food and then distribute food to partner organizations (e.g., soup kitchens, food pantries, and other programs) that often operate like food retailers by providing food directly to clients. Not only do food banks have a limited relationship with the population they serve, but they also lack direct control over the distribution of the product. Our conversations led to a discussion of the potential for using of geographic information systems (GIS) to assess how well non-governmental food assistance programs can address the proximity dimensions of access in serving food insecure populations.
The objective of this study is to assess how well a local food assistance organization serves its clientele from a geographical perspective. Specifically, the research question is: do the areas with the highest concentration of people who are likely in need of food assistance have food distribution sites in close proximity? Prior to responding to this question, we examine the broader political economic context contributing to the rise of food banks, and assess the contributions and limits of recent studies mapping food access. After describing the methods and presenting our results, we share a future research section that draws on recent scholarship in human geography to critically reflect on the role of research and private food assistance as part of efforts to both improve immediate responses to food insecurity, and foster innovations that address the persistence of poverty and malnutrition.
Food entitlement programs and the rise of food banks in the US
In the US, there are a variety of governmental programs to assist low-income families in responding to the risk of food insecurity (Schmidt et al. 2013). The largest of these programs is the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), often referred to as Food Stamps. In 2014, 46.5 million Americans residing in 22.7 million households received benefits from SNAP, totaling $74.1 billion (USDA and Food and Nutrition Service 2015). Although SNAP does not meet all food needs, rigorous research shows that it remains one of the most important elements of the social safety net and is the second largest anti-poverty program for children in the US (Hoynes et al. 2017). Other major governmental food assistance programs include the National School Lunch Program (30.4 million children and $12.7 billion in benefits), the School Breakfast Program (13.6 million children and $3.7 billion in benefits), and the Women, Infants, and Children Program (WIC), (8.3 million recipients and $4.3 billion in benefits), (USDA and Food and Nutrition Service 2015).
Nutrition assistance programs began during the Great Depression era when breadlines coincided with collapsing farm-level prices for many commodities, including wheat, corn, and cotton. The Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1933 directed the federal government to pay farmers to reduce agricultural production. Surplus commodities purchased by the federal government were then distributed through hunger relief agencies. A few decades later, during the presidential campaign debates of 1960, candidate John F. Kennedy brought the issue of hunger in the US from the margins of food policy debates to the forefront. After Kennedy’s election, his administration developed policies and programs to address the growing hunger problem. These programs were modified and expanded by subsequent administrations. Two notable programs that endure today are the food stamp program, or SNAP, and the WIC program. Agricultural subsidies and food aid, both authorized by the Farm Bill, have survived in part because of support from a rural–urban coalition with rural legislators advocating for farm price support programs and urban legislators supporting nutrition assistance programs. While the nutrition assistance programs have contributed to hunger alleviation, government food distribution programs largely exclude nutritionally important foods, such as fruits and vegetables because they focus on the distribution of surplus commodities such as dairy and wheat.
The passage of the US’s Temporary Food Emergency Assistance Program (TEFAP) in 1983 coupled with a reduction in SNAP benefits in subsequent years led to the emergence of a national private food assistance network consisting of food banks and food pantries (Cabili et al. 2013). Prior to TEFAP, food assistance was provided by 13 locally operated food banks that relied on local food donations to supply local churches, and charitable organizations (Daponte and Bade 2006). Some 20 years later, the combination of policy reform, civil society initiative, and economic change contributed to the emergence of a national network of more than 230 food banks (Gottlieb and Joshi 2013, p. 94; Feeding America 2014). Compared to past food assistance programs, today’s programs have started to develop a stronger focus on nutrition. Moreover, donations of food from producers, processors, wholesalers, and retailers have increased greatly because of tax incentives available through the program (Daponte and Bade 2006).
The aforementioned government policy changes, combined with the 2007–2008 financial crisis in the US, stagnant wages, rising costs of living, underemployment, and unemployment spurred the rise of non-profit food banks in the US and other high-income countries (Bazerghi et al. 2016; Lambie-Mumford and Dower 2014). Data for non-governmental food assistance in the US is difficult to verify because it is provided by multiple agencies with no central reporting. Nonetheless, we can get some idea of the importance of non-governmental food assistance by looking at the data from Feeding America, the largest non-governmental, hunger-relief agency in the US. Feeding America oversees a network of over 200 member food banks that represent approximately 80% of the food banks in the US (Feeding America 2014). In 2014, Feeding America reported that their network of food banks and over 60,000 partner agencies, including food pantries, soup kitchens, and meals on wheels programs, provided 3.3 billion meals to more than 46 million low-income individuals (Feeding America 2014). Although governmental and non-governmental agencies provide substantial support for low-income people, the problem of food insecurity persists. Feeding America estimates that as of 2014, an additional 8.6 billion meals were needed to fully meet the needs of Americans.
Studies about the rise of private food assistance have documented long-term dependence on ‘temporary’ emergency food assistance (Paynter et al. 2011), explained the role of food pantries in providing key benefits that respond to the needs of the changing face of hunger (Will and Milligan 2015), and critically analyzed the political and economic limits of this approach (Poppendieck 1999). Although food bank programs can help connect clients directly with government led programs, such as SNAP, sometimes these links are not established. Researchers also note that this model of food access limits the ability of citizens and residents to claim what many consider a human right to food entitlements when the primary source of food assistance is a private non-profit enterprise and not a government agency (Daponte and Bade 2006). In a recently published critical review of the scholarship on food banks, McIntyre and colleagues group the 33 articles they analyzed into those that focus on operational challenges (e.g., effectiveness and accessibility) and those that focus on the broader concerns of poverty and exclusion (e.g., indignity and invisibility of hunger) (McIntyre et al. 2016). The increasing size and scope of private food assistance networks suggests the need to approach all dimensions of this challenge, for a better understanding of the impact of these programs, an analysis of how they interact with public food assistance programs, and the development of strategies to more effectively target support.
Mapping local food insecurity and access to food assistance distribution
To develop a rapid assessment approach for mapping local household food insecurity, we started by asking: what are the proximate correlative factors that influence the predominance of food insecurity in high-income countries? A large-scale national study of the state and county level determinants of household food security in the US offers a starting point for our analysis (Gundersen et al. 2014). This study integrated the results of household surveys using the USDA’s battery of core food security questions with demographic data from the US American Community Survey (ACS), finding statistically significant correlations linking poverty, unemployment, and home renting (vs. ownership) to higher levels of food insecurity (Gundersen et al. 2014). The Gundersen study’s model also found statistically significant fixed effects related to the year of analysis, which generally correlate with fluctuations in the US economy, and the state of residence, suggesting the need for attention to the local determinants. This study was one of the first to move beyond the statewide summaries that aggregate the number of food insecure households to develop a county-by-county assessment. Another study from the Trussell Trust, the Church of England, and the charities Oxfam and Child Poverty Action Group found that food bank users in the UK were more likely to live in rented accommodations, be single adults or lone parents, be unemployed, and have experienced a “sanction,” where their unemployment benefits were cut for at least one month (Loopstra et al. 2015, p. 1, citing; Perry et al. 2014).
Our efforts to develop a procedure to map the patterns of access among potentially food insecure households and match them to the locations of food assistance benefit from a large body of existing research using GIS to analyze the spatial patterns of access to healthy food and food environments (Feagan et al. 2007; Larson et al. 2009; Hirsch and Hillier 2013; USDA 2015). Several of the pioneering studies in this literature sought to correlate a population’s weight and health status with demographic data and proximity to supermarkets and fast food outlets generating an evolving debate about urban food environments and ‘food deserts’ (Gordon-Larsen et al. 2006; Larson et al. 2009). These studies and the USDA’s Food Access Research Atlas (USDA 2015) draw buffers around supermarkets (0.5 miles or 1 mile in urban areas and 10 miles in rural areas) and then use distance to the nearest full-service supermarket as a key proximity-based indicator of access, which is then combined with poverty levels to identify areas with high poverty and low access to more affordable fresh fruits and vegetables (Gordon-Larsen et al. 2006; Gordon et al. 2011).
Food access mapping limits and the challenges of everyday foodscapes
Although scholars conducting food desert research have produced many quantitative studies analyzing spatial patterns of urban and rural access to nutritious food (McKinnon et al. 2009) and recently extended this approach with studies that focus on residents’ transportation patterns in low food access areas (Hirsch and Hillier 2013; LeClair and Aksan 2014), some scholars and food justice activists have critiqued food desert studies. These critiques highlight the way that conventional food desert studies remained rooted in a supply side perspective that relies almost exclusively on the use of quantitative and geospatial methodologies to understand obesity and food insecurity (Short et al. 2007). This methodological focus often leaves these studies silent on how racial and ethnic differences relate to the subjective lived experiences of community members experiencing food poverty, food preferences, and broader aspirations for food system and community change (Alkon et al. 2013; Shannon 2013).
Shannon argues that by defining food deserts “through their absences” researchers and policy makers are using a deficit model that neatly bounds the problem in a way that generally leads to one “solution” which is to open a supermarket in a spatially optimized location (Shannon 2013, p. 11). While the presence of supermarkets in certain places (e.g., parts of Detroit or Chicago’s South Side) could increase low income residents’ proximity to fresh fruits and vegetables at prices below those offered in most corner stores, a supermarket-only solution to food insecurity and obesity does not address root causes. Although in some cases these mapping approaches offer a useful starting point, this approach neither recognizes how relationships shape both place (Goodman 2016) and food security (Drèze and Sen 1989), nor does it address how people shop and access food through time (Widener and Shannon 2014). Critiques of food desert studies’ failure to develop a sophisticated analysis of the causal factors that shape patterns of obesity and food insecurity note that these studies often ignore the influence of exposures to environmental pollutants, poverty, stigma and social marginalization, while some of the deeper critiques also raise broader questions about the governmental regulation of urban bodies and spaces, as well as the idea of an ‘obesity epidemic’ (Guthman 2011). Collectively the critical approach has generated new avenues for research, questioned simplified policy responses to complex problems of food insecurity and access to healthy foods (Guthman 2011), and helped to inspire a more sophisticated series of urban food access and mapping studies (Hirsch and Hillier 2013; Widener and Shannon 2014).
Qualitative and mixed methods studies of foodways explain urban food insecurity and the broader challenges of malnutrition and poor access to affordable nutritious food, as they analyze everyday experiences of sustenance in ways not captured in purely quantitative mapping approaches. A range of largely qualitative studies offer conceptual insights into how culture, age, class, race, ethnicity, gender, and other dimensions of identity relate with nature and society through food production and consumption (Goodman 2016; Alkon 2013). Many of these studies explore how urban food insecurity links to the broader political economic forces as they relate to issues, such as uneven development, displacement, homelessness, welfare reform, and the shifting geographies of social welfare programs (Deverteuil 2015; Allard 2008). Other studies focus on the injustices and contradictions associated with modern production-oriented food systems e.g., developing case studies showing how low farm worker wages and uncertain immigration status perpetuate food insecurity (Minkoff-Zern 2014a). Finally, some scholars further this critical analysis as they raise pressing questions about how racial and food politics relate to food security assistance efforts that fail to take seriously cultural preferences and local knowledge, aiming to educate food insecure populations on how to cook or bring “good food to others” (Guthman 2008), instead of recognizing the local knowledge and culturally rooted responses among food insecure communities as one of the key starting points for developing responses (Bacon et al. 2014; Minkoff-Zern 2014b), or analyzing the root causes of poverty as it relates to hunger (Lambie-Mumford 2013; Hoynes et al. 2017).
Although not included in our study, an important complementary area of research considers the broader experiences of food poverty, and the common coping and access strategies that individuals and families use in their daily efforts to secure food beyond what is available in food pantries or through government programs, which generally provide insufficient food during lean times. A recent study of food assistance in the UK, conducted interviews with food bank patrons and found that visiting emergency food providers is often one of the least preferred coping mechanisms due to stigma and shame (Purdam et al. 2015), and similar results were also found in an ethnographic study conducted in the US (Greer et al. 2016). The UK-based study also shares the voices of those mobilizing coping mechanisms that range from relying on family and friends to purchasing of lower quality “cheap” foods, noting that “another food bank user commented: ‘I buy the cheapest food in the supermarket … and make it last. I wait by the reduced section in the supermarket. I make the food bank food last all week’ (female, aged 63)” (Purdam et al. 2015, p. 9–10). Feeding America recently supported another qualitative study that garnered news headlines as it identified the “impossible choices” faced by teenagers likely to experience food insecurity in ten major US cities. Key findings include: the presence of widespread food insecurity in this population segment, persistence of stigma around hunger and actively hiding it, teens overwhelmingly prefer to earn money in a formal job, and that when faced with acute food insecurity, teens in eight of the ten communities said that youth engage in criminal behavior, ranging from shoplifting food directly to selling drugs and stealing items to resell for cash (Popkin et al. 2016). Regardless of methodological focus, these recent studies concur that the depth and scope of the food insecurity in modern industrial countries could be larger than the government estimates suggesting the importance of expanded support and targeted food assistance.
Methods
Our research focuses on one key area of food assistance research, the challenge of determining whether existing food assistance distribution efforts provide adequate geographical coverage to meet the need for food assistance. We focus on the challenge of improving food assistance distribution due to interest from food bank managers. Moreover, we could not identify published research in which mapping approaches were used to match food assistance provision to a comparative analysis of different measures of food insecurity at the local level. Government and private food assistance efforts could benefit from studies that map food insecure populations and the location of soup kitchens, food pantries and other points of access by using this or a similar method to rapidly assess and distinguish vulnerable neighborhoods and reach people who may be struggling the most.
Study site and data sources
We collaborated with a local food bank, Second Harvest Food Bank of Santa Clara and San Mateo Counties (referred to as either “Second Harvest” or the “food bank” in the remainder of the paper), located in the San Francisco Bay Area of Northern California. Second Harvest provided data specifying the location and quantities of food distributed through different programs in 2009. Our primary source of household data for this analysis is from the US Census ACS 5-year estimates of poverty and demographic data, for years 2010–2014 (US Census 2015). We decided to focus on SCC, because it is a populous, largely urban county how many food banks are there in the united states close proximity to the researchers with several high-income areas and pockets of low-income households.
Second Harvest provided geocoded data on food distribution locations. Precise numbers are not available, but Second Harvest estimates that it provides the great majority, over 90%, of all food assistance in the two counties that they serve, Santa Clara and San Mateo Counties. We focused on food pantries and soup kitchens since more than 80% of the food distributed by Second Harvest is distributed through these two channels. Furthermore, this type of food assistance is targeted at the entire family as opposed to food assistance that aims to help a specific group, such as children or senior citizens. Food pantries provide bags of groceries; soup kitchens serve meals prepared from donated food that they receive.
SCC, one of nine counties in the San Francisco Bay Area, is located at the southern end of the San Francisco Bay. The county and surrounding areas are commonly referred to as Silicon Valley. The region is ethnically diverse with a population that is 34.9% Asian, 33.3% Non-Hispanic White, 26.6% Hispanic, and 2.9% African American (US Census Bureau 2014a). Although the region has a high median household income of approximately $90,000, 10.2% of the population lives below the federal poverty threshold (US Census Bureau 2014b) and Feeding America, using a formula developed by Gundersen, estimates that 12.1% of the population was food insecure in 2013, which was down from their estimate of 13.4% in 2011 (Feeding America 2015).
A comparison of two strategies to map food insecurity and access to assistance
We developed a comparative analysis that uses both poverty and a food insecurity index (FII) as two ways of measuring and mapping food insecurity. We started with a map of poverty rates (see Fig. 1). Although the income standard for most federal food nutrition programs is 185% of the federal poverty level (FPL), Second Harvest and the State of California’s use incomes that are 200% of the FPL due to the extremely high cost of living in the Bay Area. We used 200% of the FPL in determining whether a household was considered food insecure, and we will continue to use 200% of the FPL to describe an individual who is low-income or in poverty in this article. For each census tract we calculated the percentage of the population that was at or below 200% of FPL and then divided the census tracts into quintiles based on the ordering of these percentages.
In the second step of our analysis, we incorporated the location and indicators of access to Second Harvest’s network of food pantries and soup kitchens (see Fig. 2). Before performing this analysis we used US Census maps to identify rural and urban areas (see “Technical appendix”). In urban census tracts, we used the same buffers suggested by the USDA (2015), using GIS to draw 1-mile buffer zones around each food pantry and soup kitchen to indicate the area that is within close proximity. The 1-mile buffer is commonly used to assess the proximity dimension of food access to a full service supermarket in urban areas of the US (USDA 2009, 2015; Wilde et al. 2014). To determine access for rural residents we used a 10-mile buffer, which the USDA uses as the minimum distance to a supermarket when identifying unfavorable rural food environments (USDA 2009; Wilde et al. 2014). When we drew the 10-mile buffers they covered all rural areas in SCC, and thus they were omitted from Fig. 2. The 1-and 10-mile buffers were used to calculate accessibility to food pantries and soup kitchens by applying the “use ratio policy” in ESRI’s Arcmap 10.2. This allowed us to analyze the percentage of each census tract’s area that is covered by the buffer and assign the same percentage to its population value as well as that portion of the population living at or below 200% of the FPL (Harder et al. 2013).
The third step develops a poverty-based assessment of food insecurity, and employs it to identify areas of concern—specifically census tracts with high poverty and low access to food assistance distribution locations (see Fig. 3). High poverty is defined based on the natural breaks in the poverty data (see Fig. 1), which represents census tracts with 22.2% or more of the population at or below 200% of the FPL. For urban areas, the access to food distribution sites was calculated based the distances developed in step two. We define access based on proximity using USDA criteria for Food Access Research Atlas such that low access = 67% or more of the census tract area is outside of the 1-mile buffer around food assistance distribution locations. Some access equates to 34–66% of the census tract area lying outside of the 1-mile buffer around food assistance distribution locations. Good access represents 33% or less of the census tract area lying outside of the 1-mile buffer around food assistance distribution locations (USDA 2015). Access for rural census tracts is calculated in the same manner except that the buffer zone is 10 miles rather than 1 mile.
The next three steps involve creating a Food Insecurity Index (FII) that represents the percent of individuals within a census tract that are potentially food insecure. To do this, we drew on the national study regarding the proximate determinants of food insecurity (Gundersen et al. 2014) to identify the independent variables that correlate significantly with reported levels of household food security. The most important county- and state-level variables in the model are poverty, unemployment, and the percentage of households that are occupied by renters.Footnote 1 We then weighted these variables based on the literature suggesting that poverty is the key driver of food insecurity, and their perceived importance in the local context as reported by Second Harvest managers.
To calculate the FII for each census tract, we multiply the percent of people in a census tract who are at or below 200% of the FPL (Poverty%) by 50, the percent of people in renter-occupied units (Rent%) by 10, and the percent of households with one or more unemployed member (Unemployed%) by 40 and divide by 100 (Eq. 1).Footnote 2 These calculations were made for each census tract (ct) (see equation below) and then the data were displayed to show the distribution of food-insecure areas within the county together with the location of food distribution sites (Fig. 4).
$${\text{FII}}({\text{ct}})={\text{ }}\frac{{\left[ {50 \times {\text{Poverty}}\% \left( {{\text{ct}}} \right){\text{ }}+{\text{ }}40 \times {\text{Unemployed}}\% \left( {{\text{ct}}} \right)+10 \times {\text{Rent}}\% \left( {{\text{ct}}} \right)} \right]}}{{100}}{\text{ }}$$
(1)
The seventh step involved using the FII to identify areas of high food insecurity and low access (see Fig. 5). We defined access based on the percentage of the census tract covered by the buffer areas using the same three levels (e.g., low, some, and good access) described in the poverty-based analysis for both urban and rural areas. These data were displayed using ArcGIS together with the SHFB food assistance distribution sites and the 1-mile buffers (for urban areas) as previously described. High food insecurity census tracts were defined as those in which the index-based calculation found that at least 16.7% of the population within the tract is food insecure. We only presented the data for the urban census tracts, since the rural ones include a 10-mile buffer around the food distribution site and thus are fully covered.
Finally, we compare the results generated using the poverty-only score to those using the FII (Fig. 6). To do this, we identified the census tracts with low access to food distribution sites that had either a high poverty incidence or a high FII score. We then developed an overlay analysis that identified the areas of low access that had both high poverty and a high percentage of potential food insecurity as well as those areas of low access that had only a high poverty or a high FII score.
Limits of this study
There are several limitations to this research. First, although we have good information regarding population characteristics and the provision of food assistance, the information is not complete, and is subject to change. Regarding the food distribution sites, the food bank estimates that it provides over 90% of the food distributed to low-income people in SCC. Information on other sources is lacking. Regarding the demographic statistics, we rely on US Census data, which is generally regarded as high quality, but is not perfect. This is particularly true of the population in which we are interested, the poor. With a large immigrant population, many of whom are undocumented, there is the likelihood that this group will be undercounted and the location of their residences unknown. Furthermore, frequent moves are characteristic of the low-income population as they constantly strive to find housing in an area that has become increasingly unaffordable. The homeless population is another marginal group not included in mapping approaches that rely on Census data. The number of temporary homeless individuals is very high in this volatile housing market. An in-depth study found that in the 6 years from 2007 to 2012, 104,206 individuals experienced homelessness in SCC (Flaming et al. 2015, p. 2). Current estimates suggest that there are 7500 homeless individuals on any given night, of which about 2500 are chronically homeless (http://destinationhomescc.org/), and a point in time count found 6556 homeless individuals in SCC on January 27 and 28, 2015 (Applied Survey Research 2015).
One of the key assumptions that we make in developing the maps is that the overall population as well as the low-income population is evenly dispersed within each census tract. For geographically small census tracts, this is not an issue; however, for large area census tracts, the issue may be significant. When we see one food distribution site in a census tract that stretches several miles from one end to another, the count of low-income residents that live near (or far) from a food distribution site depends on an assumption of population distribution. In these cases, as well as for some urban areas, more information is needed at the neighborhood level to make a determination as to whether those requiring food assistance are well served.
Other limitations of this study include our definitions of food insecurity or need (200% of the FPL, unemployment, and house renting), distance as a proxy for access to food assistance, and the study’s focus on one county. In choosing the criteria we necessarily omitted factors such as federal and state assistance, annual variability, access to transportation, and actual travel activity patterns, all of which impact need and access to food assistance sites. In future research, these screening approaches should be validated and refined using data collected from representative samples using the USDA’s food security survey questions. The research was conducted in one urban county. To be generalizable, the study should be replicated in a diverse set of counties across the US.
Findings
In the following paragraphs we present the results of our analysis and discuss our major findings. We examine both the poverty-based assessment of food insecurity and the more robust assessment that also includes unemployment and the incidence of renting (vs. home ownership) and discuss the implications for identifying areas that may be underserved by food assistance distribution sites.
Poverty-focused food security assessment
Figure 1 depicts the poverty levels by census tract in SCC. The quintile representing those areas that are least impoverished have 2–12% of the population at or below 200% of the FPL, whereas the quintile containing census tracts with the highest levels of poverty have between 44.6 and 78.2% of the population at or below the 200% level. We do not include the mountainous region in the eastern portion of the county that has a very low and sparsely populated population. The areas with the highest levels of poverty are concentrated along the Highway US 101 corridor, which runs from the southeast corner to the northwest part of the county. These areas correspond to the lowest income areas of San Jose, Santa Clara, Sunnyvale, Mountain View, and Palo Alto. There is also a large cluster of low-income census tracts in what is known as East San Jose, which is centered near the junction of Highway US 101 and Interstate 680 (see Fig. 1).
(Sources US Census, ACS 5-year estimates 2010–2014)
Poverty levels, by census tract in Santa Clara County. The map in a shows the location of SCC in California. The large, low-density population area shown in b is omitted from subsequent analysis.
Full size image
Figure 2 adds point locations for pantries and soup kitchens. It is apparent that these food distribution sites are concentrated in East San Jose, also a high poverty area. Food assistance sites are much more dispersed in other areas of the county. The spatial patterns in this figure show that the current distribution of food assistance locations appears to be meeting the expected need in large areas of the county. Figure 2 adds 1-mile buffer zones around the food distribution sites, which help to assess how well the areas of greatest poverty are served by the sites providing food assistance.
(Sources US Census 2010; Second Harvest Food Bank of Santa Clara County and San Mateo Counties 2013)
Map of SCC poverty levels and food assistance distribution sites with buffer zones, by Census Tract.
Full size image
For the most part, we observe that people living in the areas with the highest poverty levels live in close proximity to food assistance distribution centers. In Fig. 3, we develop an analysis that focuses on high poverty census tracts, defined as those in which more than 22% live below 200% of the FPL. These census tracts represent about 24% of those in the county, and most of them (61.1%) have good access (shaded in blue) or at least some access (pink) to a food distribution site. If we extend this combined poverty and proximity analysis to all 371 census tracts in the county, including those with lower poverty rates, we find that 85% of SCC is either well served by food assistance distribution locations or has relatively low poverty rates.
The maps in Figs. 2 and 3 offer guidance to decision makers at the food bank and those who distribute food to the needy. To identify potentially underserved populations, we focused on urban census tracts that are both high-poverty and low access (see Fig. 3 for areas shaded in yellow or pink). In all of the rural census tracts, significantly less than 20% of the population lives farther than 10 miles away from a food distribution site, suggesting that the rural census tracts are currently well served based on the criteria for rural census tracts. However, areas of potential need persist in urban areas. We calculated that 38% of the low-income census tracts had low access to SHFB food assistance. This suggests that there is a need for greater access to food distribution in these areas of the county.
Furthermore, our study identified several potentially underserved regions using the poverty-based food insecurity assessment (see Fig. 3). These regions include the southern US 101 corridor near the cities of Gilroy and Morgan Hill, as well as a generally contiguous group of census tracts that lie west of Interstate 880 and State Road 17 extending from the northern central border of the county in the city of Santa Clara to west San Jose and the intersection of State Roads 85 and 17. A third potentially underserved area can be found in the northern portion of the county often referred to as East San Jose, which is generally east of Interstate 680 and US 101. Also, in the northwestern part of SCC between 101 and 280, an area that has a relatively high concentration of low-income people with no food assistance site nearby is located in Palo Alto. Although East Palo Alto is one of the well-known high-poverty and low-employment areas in the Bay Area (Benner and Karner 2016), this result could also be influenced by the “Stanford anomaly,” suggesting that some, if not many, of the low-income members of the community are students, who may have additional support from relatives or elsewhere. It is interesting to note that food pantries have recently opened on many university campuses across the US (Nellum 2015).
(Sources Own calculation using US Census, ACS 5-year estimates 2010–2014; Second Harvest Food Bank of Santa Clara and San Mateo Counties 2013)
High poverty and low access areas. High poverty is defined as census tracts (CT) with 22.2% or more of the population at or below 200% of the FPL (see Fig. 1). The map includes high poverty tracts only. Low access indicates 67% or more of the CT area is outside of the 1-mile buffer around food assistance distribution locations; Some access indicates 66 to 34% of the census tract area is outside of the 1-mile buffer around food assistance distribution locations. Good access indicates 33% or less of the CT area is outside of the 1-mile buffer around food assistance locations.
Full size image
Food insecurity index assessment
After conducting the poverty-based analysis, we developed the Food Insecurity Index (FII) and mapped the results of this alternative approach. The progression of Figs. 1 and 2 explains the steps involved in developing this index, shown in Fig. 4. The intermediate steps included mapping unemployment and renter-occupied units. The spatial pattern in unemployment rates is broadly similar to poverty rates, with higher concentrations in southern SCC and East San Jose. Housing costs are extremely high and rising in this region, making the situation especially difficult for those in low-wage jobs who are seeking affordable housing as displacement becomes increasingly common (Benner and Karner 2016).
(Sources Own calculation using US Census, ACS 5-year estimates 2010–2014; Second Harvest Food Bank of Santa Clara and San Mateo Counties 2013)
Food Insecurity Index and the location of food assistance distribution sites.
Full size image
In Figs. 4 and 5, we show the results of the FII using the weights in Eq. 1. As expected, the patterns broadly follow the poverty map, with concentrations in central and eastern San Jose and the southern part of SCC; however, the ranges of values of the FII are lower than the poverty only map. The census tract-based assessment identifying the high food insecurity and low access areas (Fig. 5) shows that most areas of high food insecurity have good access to food distribution sites (areas shaded in blue). We calculated that 27% of the census tracts in SCC have high food insecurity levels (index scores > 16%), and that 58% of the high FII tracts have either good access or some access. The remaining 42% of the areas have high food insecurity levels and low access (shaded in purple). These areas of concern include the poverty/high food insecurity corridor that is west of Interstate 880/Highway 17, as well as several areas north of 101 and in East Palo Alto.
(Sources Own calculation using US Census, ACS 5-year estimates 2010–2014; US Census 2010; Second Harvest Food Bank of Santa Clara and San Mateo Counties 2013)
High Food Insecurity Index Scores and low food assistance access areas. High food insecurity in this context refers to census tracts in which we estimate that 16.7% of more of the population is food insecure (USDA 2015).
Full size image
Comparison of poverty and food insecurity index approaches
The areas of greatest food assistance need, i.e. high levels of food insecurity and low access, identified by both the FII and the poverty approach share significant spatial overlap (see Fig. 6), although these two metrics produce slightly different estimates regarding the total number of people who are potentially food insecure in SCC. This overlap can be explained by the fact that poverty is the largest factor in the FII (see Eq. 1). In addition to poverty, the two other variables in the FII, unemployment (weighted at 40% of the index score) and renter-occupied units (weighted at 10%), were strong enough so that several additional potentially high-need areas omitted by the poverty-only approach were identified (see the purple tracts in Fig. 5 between State Road 85 and Interstate 880 in northern SCC). Both rapid assessment approaches are useful for identifying areas of potential concern, but more research is needed using household surveys to validate the approaches before either approach becomes a standard proxy for estimating the total percent or number of food insecure people.
(Sources Own calculation using data from US Census, ACS 5-year how many food banks are there in the united states 2010–2014; Second Harvest Food Bank of Santa Clara and San Mateo Counties 2013)
Comparison of Food Insecurity Index versus poverty assessment. This is an overlay analysis that compares the areas of high poverty and low access versus areas with high FII scores and low access.
Full size image
The poverty-only calculation draws from the 200% FPL US Census ACS 5-year estimates data from 2010 to 2014 and finds that 23.2% or 422,004 people in SCC live below the FPL and potentially food insecure. Our FII calculation finds that the average rate of food insecurity is 19.3% in SCC. Feeding America calculations use the Gundersen (2015) formula to estimate food insecurity levels. They report that in 2013, 12.1% of the population in SCC was food insecure representing 219,110 people, and in 2011 the calculated rate was 13.4% (Feeding America 2015).
Although the USDA publishes periodic national studies that use household surveys to measure food insecurity (Coleman-Jensen et al. 2014), we could not find readily available government data that measures and maps the total number of food insecure people at the county, city, and census tract-level in the US. A recently published USDA study drew on a representative sample of more than 42,000 households and found that food insecurity rates in California averaged 13.5% from 2012 to 2014, down from 16.2% measured from 2009 to 2011, but still higher than the 2002–2004 average of 12.4% (Coleman-Jensen et al. 2014: 21). The USDA’s direct measures of food insecurity rates in California from 2012 to 14 are slightly below Feeding America’s calculation of 15% in 2013 (Feeding America 2015). The calculation using 200% of the FPL suggests that food insecurity rates could be significantly above those calculated by Feeding America or those measured by USDA’s survey and then generalized to the county level. Our simple FII also yields estimates that are roughly 4% above the Feeding America estimate, while the poverty-only calculation is about 8% higher.
Although there are differences in the calculated magnitude of the challenge, the primary goal of this rapid assessment method is to identify areas of potential need. We believe that the patterns of local food insecurity at the census tract-level found using the rapid assessment tools proposed in this study are similar to those calculated by Feeding America if data were available using a finer scale. However, it will be important to use the USDA survey questions during different years and with multiple populations to further test and refine this approach. One key difference between the metrics proposed for this screening method and the Gundersen et al. (2014; 2015) approach is the degree of emphasis or numerical weight placed on poverty levels. The Gundersen et al. models include other important variables, such as unemployment and home ownership; however, their increasingly sophisticated models potentially decrease how many food banks are there in the united states influence of poverty rates on predicted food insecurity levels. Recent research using the US Census poverty measure, which includes estimates for the cost of living, finds that California has some of the highest poverty rates in the US (Short 2014). More research is needed to assess how these circumstances influence local determinants of food insecurity, as well as continued work that examines ways in which supplemental food assistance could help keep children and others out of more severe forms poverty and high levels of food insecurity (Anderson et al. 2014).
Broader implications
In addition to contributing to a dialogue about mapping and shared data that document the local determinants and patterns of food insecurity, we argue that this rapid assessment approach can be useful for food banks and charities that coordinate direct food assistance sites and want to ensure they are effectively targeting areas of greatest need. We shared earlier versions of the maps that identify high poverty and low access census tracts (see Figs. 2, 3) with food bank managers, leading to a discussion of how well the food needs of low-income populations were met by current food assistance distribution sites. One immediate result was the addition of another food distribution site in the southern portion of the county. Second Harvest plans to continue working directly with the food assistance providers to encourage them to locate distribution sites in the areas with the greatest unmet needs.
Despite moderate economic growth at the national level, the question of access to food assistance distribution sites by how many food banks are there in the united states insecure households remains a pressing one, because the economic gains have not been evenly distributed. The determination of where to locate food assistance sites is complex, especially in large cities or counties where the low-income population is not neatly situated in one or a few densely populated areas. In our research, we found that the highest poverty areas, which were also the most densely populated, had the highest concentration of food assistance sites. However, other high poverty areas, which were less densely populated, had lower levels of access to food assistance distribution sites e.g., several areas in south SCC, especially parts of Gilroy, and a cluster of census tracts located west of Interstate 880 extending from the northern central border of the County west San Jose (see Fig. 5). These areas appear to pose the biggest challenge to food assistance providers. A recently published report confirmed our study’s focus on poverty and our findings regarding the importance of additional food assistance in South SCC, finding that the “geographic distribution of homelessness corresponds roughly with the distribution of poverty in SCC, noting that homeless residents are concentrated at the center and south diario las americas clasificados rentas of the County—in San Jose and Gilroy,” and that “Services provided by nonprofit agencies appear to be unevenly distributed, with a below average level of services provided to homeless residents of Gilroy” (Flaming et al. 2015, p. 3).
In the case of food banks, which, in the US, provide the food but do not distribute directly to the clients, the issue of ensuring convenient access and communicating directly with those in need is even more difficult, because they are one step removed from those they serve. The use of GIS can provide insight into the distribution of the impoverished population and the density of that population within census tracts. By overlaying the food distribution sites, we can provide decision makers with easily interpreted visual maps that can be used to evaluate whether their client population has convenient access to the services they offer. This allows managers to see the “big picture” as it relates to the spatial location of food distribution, and is an alternative to separately collecting information and evaluating individual outer banks nc real estate listings to assess their clients’ needs and the services provided.
Future research
Like food desert research, we think that starting an emergency food assistance needs assessment with a rapid mapping approach that focuses on identifying areas of high food insecurity and assessing this population’s proximity to food assistance locations is a good first step, but a distance-based analysis needs to be set within a broader context or it risks obscuring how residents cope with food insecurity and other factors that food banks should look at when addressing access. In a previous section of this article, we identify the limits of food access mapping approaches and discuss the complexities of impoverished lives and several food access challenges. In this section, we discuss additional research that could how many food banks are there in the united states light on several questions left unanswered in this paper. For example, why might some of the high-poverty areas not have food assistance distribution sites located nearby? Is it possible that there are food distribution sites located nearby that are not served by the food bank (which provides most of the non-governmental food assistance in the county)? Have the demographic patterns and poverty levels recently changed in these neighborhoods, suggesting the need for other distribution sites? Do people living in these areas have access to good transit, obviating the need for a food assistance distribution site in these neighborhoods? Are there other factors that we have not considered? Answers to these questions require ethnographic research to provide a better understanding of individuals, their situations, behaviors, and activity patterns (Hirsch and Hillier 2013).
The question regarding the ideal location of food distribution sites has two parts. We have attempted to answer the first part, which is, “are there areas with large populations of low-income people who do not have convenient access to a food assistance distribution site?” However, an efficient food assistance distribution network would also ensure that there is not an overabundance of food distribution sites, which could easily occur in areas of high need. Studies focused on welfare assistance have documented welfare service hubs, which are likely to host a higher density of the charity-oriented organizations (e.g., churches and social assistance non-profit agencies), which are the same groups that often open food pantries and soup kitchens (DeVerteuil 2015). Thus there is a potential for clustering private food assistance with welfare services in areas such as East San Jose in the present study. Although this could offer some benefits as residents save time by accessing multiple services, the rapidly changing demographic maps of the Silicon Valley and patterns of food insecurity, especially as it relates to rising rents and displacement (Benner and Karner 2016), bermuda real estate for sale the need to continually update and re-evaluate spatial location of food assistance in order to meet needs and address issues of spatial equity in regards to accessing benefits (Talen and Anselin 1998).
There are several additional future research projects that could complement this study. We hope to conduct qualitative studies that complement this work and help to develop a more comprehensive understanding of food bank members’ everyday lived experiences, and to document the preferences of different racial and ethnic groups. Previous studies suggest the needs for this type of research; for example, a 2003 study used focus groups with food pantry clients and found that “food donations did not match client needs for people with different ethnic backgrounds or age groups and food safety concerns” (Verpy et al. 2003, p. 6). A related study conducted in 2015, documented food pantry client voices as they expressed appreciation for staff and volunteers, but also concerns about stigma, access to enough food, dietary needs related to specific health conditions (e.g., diabetes), food nutrition, and more (Greer et al. 2016, p. 202). In addition, a future study could use access to national and more detailed local data sets to map patterns in food assistance and need and integrate them with more detailed demographic analysis to match food assistance to a finer scale block group level analysis with a focus on identifying areas that have high concentrations of children, elderly ethnic and racial minorities, or other specific demographic characteristics. Another important future study is food assistance access among Santa Clara County’s homeless population. Although SHFB partially addresses this need through partnerships with homeless shelters, shelters account for about 29% of the estimated homeless population in SCC on any given night, while more than 30% are in the streets, and 23% in vehicles (Applied Survey Research 2015), suggesting the need for research and action identifying how to best provide short-term food assistance, even as broader efforts to improve access to housing and other forms of care continue (see the Health Trust’s innovative work http://destinationhomescc.org/).
Finally, we wish to include a short reflection on how our own ethics, politics and values relate to the conduct of this type research, consisting of collaboration with food banks to target unmet need, while simultaneously raising questions and starting work to address hunger’s root causes. In an insightful article, Cloke, May and Williams start developing a theoretical framework useful for explaining our approach and future research aspirations. “Though also sometimes positioned as a relatively benign, if limited, response to the victims of austerity, the typical starting point for geographical analyses of food banking has been to apply either a food security or political economy perspective” (Cloke et al. 2016, p. 3). The food security argument focuses on the right to food and the inadequacy of food bank offerings, while the political economy critique focuses on how food banks may - inadvertently - further embed private food assistance from the same industrial food system that produces food insecurity, thus legitimizing the structure of the current food system and private donations as an adequate (ethical or politically acceptable) response to hunger (Poppendieck 1999; Williams et al. 2016). In the space between these two critiques, Cloke and colleagues trace “some alternative ways of understanding food banking [including soup kitchens and food pantries], conceptualizing food banks as spaces of care that potentially serve to articulate a newly emerging and not yet fully formed ethical and political response to welfare in the meantime”, as they propose to improve strategies to address “the austere conditions of the here and now,” while conducting the work, research, and critical reflection that aim to develop more transformative alternatives (Cloke et al. 2016, p. 2).
As engaged researchers, the authors are also concerned about the extent that developing tools to facilitate private food assistance relates to the broader challenge of fulfilling a human right to food, which still lacks political recognition in the US (Dowler and O’Connor 2012). However, the fact that 14% of the people in the US visited a food bank last year suggests the need to continue improving food assistance as society strives to address this symptom, even as parallel efforts take aim at the root causes. We argue that the analysis in this paper focuses on identifying a more socially just and efficient allocation of scarce resources, which is critical for resource-strapped aid agencies if they are to ensure that their resources go as far as possible. In this way, our study could be seen as a first step—not a final destination—and a proposal to more fairly allocate resources in the shorter term.
Many food bank managers, food justice advocates, and researchers remain profoundly motivated by developing a response that seeks to address longer term challenges related to persistent food insecurity, and this study takes one of the several initial steps by developing a mapping methodology that identifies and prioritizes areas of high poverty and low access to private food assistance. Next steps could also include studies that focus on the role of food banks and partners (e.g., universities, businesses, nonprofits) in the innovation processes that aim to build a more equitable and inclusive food systems that enhance healthy food access for all.
Several examples of potentially innovative initiatives to address food insecurity with vulneraby populations from within the study area include efforts that work with low-income seniors, Latino immigrants, and homeless populations. La Mesa Verde is community-based organization that works with low-income Latinos/as to build backyard vegetable gardens, increase food access, and strengthen community ties (Gray et al. 2014; Algert et al. 2016). The Health Trust is leading another local example that recently produced a sophisticated report combining GIS analysis by Fulfrost & Associates with social research by Calise and Bateman to suggest strategies to better target food assistance serving two of San Jose’s most vulnerable populations, low-income seniors and homeless individuals. In addition to identifying areas within San Jose needing additional attention, this report’s top recommendations include the need to integrate food access into City and County homeless support services, create a flexible congregate meal system for individuals that are homeless that can move as the population moves, develop senior nutrition programs for the county’s estimated 27% of seniors that are food insecure, create cost-effective options in communities with high concentrations of low-income seniors exploring options, such as congregate meal sites or restaurant vouchers, grocery delivery services, and expand SNAP enrollments among both populations (Health Trust 2015, p. 2, 3).
We will also review several related experiences from outside the study area in which private food assistance organizations are simultaneously working to reduce food insecurity, and address longer-term solutions. A statewide food bank claims, “In order to truly end hunger, we need to engage the whole community to develop innovative solutions that address the root causes of hunger. For the last 15 years, Oregon Food Bank has been at the forefront of the development of one of these solutions: building community-based food systems” (Oregon Food Bank 2016). Other examples potentially include the Stop Community Food Centre in Canada, the Matthew Tree Project in Bristol UK, which is an emergency provider that builds trust to develop a holistic response of care that addresses people’s multiple challenges, and the many Sikh Langars or free kitchens in India, some of which peacefully and respectfully serve 60,000–100,000 hot meals daily (Gottlieb and Joshi 2013). Research and learning exchanges to assess impacts and social processes that generated these alternative approaches that incorporate private food assistance into broader strategies for creating an inclusive society and reducing hunger are urgently needed.
Conclusions
The rapid rise in the number of food banks in the US, the UK, Australia and other high-income countries suggests the need for greater attention to how food insecurity needs can be quickly measured, mapped and matched with access to food assistance. In this study we use GIS, readily available demographic data, and Second Harvest food distribution locations to develop a rapid assessment tool. Our findings suggest that food assistance distribution locations match the areas of greatest potential need in more than 80% of urban census tracts and all of the rural tracts. However, there are several potentially underserved locations that could benefit from new food assistance operations. Food assistance could expand in these areas through partnerships with government social service agencies, as well as community and faith-based institutions serving hot meals with dignity. The maps developed using the poverty-only and food security index-based approaches show significant spatial overlap in the areas of high food insecurity and low access. The poverty-only approach produces a higher estimate of food insecurity rates, is easier to calculate, and highlights poverty as the key driver of food insecurity.
Notes
- 1.
In Gundersen’s model (see Gundersen et al. 2014 and Gundersen et al. 2015), unemployment has a higher coefficient than poverty, and the other statistically significant correlates with food insecurity include constant, and fixed effects for different states and years.
- 2.
The algorithm that Feeding America (Gundersen et al. 2015; Feeding America 2016) uses for estimating food insecurity at the state and county levels as well as the most recent data for 2014 was unavailable at the time of writing.
Abbreviations
American Community Survey
Census Tract
Food Insecurity Index
Federal Poverty Level
Geographic Information Systems
Santa Clara County
Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program
Temporary Food Emergency Assistance Program
United Kingdom
United States of America
United States Department of Agriculture
Women, Infants, and Children Program
References
Algert, S., L. Diekmann, M. Renvall, and L. Gray. 2016. Community and home gardens increase vegetable intake and food security of residents in San Jose, California. California Agriculture 70 (2): 77–82.
Article Google Scholar
Alkon, A.H., D. Block, K. Moore, C. Gillis, N. DiNuccio, and N. Chavez. 2013. Foodways of the urban poor. Geoforum 48: 126–135.
Article Google Scholar
Allard, S.W. 2008. Out of reach: place, poverty, and the new American welfare state. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Book Google Scholar
Anderson, P., K. Butcher, H. Hoynes, and D. Schanzenbach. 2014. Beyond income: what else predicts very low food security among children? University of Kentucky Center for Poverty Research Discussion Paper Series, DP 2014-06.
Applied Survey Research. 2015. Santa Clara County Homeless Census & Survey. San José, CA.
Bacon, C.M., W.A. Sundstrom, M.E.F. Gómez, V.E. Méndez, R. Santos, B. Goldoftas, and I. Dougherty. 2014. Explaining the ‘hungry farmer paradox’: smallholders and fair trade cooperatives navigate seasonality and change in Nicaragua’s corn and coffee markets. Global Environmental Change 25: 133–149.
Article Google Scholar
Bazerghi, C., F.H. McKay, and M. Dunn. 2016. The role of food banks in addressing food insecurity: A systematic review. Journal of Community Health, 41 (4): 732–740.
Article Google Scholar
Benner, C. and A. Karner. 2016. Low-wage jobs-housing fit: identifying locations of affordable housing shortages. Urban Geography, 37: 1–21.
Article Google Scholar
Cabili, C., E. Eslami, and R. Briefel. 2013. White Paper on the Emergency Food Assistance Program (TEFAP). Alexandra, VA: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Food and Nutrition Service, Office of Policy Support.
Google Scholar
Cloke, P., J. May, and A. Williams. 2016. The geographies of food banks in the meantime. Progress in Human Geography 1–24.
Coleman-Jensen, A., C. Gregory and A. Singh. 2014. Household food security in the United States in 2013. USDA-ERS Economic Research Report 173. http://www.ers.usda.gov/media/1565415/err173.pdf. Accessed 25 March 2015.
Daponte, B.O., and S. Bade. 2006. How the private food assistance network evolved: Interactions between public and private responses to hunger. Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly 35 (4): 668–690.
Article Google Scholar
Desmond, M. 2015. Severe deprivation in America: An introduction. The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences 1 (1):1–11.
Article Google Scholar
DeVerteuil, G. 2015. Resilience in the post-welfare inner city: Voluntary sector geographies in London, Los Angeles and Sydney. Bristol: Policy Press.
Book Google Scholar
Dowler, E.A., and D. O’Connor. 2012. Rights-based approaches to addressing food poverty and food insecurity in Ireland and UK. Social Science & Medicine 74(1):44–51.
Article Google Scholar
Drèze, J., and A. Sen. 1989. Hunger and Public action. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Google Scholar
Feagan, R. 2007. The place of food: mapping out the ‘local’ in local food systems. Progress in Human Geography 31 (1): 23–42.
Article Google Scholar
Feeding America. 2014. Feeding America 2014 Annual Report. http://www.feedingamerica.org/about-us/about-feeding-america/annual-report/2014-annual-report.pdf. Accessed 25 March 2015.
Feeding America. 2015. Map the Meal Gap. http://map.feedingamerica.org/county/2013/overall. Accessed 1 September 2015.
Feeding America. 2016. How we got the map data. http://www.feedingamerica.org/hunger-in-america/our-research/map-the-meal-gap/how-we-got-the-map-data.html?referrer=http://map.feedingamerica.org/county/2013/overall/california/county/santa-clara?referrer=http://www.feedingamerica.org/hunger-in-america/our-research/map-the-meal-gap/how-we-got-the-map-data.html. Accessed 3-19-2016.
Flaming, D.J., H. Toros, and P. Burns. 2015. Home not found: The cost of homelessness in silicon valley. Santa Clara County, CA: The Economic Roundtable.
Google Scholar
González-Torre, P.L., and J. Coque. 2016. How is a food bank managed? Different profiles in Spain. Agriculture and Human Values 33 (1): 89–100.
Article Google Scholar
Goodman, M.K. 2016. Food geographies I Relational foodscapes and the busy-ness of being more-than-food. Progress in Human Geography 40 (2): 257–266.
Article Google Scholar
Gordon-Larsen, P., M.C. Nelson, P. Page, and B.M. Popkin. 2006. Inequality in the built environment underlies key health disparities in physical activity and obesity. Pediatrics 117 (2): 417–424.
Article Google Scholar
Gordon, C., M. Purciel-Hill, N.R. Ghai, L. Kaufman, R. Graham, and G. Van Wye. 2011. Measuring food deserts in New York City’s low-income neighborhoods. Health & Place 17 (2): 696–700.
Article Google Scholar
Gottlieb, R., and A. Joshi. 2013. Food Justice. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Google Scholar
Gray, L., P. Guzman, K.M. Glowa, and A.G. Drevno. 2014. Can home gardens scale up into movements for social change? The role of home gardens in providing food security and community change in San Jose, California. Local Environment 19 (2): 187–203.
Article Google Scholar
Greer, A.E., B. Cross-Denny, M. McCabe, and B. Castrogivanni. 2016. Giving economically disadvantaged, minority food pantry patrons’ a voice: Implications for equitable access to sufficient, nutritious food. Family & Community Health: The Journal of Health Promotion & Maintenance 39 (3): 199–206.
Article Google Scholar
Gundersen, C., B. Kreider, and J. Pepper. 2011. The Economics of Food Insecurity in the United States. Applied Economic Perspectives and Policy 33 (3): 281–303.
Article Google Scholar
Gundersen, C., E. Engelhard, and E. Waxman. 2014. Map the meal gap: Exploring Food Insecurity at the Local Level. Applied Economic Perspectives and Policy 36 (3): 373–386
Article Google Scholar
Gundersen, C., A. Satoh, A. Dewey, M. Kato, and E. Engelhard. 2015. Map the Meal Gap 2015: Technical Brief. Feeding America.
Guthman, J. 2008. Bringing good food to others: Investigating the subjects of alternative food practice. Cultural Geographies 15 (4): 431–447.
Article Google Scholar
Guthman, J. 2011. Weighing in: Obesity, food justice, and the limits of capitalism. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Google Scholar
Harder, C., T. Ormsby, and T. Balstrøm. 2013. Understanding GIS: An ArcGIS Project Workbook. Redlands, CA: ESRI, p. 227.
Health Trust. (2015). Food for Everyone: Food access challenges for low income seniors and homeless individuals in San Jose. Health Trust. http://healthtrust.org/food-for-everyone/ Accessed 7 March 2017.
Hirsch, J.A., and A. Hillier. 2013. Exploring the role of the food environment on food shopping patterns in Philadelphia, PA, USA: A semiquantitative comparison of two matched neighborhood groups. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health 10 (1): 295–313.
Article Google Scholar
Hoynes, H.W., E. Bronchetti, and G. Christensen. 2017. The Real Value of SNAP Benefits and Health Outcomes. GSPP Working Paper, University of Kentucky.
Jensen, H. 2002. Food insecurity and the food stamp program. American Journal of Agricultural Economics 84 (5): 1215–1228.
Article Google Scholar
Jyoti, D.F., E.A. Frongillo, and S.J. Jones. 2005. Food insecurity affects school children’s academic performance, weight gain, and social skills. The Journal of Nutrition 135 (12): 2831–2839.
Google Scholar
Lambie-Mumford, H. 2013. ‘Every town should have one’: Emergency food banking in the UK. Journal of Social Policy 42 (1): 73–89.
Article Google Scholar
Lambie-Mumford, H., and E. Dowler. 2014. Rising use of “food aid” in the United Kingdom. British Food Journal 116 (9): 1418–1425.
Article Google Scholar
Larson, N.I., M.T. Story, and M.C. Nelson. 2009. Neighborhood environments: Disparities in access to healthy foods in the US. American Journal of Preventive Medicine 36 (1): 74–81.
Article Google Scholar
LeClair, M.S., and A.M. Aksan. 2014. Redefining the food desert: Combining GIS with direct observation to measure food access. Agriculture and Human Values 31 (4): 537–547.
Article Google Scholar
Loopstra, R, A. Reeves, D. Taylor-Robinson, B. Barr, M. McKee, D. Stuckler. 2015. Austerity, sanctions, and the rise of food banks in the UK. BMJ (Clinical Research Ed) 350: h1775.
Google Scholar
McIntyre, L, D. Tougas, K. Rondeau, and C.L. Mah. 2016. “In”-sights about food banks from a critical interpretive synthesis of the academic literature. Agriculture and Human Values 33 (1): 843–859.
Article Google Scholar
McKinnon, R.A., J. Reedy, M.A. Morrissette, L.A. Lytle, and A.L. Yaroch. 2009. Measures of the food environment: A compilation of the literature, 1990–2007. American Journal of Preventive Medicine 36 (4): S124–S133.
Article Google Scholar
Miewald, C., and E. McCann. 2014. Foodscapes and the geographies of poverty: Sustenance, strategy, and politics in an urban neighborhood. Antipode 46 (2): 537–556.
Article Google Scholar
Minkoff-Zern, L.A. 2014a. Hunger amidst plenty: Farmworker food insecurity and coping strategies in California. Local Environment 19 (2): 204–219.
Article Google Scholar
Minkoff-Zern, L.A. 2014b. Knowing “good food”: Immigrant knowledge and the racial politics of farmworker food insecurity. Antipode 46 (5): 1190–1204.
Article Google Scholar
Nellum, N. 2015. Fighting food insecurity on campus. Higher Education Today. http://higheredtoday.org/2015/06/29/fighting-food-insecurity-on-campus/. Accessed 24 March 2016.
Oregon Food Bank. 2016. Our Work. https://www.oregonfoodbank.org/our-work/partnerships/community-food-systems/ Accessed 12 Dec 2016.
Paynter, S., M. Berner, and E. Anderson. 2011. When even the ‘dollar value meal ‘costs too much: Food insecurity and long term dependence on food pantry assistance. Public Administration Quarterly 35 (3): 26–58.
Google Scholar
Perry J, M. Williams, T. Sefton, M. Haddad. 2014. Emergency use only: Understanding and reducing the use of food banks in the UK. Accessed 22 Feb 2016. http://policy-practice.oxfam.org.uk/publications/emergency-use-only-understanding-and-reducing-the-use-of-food-banks-in-the-uk-335731.
Popkin, S.J., M. Scott, M Galvez. 2016. Impossible Choices Teens and Food Insecurity in America. Urban Institute and Feeding America. http://www.urban.org/research/publication/impossible-choices-teens-and-food-insecurity-america.
Poppendieck, J. 1999. Sweet charity?: Emergency food and the end of entitlement. Penguin.
Purdam, K., E.A. Garratt, and Esmail, A. 2015. Hungry? Food insecurity, social stigma and embarrassment in the UK. Sociology, 1–17.
Schmidt, L., L. Shore-Sheppard, and T. Watson. 2013. The Effect of Safety Net Programs on Food Insecurity. Working Paper 19558. National Bureau of Economic Research. http://www.nber.org/papers/w19558.pdf. Accessed 12 November 2015.
Second Harvest Food Bank of Santa Clara and San Mateo Counties. 2013. Spreadsheet of food Assistance distribution locations in Santa Clara County.
Shannon, J. 2013. Food deserts Governing obesity in the neoliberal city. Progress in Human Geography 38 (2): 248–266.
Article Google Scholar
Short, A., J. Guthman, and S. Raskin. 2007. Food deserts, oases, or mirages? Small markets and community food security in the San Francisco Bay Area. Journal of Planning Education and Research 26 (3): 352–364.
Article
