COVID-19 has shined a light on problems that our community has struggled with for a long time. For example, the survey Community Spring conducted as part of the Grassroots COVID-19 Recovery Campaign revealed that 27% of responding Alachua County low-income households did not have consistent access to food in May and April. This suggests that thousands of our neighbors are going hungry. While many respondents reported lacking the funds to purchase food, perhaps even more troubling was that one-third of people couldn’t even access the food that was available. Access to food is a basic human right as stated in Article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It is simply unacceptable that this human right is not being respected for so many in our community.
Even before COVID-19 struck, US food systems were already unsustainable and inequitable. According to Feeding America, over 37 million people in our country are experiencing food insecurities, including over 11 million children. In 2015, Florida had the 10th highest rate of food insecurity in the nation. Alachua County landed in the top five of Florida’s 67 counties, with a 19.8% food insecurity rate. This figure was improving, but since COVID-19 it has slipped to 18.9%, which means that nearly 50,000 members of our community are still food insecure.
The scale of hunger in our community is staggering given all the work that is already being done to combat it. Dedicated organizations such as Bread of the Mighty Food Bank, Working Food, SWAG, Gainesville Community Ministry, Alachua County Christian Pastors Association (ACCPA), Salvation Army and Catholic Charities have been instrumental in distributing food both before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. In addition, food programs such as SNAP (food stamps) and WIC are available to assist with nutrition needs. However, only about 69% of food insecure individuals qualify for federal assistance, which leaves thousands of households struggling to get enough food.
The persistence of food insecurity is due in part to a long history of systemic racism and class inequality. The root of food access disparities, both in Alachua County and elsewhere, is the historic and present-day segregation of low-income minority communities. The lack of diverse, nutritional food options in these places is a painful reminder of archaic discriminatory policies, segregation and racism.
So what can be done to decrease food insecurities in Alachua County? One place to start is increasing access to food via additional grocery stores. Alachua County has several food deserts - areas with severely limited access to grocery stores - all of which are scattered around Gainesville. For example, in East Gainesville the singular grocery store is Walmart. For East Gainesville residents without reliable transportation this lack of options significantly limits their ability to secure healthy food. The local transit system takes between 8 and 53 minutes to reach Walmart, depending on your location. That timeframe doesn’t include traffic or other delays. That’s potentially two hours round-trip just to get some groceries. Also, factoring in the limited amount of groceries one can carry and bus fare for each trip, there is a clear and significant barrier to food access. Local leaders should find ways to encourage developers to open additional stores in these areas.
However, it’s important to recognize that systemic barriers to food access run deep and new grocery stores won’t open overnight. Taking that into consideration, we need to move forward with other options in the meantime. One possibility is increasing distribution sites for free food. This is already being done in part by the Bread of the Mighty’s Mobile Food Pantry Program. So far there are 30 - 50 distribution sites spread over five counties and serving around 87,000 people each month. This model should be expanded. Imagine market stations of fresh food and produce options deliberately located in vulnerable communities throughout Gainesville. Communities such as Eastwood Meadows, Village/Forest Green, Lamplighter, Lincoln Estates, and Linton Oaks would benefit greatly from increased access to food. Distribution needs to take place on a micro-level, neighborhood by neighborhood.
There might be other creative solutions. Perhaps we could provide busing from communities to the food drive locations. Or bus loads of food boxes can be delivered directly within each food insecure community. Given the scale of the need, it’s time to start looking for new ideas and thinking outside the box.
The veil covering the full scope of food insecurity in our community has been shredded. COVID-19 has brought suffering and losses that we will never forget, but all of that pain is also an opportunity to finally make things better. Our neighbors who are elderly, or single parents, or disabled, or homeless and many others need more food options. Local leadership should encourage developers to open grocery stores in low-income and food insecure communities. In the meantime, a nutritional triage effort is required for food insecure individuals and communities. Partnerships should be formed between local government, farmers and other organizations to expand food distribution. If we fail to act now things will only get worse.
As we all wait in anticipation for things to get back to normal, we need to think critically about what we consider normal. Food insecurity should not be normal. I hope that this painful moment can help our community unite and ensure that everyone’s basic human right to food is fulfilled.