Hunger in the Land of Plenty

Melissa Terry makes coffee while Adrienne Shaunfield chops garlic to put in a crockpot. They stand in the kitchen area of the warehouse building where they work, where jars full of food line shelves in the place of books and a couch sits next to two large windows. Terry and Shaunfield work for Feed Fayetteville, an organization that helps to educate people about hunger, food stability and nutrition. The crockpot is part of a slow-food initiative they are working on to give impoverished families healthier options that are still easily available.

“We’re like everybody else,” Terry said “We don’t have time to spend all day in the kitchen, and this is a great alternative to fast food.”

A September report by the U.S. Department of Agriculture ranked Arkansas as second, behind Mississippi, for food insecurity in the United States. Washington County has one of the lowest food security ratings in both Arkansas and the nation. Food organizations in Fayetteville and other parts of the Northwest Arkansas area are abundant, but there is still a staggering problem with hunger and food security.

“The major problem is that there is a misunderstanding between food supplies and how people see hunger,” Terry said “We live in the land of plenty and hunger.”

Even with abundant organizations and resources Arkansas still manages to land at the bottom of the list.

Northwest Arkansas’ two biggest counties, Washington is in the top three for extreme hunger even though it is surrounded by powerhouse industries like Walmart, Tyson and other industries that flock to the Fayetteville and the University of Arkansas, like J.B. Hunt.

The University Of Arkansas School of Law is home to the only food justice program in the nation. The director of the LL.M. program in Agriculture and Food Law, Susan Schneider, said the hunger gap in northwest Arkansas is because the population of this area is too divergent in its economic distribution.

“You can go into one of the beautiful neighborhoods here in Fayetteville and see gorgeous house and an area that is obviously successful, but at the same time there is a large population of people who don’t have access to the basic benefits you find in our society,” Schneider said.

                According to Shaunfield and Terry this gap in wealth and poverty plays a prominent role in the success of people suffering from hunger. They said that often people do not see this other side of Northwest Arkansas and when they do it doesn’t fit with the stereotype of hunger.

“I get so mad when someone says they don’t think people are really struggling with hunger because they walk into a food bank and see someone who’s got an iPhone,” Shaunfield said. “They don’t know that person’s story or where they’re coming from. It’s so much more complex than the stereotype.”

Shaunfield and Terry said the face of hunger is steadily becoming an obese one. They said that people who fight hunger are often overweight simply because their options are limited. And those options are often fast foods and foods with low nutritional value.

Nutrition is an aspect that many of the food recovery services in Northwest Arkansas do not take into account. One of Feed Fayetteville’s main goals is to give people access to more options and better food. Ultimately they want to be able to break bad food habits, which are passing from adults to children.

“It’s a cycle,” Terry said, “but we want to show people that there are other options out there… we can give them the tools to feed themselves and give them roots and a self-sufficient lifestyle.”

A study by the Arkansas Center for Health Improvement showed that about 30 percent of adolescent students in Fayetteville were overweight or obese, with about 28 percent of kids at a risk for hunger.

Shaunfield works with several Head Start programs in Northwest Arkansas. Head Start is a pre-school program funded by the United States Department of Health and Human Services for kids age five and under from low-income families. At one of the schools Feed Fayetteville helped to create a student garden.

The Head Start school is located in a small metal building and surrounded by trees on one side and older, rugged houses on the other off of South Garland Avenue in Fayetteville.

 “I love it here,” said Sarah Wendell, a family advocate at the school, standing between the patches of the small garden. Tomato plants line the fence around the garden, each one with a different student’s name.

“Cherry tomatoes aren’t that exciting,” she says “but when they grow them themselves and get to come and pick them it can seem that way.”

Wendell said most of the students did not know food came from somewhere other than the supermarket before they started their garden program.

Health and Nutrition Service Manager for the program Casey Rigsbee said about 72 of their students are considered overweight or obese. She also said she sees a lot of families that are struggling to get food usually when they are moving here and still transitioning. But she said often parents may be illiterate and unable to get or use the resources that are available to them.

                Wendell said she wants the lessons that the students learn here to carry home to their parents. Every day the kids and teachers eat lunch family-style. This, Wendell hopes, will make the kids want to eat home meals with their family. Most of the students, she said, eat their dinner in front of the TV with a take-out box.

                Pat Warford, one of the cooks at the school said it is hard to get the kids to eat the healthier options.

“I hear some kids that say ‘I don’t have to eat this because my daddy’s gonna take me to McDonald’s tonight,’” She said. “There’s your problem.”

                As the kids pick up their gardening supplies and go inside the school Wendell watches and says she has talked to parents who sometimes have to decide between paying for gas to go to work and paying for food.

“Luckily, it’s easier for me to find food than gas,” she said.