Catholic Charities {span} Assistant Agency Director Jennifer Tames stands before a Feeding America poster in organization’s warehouse. Tribune-Star/David Kronke
Rising prices have conspired to increase food insecurity throughout Indiana, but particularly in the seven counties served by Catholic Charities Terre Haute, a new Map the Meal Gap study conducted by Feeding America has found.
The study found that the amount of money people said they need to have enough food reached its highest point in 20 years.
Inflation has boosted the national average cost per meal to $3.99. Meal costs average $3.58 in Catholic Charities’ service area, but that hasn’t alleviated any of the other statistics, the Map the Meal Gap study discovered.
For Catholic Charities Assistant Agency Director Jennifer Tames, the statistic that stood out concerned child food insecurity.
In Indiana, child food insecurity stands at 18.2%. Six counties served by Catholic Charities exceeded that number, with Vigo County tying for the fourth highest rate of child food insecurity in the state at 22.9%.
“We’ve got one in five children who are food insecure,” said Tames. “That’s a lot of children in our community and I always look to children and seniors as being the most vulnerable populations. They rely on other people to be able to help them out. They aren’t necessarily able to get out and acquire that food on their own.”
She added, “So many of our children are receiving free or reduced-price breakfast and lunch at school — we’re coming up on summer. So many of them then aren’t going to have access to that food during the day.”
Tames continued, “For children, food is so important for their emotional and physical development, their cognitive development. When adults are hungry and food insecure, that affects us, but not like it does children when it affects them for a lifetime.”
Greene County’s child food insecurity rate was 21.4%. Parke and Vermillion Counties both came in at 20.2%. Sullivan County was experiencing it at 19.6%, followed by Knox County with 19.2% and Clay County at 16.1%.
Map the Meal Gap provides local-level estimates of food insecurity and food costs for every county and congressional district in the country. Terre Haute Catholic Charities Foodbank is one of more than 200 food banks that are part of Feeding America’s nationwide food bank network.
To counter the bleak news, Terre Haute Catholic Charities’ increased the amount of food that it will distribute in 2024. Its goal is to distribute 4.5 million pounds of food, or about 3.75 million meals, up from 3.2 million meals last year.
It has also expanded its partnerships with school corporations, moving from the backpack model in which a child is sent home with food on Fridays to now opening school pantries that serve not just the child receiving food on the weekend but the entire family.
Vigo County’s food insecurity numbers have over the last few years for a couple of reasons, Tames said. Inflation has increased the price of just about everything, leaving families with less money to buy food.
And the county has trailed much of the state in its economic development, particularly after seeing a decrease in local major manufacturers going back to 2008.
“We’ve never caught back up to that,” Tames said. “It takes time to bring back those large manufacturers and bring back those high-paying jobs. We’re seeing the result of that in these food insecurity numbers now.”
Given the enormity of the problem, combating it can seem like the mythological Sisyphus eternally attempting to roll a boulder up a hill, only for it to invariably roll back down.
“That boulder, as difficult as it is to push up that hill, we aren’t trying to push it on our own, we’ve got a lot of people out there who are helping us,” Tames said. “There’s a lot of work to do and we do not do that work alone. We rely on 85, 90 other nonprofits for person- to-person service, and that’s the only way we’re going to make an impact in our communities.”
Tames added, “The most important thing that people should know is they can be part of solving this problem.”
There are a number of ways, such as volunteering with local pantries and soup kitchens and advocating the state legislature for programs benefiting the food insecure. And, of course, donate money.
“Our agencies and Catholic Charities are able to do so much more with the dollar that’s donated than if you or I were to go to the grocery store and purchase that food ourselves,” Tames said. “Our conversion is that a dollar can provide as many as four meals. I don’t know where else you can get that pretty good deal.”
As passionate as Tames is about Catholic Charities’ mission, she wouldn’t mind if she didn’t have to do it anymore.
“If only we could work ourselves out of a job,” she said of eliminating hunger. “That’s our ultimate goal.”
Other findings in Feeding America’s Map the Meal Gap study:
• In Indiana, food insecurity averages 13.9%. All of the counties served by Catholic Charities’ Foodbank were above the state aggregate: 16.8% in Vigo County, 16.5% in Greene County; 16.1% in Vermillion County, 15.4% in Knox County, 15.2% in Parke County; 14.8% in Sullivan County and 14.2% in Clay County.
• Nearly 50% of people facing hunger may not qualify for SNAP benefits due to income thresholds. In Catholic Charities’ seven-county service area, nearly 46% of people facing hunger may not qualify for SNAP.
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