St. Vincent DePaul Volunteer Tim Leahy prepares food boxes for families at the Marquette pantry. (Journal photo by Shannon Konoske)

EDITOR’S NOTE: This story is part one of a multi-part series that examines how the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted food insecurity in the Upper Peninsula. Part two, which will focus on food insecurity among seniors and children, will be published in Friday’s edition of The Mining Journal.

MARQUETTE — Combating food insecurity in the Upper Peninsula has for decades remained a unique and monumental task. However, the existing factors which contribute to food insecurity in the Marquette-Alger area have been compounded by new barriers brought on by a pandemic-induced recession, the first recession since 2007. Due to this, regional and local food assistance organizations have witnessed significant changes in need related to the pandemic.

Feeding America West Michigan’s mobile pantry, which visited Marquette twice as many times in 2020 as it did in the previous two years — in part because of the pandemic and because of an ongoing effort to increase its presence — has reported a large increase in attendees.

“In 2020, throughout our 40-county service area, we saw a 64% increase in mobile pantry attendance,” said Molly Kooi, communications manager for Feeding America West Michigan, which partners with St. Vincent de Paul’s pantries in Marquette and Alger counties.

While overall rates of visitors to the St. Vincent de Paul food pantry in Marquette have remained fairly stable, some populations have been impacted more than others, Jacy Williams, Marquette district president for St. Vincent de Paul and the pantry manager for Marquette’s location, said. The group with the most noticeable increase in need amid the pandemic has been families with children, she said.

The ripple impact of the pandemic could explain why families with children might be in need of greater assistance, Kooi said.

“When schools close or go remote, families’ food and utility bills grow,” she explained. “Heightened unemployment makes it difficult for many to manage the increased expenditures.”

Furthermore, the pandemic caused an “influx of new people to need food support who had never before needed help keeping food on the table,” and thus, lacked experience with navigating the local resources, Kooi said.

Food insecurity, defined by the United States Department of Agriculture as “the disruption of food intake or eating patterns because of lack of money or other resources,” describes not only the experience of missing meals, but the unreliable access to nutritional food necessary for maintaining “an active, healthy life.” Therefore, food insecurity encompasses hunger, as people traditionally think of the problem, but it also describes a limited access to nutritional food necessary for good health.

In part because of unique accessibility barriers to nutritious and fresh food, the U.P. has reported an increase in food insecurity rates, which Kooi said were already relatively high before the onset of the pandemic.

Feeding America’s “Map the Meal Gap,” an interactive resource created with Dr. Craig Gundersen, professor at the University of Illinois, shows that in 2019, 8,910 people in Marquette County, representing 13.3% of its population, were food insecure. The same dataset indicates that 1,310, or 14.2% of Alger County residents, were food insecure in 2019.

However, 2020 projections suggest increases in food insecure households that correlate with the onset of the pandemic. These projections indicate that 16.6% and 17% of households in Marquette and Alger counties, respectively, experienced food insecurity in 2020.

While the increase in food insecurity due to COVID-19 in these counties may seem low compared to some national figures, “food insecurity was already elevated” in this area, Kooi said.

Multiple factors contributed to the pre-existing elevated rates of food insecurity in the area, but the many miles between food distributors and producers — and the distance between consumers and food distributors — impact easy access to fresh, healthy and nutritious foods.

It’s important to recognize that as the period between harvest and consumption grows longer, the nutrients in fresh foods decline, said Sara Johnson, market manager for the Downtown Marquette Farmer’s Market, which is sponsored by the Marquette Downtown Development Authority.

This means that distance between a grower and distributor — which can be significant in the U.P. — makes a difference in nutritional value when it comes to fresh produce. In short, locally grown produce that is sold near the peak of its freshness often offers a higher nutrient content, she said.

While the mobile food pantry and its partnering pantries are able to provide fruits and vegetables — in addition to nonperishables, dairy, meat and baked goods — by sourcing from other regions, this means raw produce must spend time in storage.

And beyond the distance food must travel to reach U.P. residents, there’s the miles that residents must travel to access pantries, grocery stores and farmer’s markets, Kooi said.

For example, while the mobile nature of the Feeding America West Michigan pantry allows it to visit different parts of the U.P., it must visit population centers — as opposed to meeting people where they are or stopping in many small communities — to offer the most impact and efficiency, meaning that some who lack transportation may not be able to benefit from the food assistance.

Johnson also addressed the barriers that come with a largely decentralized and rural population. With residents spread far apart and away from population centers — where many of the region’s farmer’s markets and other sources of food are located — these barriers may include the cost of travel or a complete lack of transportation.

For example, Johnson said she was receiving web orders — through the online Farmer’s Market offered last year due to COVID-19 restrictions — from residents living three to four hours away. To her, this demonstrated not only a desire among many for nutrient-rich, local food, but the population dispersement in the area.

However, Johnson, like Kooi, said it’s likely there’s a substantial number of people who lack a means to attend.

“Something I see as a serious need in this community,” she said, “is better public transportation.”

These pre-existing factors and more were compounded by new region-specific barriers brought on by the pandemic.

For example, many U.P. communities rely on seasonal economic industries like tourism, Kooi said. The businesses in this industry — such as restaurants, bars, hotels and bakeries — took an especially heavy hit as a result of closures beginning last spring and continuing through peak summer tourism months. This resulted in many who were newly unemployed.

The Michigan Food Security Council’s “Initial Report: COVID-19 Findings and Recommendations,” also stated that “Michiganders (who were) previously food insecure pre-COVID-19 faced intensified disparities marked by key determinants such as race, disability status, non-college students between the ages of 18 and 30, and individuals who experience high food prices affecting food access.”

The local increases in food insecurity rates are on par with a reverse in trends correlating with the pandemic seen nationwide.

While food insecurity rates had previously been declining, the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic effectively reversed any ground gained by the organizations working to solve the nationwide problem.

On a national scale, the 2019 “prevalence of food insecurity continued to decline at 10.5% from a high of 14.9% in 2011,” according to the USDA, and was below even the pre-2007 recession level of 11.1%.

While reports are done by leading sources like the USDA and Feeding America every other year, an NPR article headlined “Food Insecurity in the United States by Number,” noted that researchers have estimated some of the worst rates in years.

Feeding America’s March 2021 analysis report on the “The Effects of COVID-19 on Food Insecurity in 2020 and 2021” estimates that 45 million people may have experienced food insecurity in 2020 and 42 million people may experience food insecurity in 2021, compared to the 35 million people who were food insecure in 2019, the “lowest it had been in more than 20 years.”

Kooi has seen firsthand the impacts of this pandemic-induced recession in the U.P.

“Because of the extended time out of work, we anticipate it will take time for our U.P. neighbors to recover economically from the crisis,” Kooi said. “… As such, our food distribution in the U.P. is up so far this year. In January to March 2021, we have distributed 115% more food than in 2020.”

Just as estimates from researchers have shown, Kooi expects this “elevated rate of distribution” to continue.

After all, as Feeding America’s 2021 analysis report points out, it took 10 years for food insecurity rates to lower to pre-recession levels after the Great Recession of 2007 — and this pandemic is not over yet.

Meanwhile, the regional partners of Feeding America, community organizations and more play critical roles in addressing the challenges brought on by pre-existing and pandemic-induced food insecurity.

For example, St. Vincent de Paul’s pantries have adapted an open-pantry format to prepacked boxes available for drive-through pickup.

Wife and husband Sheila and Tim Leahy volunteer at the Marquette pantry every week, sorting boxes and packaging grocery bags of donated food for those who need them.

Sheila Leahy said that there is no shortage of food to give, thanks to donations from national organizations like Feeding America, as well as Marquette donors, such as Jilbert’s Dairy, Meijer, Walmart, local churches and individual citizens.

Through Meijer’s Simply Give Program, in fact, local citizens have been able to donate gift cards to pantries, the total value of which Meijer then doubles or triples in donation on special days.

“There’s really no need for people to go hungry. There’s lots of food here,” Sheila Leahy said of the well-stocked pantry at Marquette’s St. Vincent de Paul. “We’ve all been in a place where we’re like, ‘Oh gosh, I need help.'”

In addition, local farmers are integral to providing nutrient-rich foods that have not traveled long distances or need to be stored for a long time before being dispersed. For example, Jilbert’s Dairy provides local meat and dairy products to the St. Vincent de Paul Pantry, and the Downtown Marquette Farmer’s Market provides freshly harvested food with peak nutritional value.

“When you’re food insecure,” Johnson said, “you want to make the most out of what you get.”

While many shop at large grocery chains to stretch every dollar, Johnson said that contrary to popular belief, farmer’s markets are often more affordable than grocery stores because there is no markup.

In addition, the market accepts five different food assistance payment methods: SNAP/EBT cards, Michigan Pandemic-EBT cards, WIC, Project FRESH vouchers, Senior Project FRESH vouchers and Hoophouses for Health vouchers.

Furthermore, when patrons use their EBT or P-EBT cards, the Marquette Downtown Farmer’s Market and “other participating markets in the state of Michigan,” according to the market’s website, will match the amount spent on fresh fruits and vegetables. This means patrons can get double the amount of healthy produce for the same price.

In terms of addressing access gaps, some local organizations do so by having a presence in more isolated communities and food deserts, such as low-income urban or rural areas, which have limited access to grocery stores with a supply of nutritious, healthy food. One example of a food desert is the K.I. Sawyer community. Nearby, St. Vincent de Paul’s Gwinn pantry offers support.

Another might be found in the county’s west end, where Partridge Creek Farms is working against access inequities by producing more food locally.

Finally, some assist by finding ways to get food to those who are unable to attend mobile or locally located pantries, such as Community Action Alger-Marquette’s meal delivery service for home-bound seniors.

While these entities may differ in the populations they serve and the mechanism in which they do so, their staffers have one commonly echoed hope: that those in need can access and benefit from the assistance offered by their neighbors and community organizations.

EDITOR’S NOTE: This article is intended to serve as an overview of food insecurity in the Upper Peninsula. In future installments of this series, The Mining Journal will take a deeper look at how this experience varies among community subgroups and how local organizations — including those mentioned above and more — are working to assist them, as well as how a generations-long effort to end food insecurity has been complicated by the pandemic.

Shannon Konoske can be reached at 906-228-2500, ext. 206. Her email address is skonoske@miningjournal.net.