In order to address the problem of hunger, we must first understand it.
Feeding America
undertook the
Map the Meal Gap project to learn more about the face of hunger
at the local community level. By understanding the population in need,
communities can better identify strategies for reaching the people who most
need food assistance.
Food insecurity refers to the
USDA's measure of the lack of
access, at times, to enough food for an active, healthy life for all household
members and limited or uncertain availability of nutritionally adequate foods.
Food insecure households are not necessarily food insecure all the time. Food
insecurity may reflect a household’s need to make trade-offs between important
basic needs, such as housing or medical bills, and purchasing nutritionally
adequate foods.
You can select New
York State
and then the county of your choice from the interactive map at
http://feedingamerica.org/hunger-in-america/hunger-studies/map-the-meal-gap.aspx
and learn more about what our communities are facing when it comes to food
insecurity. Once you get to the map, if you select the “Print” option (the
yellow-orange box slightly above and to the right of the map), you can then
specify what county or state you’d like data concerning.
But first a few words about the data sheets. Quite frankly
they are a bit confusing to read. They provide some very interesting data but
here’s a couple tips to help you understand their print out. First off, the top
half of the page is New York
State data; the bottom
half is data for the county you selected.
Second, the data on the right hand side of the page, which is presented
as a three-tiered green-shaded table of “Income Bands,” basically represents
three different income groups – those who make more than 185% of poverty, those
that make between 185% and 130% of poverty, and those that make less than 130%
of poverty. Each one has different social safety nets that help people within
the band. These are explained briefly below to help you understand what you
are seeing when you look at the Herkimer and Oneida Counties
data.
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| Click to Enlarge |
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| Click to Enlarge |
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| Click to Enlarge |
Assuming that you can now follow what each of the "income bands" represents, the important number is the percentage shown for each of the bands. That percentage represents the percent of the food insecure population that falls into each income band. This allows you to not only see those that are the poorest among the local population that are struggle with food security, but also those that are sometimes referred to as the "working poor", those that may have jobs but still struggle to make ends meet.
At any rate, below you can find two sets of reports for each county. The firs set is for the county as a whole; the second set shows the data in regard to children within food insecure households. For a fuller explanation of these pages you may want to read some of the
the Executive Summary of the "Map the Meal" page.
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| Click to Enlarge Herkimer County Full Report |
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| Click to Enlarge Oneida County Full Report |
And here are the two focusing on children in each county living within insecure food households.
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| Herkimer County Children Living with Food Insecurity |
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| Oneida County Children Living with Food Insecurity |
