This Community Food Access Report summarizes an assessment process that began late in 2021 and finished in July 2022.
The purpose of this assessment was to focus on the expertise and experiences of those most impacted by food insecurity. We intentionally avoided more traditional assessment practices such as surveys or an over-reliance on quantitative data. Instead, our focus was on listening to the community and honoring their experiences as subject-matter expertise.
Key Definitions
FOOD INSECURITY: Food security is defined by the United States Department of Agriculture as access by all people at all times to enough food for an active, healthy life. Please note that throughout this report we will use terms like ‘hunger’ and ‘food access’ interchangeably to describe the many issues and causes connected to food insecurity.
FOOD APARTHEID: Farmer and activist Karen Washington develop the term. In her words, “people use the words ‘food desert’ to describe low-income communities who have limited access to food. In fact, we do have access to food—cheap, subsidized, processed food. The word ‘desert’ also makes us think of an empty, absolutely desolate place. But there is so much life, vibrancy, and potential in these communities. I coined the term ‘food apartheid’ to ask us to look at the root causes of inequity in our food system on the basis of race, class, and geography. Let’s face it: healthy, fresh food is accessible in wealthy neighborhoods while unhealthy food abounds in poor neighborhoods. ‘Food apartheid’ underscores that this is the result of decades of discriminatory planning and policy decisions.
Methods
Collection of Budget Data: Neoliberalism and Individualism are white supremacy manifestations that show up in our food system as the focus on personal responsibility, that hard work can combat hunger, and that food charity and food distribution are enough. This takes away government responsibility and shifts blame from the failure of our systems to the communities experiencing food insecurity. To combat this, we wanted to know where county funding was going and if community experts were seeing the results.
Photovoice: The narrative that “communities can’t take care of themselves” assumes that people experiencing hunger are lazy and need to be helped by those with more “knowledge.” This is rooted in race and class stereotypes, and results in outside, often white-led, organizations deciding what is best for communities. Photovoice combats this by embracing the lived experience and knowledge of communities experiencing food insecurity and uses photography as a medium to illuminate structural inequalities.
Community Expert Sessions: Another result of Paternalism shows up as the failure to listen to the community. Often organizations and government bodies pre-determine what “best practice” should be applied, and community members are not trusted to determine their own solutions or know what is best. Community-led solutions require not just listening to community feedback but shifting power to community members and allowing them to guide each step of the conversation.
Our methods were informed by the Duke Sanford World Food Policy Center:
Collection of Budget Data
We examined Orange County budgets between 2017 to spring 2022 to see how much money was going to programs related to food access. Because we recognize that many factors influence if someone is able to access food, such as access to housing and transportation, we decided that if money was connected to any of the following categories, it could be considered food access funding:
- Food: Funding that directly supports emergency food programs, charitable food programs, and food-based aid and assistance
- Transportation: Funding that can impact food access when routing public transit.
- Housing: Funding to support housing expenses and in turn free up funding to pay for food
- Economic Development: Funding that promotes economic development initiatives, local food businesses (including food production and agriculture), creates an economic tax/revenue source, or provides incentives to attract more businesses (i.e., tax incentives for a new grocery store or development)
- Multiple: Falling into more than one category listed above
Community Experts
Community Experts are defined as people living within Orange County who have lived experience with hunger. Community Experts were identified by the assessment team’s Community Consultant who has deep roots and relationships within the community along with lived experience with issues of food access. The Community Consultant played an important role throughout the entire assessment process from design to implementation to report development. The Consultant helped advise the assessment team’s work, recruit participants, co-facilitate sessions, and be a consistent liaison and relationship-builder between the assessment team and Community Experts. All Community Experts were compensated for their time and expertise and this compensation was commensurate with an average hourly consulting fee ($40 to $50 / hour). The Community Consultant was also compensated for their role.
Recommendations
Categories
- Direct Service Programs: includes direct service programs like school foods, transportation, and charitable programs.
- Deeper Investments in Ending Hunger: includes issues like housing, economic development, and other wrap-around services.
- Feedback for Decision-Makers: feedback specifically aimed at decision-makers and how decisions are made.
Direct Service Programs
School food programs should be improving. This is a top priority for community experts. Recommended actions:
- Increase funding for fresh foods and foods that appeal to students to eat, this may require additional funding for purchasing foods and hiring staff to prepare the kinds of foods that any decision-maker or elected official would want to eat themselves or serve their children.
- A commitment to long-term investments must be made, instead of programs that are advertised as a big change but do not feel truly impactful for families and children.
- During summer foods programs, allow children and families to pick up food and eat it when they need/want to eat it. Children should not be forced to eat lunch outside in the heat during the summer, they should have the option to take it home to share or eat it later. This may require additional funding and to forgo funding from state/federal sources, but this kind of undignified programming should not exist in one of the wealthiest counties in the state.
Existing programs are appreciated but the following changes are needed. Recommended actions:
- The buses do not meet the actual needs of the community. A consistent bus schedule needs to be offered that works for community members working non-traditional work hours and is offered year-round instead of centering around UNC students and the University calendar.
- Food programs provide supplemental support, but experts say there are three main issues with accessing food charity: There should be more choice to ensure the types of foods offered/being pro-vided are appropriate and actually used by the recipient. More fresh foods are needed the perishable foods currently being provided are not filling the need. Too often fresh food from charity distributions are either rotten or very dirty and not something you would find being sold. When fresh foods are offered through charity programs, they should be the same quality that would be sold at a store or market.
We must improve language and translation services. Recommended actions:
- County materials are often translated after being released, causing delays for those who do not speak English. All materials should be translated before being released so that refugee and immigrant community members are not put further behind. Language advocates and language services should be made available to increase communication outside of written language and provide additional context to understand complicated programs, resources, applications, and processes.
We must streamline Federal Nutritional Services when possible and do a better job of providing information about these services especially when changes occur. Recommended actions:
- More direct and consistent support and/or communication should be available at a local level to help individuals navigate food programs and federal systems. Community Experts say programs like WIC (Women Infants and Children) and other FNS (Federal Nutrition Services like SNAP/EBT) programs are difficult to navigate and even more challenging if English is your second or third language. Changes occur in programs without effective communication to the participants. For example, WIC may choose to no longer cover an item or specific brand that a participant has purchased before, even something purchased recently using WIC funds, and suddenly they are checking out at the grocery store and are forced to pay out of pocket or remove the item.
We need a more effective, dignified, and direct way of providing food assistance. Recommended actions:
- In one of the wealthiest counties in North Carolina, we should not be struggling with hunger or undignified ways of receiving food assistance. Experts recommend a service similar to Instacart to be available as a public program. People should be able to choose their foods and schedule when to pick up or receive them. This would help increase access and dignity for those receiving food program support, especially for people who are homebound or need delivery services due to transportation issues. The proposed online service should allow for SNAP/EBT to be used.
Deeper Investments in Ending Hunger
There needs to be a focus on longer term changes not just immediate needs-based services. Recommended actions:
- Experts recommend focusing on reducing poverty, not just direct service programs that meet immediate needs. The County needs to invest significant funding in longer term supports that enable people to change their economic status over time.
Economic programs that serve as stepping stones and enable a clear pathway to a sustainable economic status for households and individuals are essential. Recommended actions:
- Community Experts recommend creating economic support programs that enable someone to advance in their profession/employment and make existing incentive programs more accessible and with better wrap-around supports. Support programs could pay for specific educational or certification programs, provide gas vouchers, expand free wifi/internet access, and provide child-care programs or subsidies. There are community members and families falling through the cracks because they may not be eligible for certain federally funded programs but are still struggling to find stable housing, good employment options, and be able to afford food. We cannot let people fall through these cracks.
Housing is an important part of these longer-term solutions. Recommended actions:
- Community Experts recommend that any time a new development is being proposed or built, a certain number of new apartments or homes must be set aside for subsidized/affordable housing. Experts see gentrification tearing apart communities and neighborhoods being broken up because of taxes and cost of living. There needs to be a publicly accessible list of existing policies that combat the harms of gentrification.
Feedback for Decision Makers
This section addresses community expert feedback that is applicable to County operations and the state of our County as a whole. Therefore, there are no specific recommended actions listed. This feedback should be considered in all actions the County takes to improve food access and center equity.
- We are a rich community and all the necessary resources seem to be here. No one should be going hungry or experiencing housing insecurity in a community like Orange County.
- The community needs to know what kind of data the county is getting from the service providers that show their program’s impacts and how this informs their decisions for funding and other priorities. Community Experts need to be included to ensure the data and information accurately reflect community experiences. There is a desire for accountability and to understand how these decisions are being made. If a program has existed for 10 or 20 years, what are the examples of directly impacted community members that feel supported by this program? Testimonials and other metrics of success should be shared openly with the public.
- Elected officials and decision-makers should participate in simulation courses to make sure they understand the experiences of those in the community they are intended to serve. They need to ride the bus for a day and try to get to where they need to be on a Sunday. They also need to experience signing up for and participating in social service programs.
- Community Experts say past assessments and report processes have altered or “sugar coated” their voices and perspectives. Communities deserve to be heard in exactly the ways we express ourselves and to share information directly with decision-makers.
- Board meetings should become more accessible to improve democratic participation. This can begin with better communication especially with directly impacted communities and those historically disenfranchised. Meeting schedules should be shared regularly with important topics and decisions highlighted. An active message board or email alert system would help make sure communities know about important meetings. Meeting environments and elected boards should embrace and support participation from communities most impacted by economic, housing, transportation, and food policy decisions. Overall, Orange County and the Towns do not have an equitable or fair way of listening to community. The same privileged groups of people who are able to show up at meetings and who have the time, skills, or access to track local policy and program information continue to have an unfair influence on decisions.