Food Insecurity during COVID‐19

Abstract

For a decade, Feeding America's Map the Meal Gap (MMG) has provided sub‐state‐level estimates of food insecurity for both the full‐population and for children. Along with being extensively used by food banks, it is widely used by state‐ and local‐governments to help plan responses to food insecurity in their communities. In this paper, we describe the methods underpinning MMG, detail the approach Feeding America has used to make projections about the geography of food insecurity in 2020, and how food insecurity rates may have changed due to COVID‐19 since 2018. We project an increase of 17 million Americans who are food insecure in 2020 but this aggregate increase masks substantial geographic variation found in MMG.

Measuring the impact of COVID‐19 on stock prices and profits in the food supply chain

“…Although the two shocks differ in their causes, the financial crisis provides indications of possible further consequences of COVID‐19. These include an increase in insolvencies, rising unemployment, and continued food insecurity (Baldwin & Tomiura, 2020; Gundersen et al, 2020).…”

“…Newspapers report about the lack of harvest workers in agriculture, slowed distribution, massive outbreaks among personnel in slaughterhouses and empty shelves in grocery stores (Financial Times, 2020; New York Times, 2020). All these effects imposed significant costs on the companies concerned and reduced food security (Gundersen et al, 2020). Government interventions have aimed at mitigating the impact of the COVID‐19 crisis on the value chain (Reuters, 2020a).…”

The Impact of COVID‐19 on Consumer Food Waste

“…In response to simultaneous supply chain disruptions (Hobbs 2020) and an increase in household food insecurity spurred by the COVID‐19 pandemic (Ahn and Norwood 2020; Gundersen et al 2020; Ziliak 2020), the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) introduced the Farmers to Families Food Box program that distributed more than 32 million food boxes during May and June of 2020, with additional distributions planned for the summer of 2020 (USDA 2020). Boxes contain an assortment of produce, dairy, and/or meat chosen by participating vendors and delivered to interested consumers through familiar touchpoints in the emergency food system (food banks, food pantries, churches, and other nonprofits).…”

“…Remarkably, only 11% of consumers reported no changes in shopping habits during early April of 2020, and only 19% reported no changes in eating habits (IFIC 2020a), suggesting few American households were untouched by the turbulence of the COVID‐19 pandemic. Indeed, many households have struggled to maintain food security since the onset of the pandemic (Ahn and Norwood 2020; Gundersen et al 2020; Ziliak 2020).…”

Labor Issues in the Food Supply Chain Amid the COVID‐19 Pandemic

“…These sudden and drastic changes have far‐reaching consequences for workers in upstream segments of the food supply chain because, over the last two decades, the portion of consumers' food expenditures spent on the food‐service industry expanded from 47.1% in 1997 to 54.4% in 2018 (Newman and Bunge 2020). The closing of the food service industry caused increases in unemployment and income losses which led to increases in food insecurity (see Ahn and Norwood 2021; Gundersen et al 2021 and Ziliak 2021). It also caused consumers to drastically alter their food consumption habits toward cooking at home.…”