by Hannah Wilson My work in the Critical Food Studies Lab began in October 2017 when I became a Sustainability Scholar through the School of Public and Environmental Affairs. My project was originally assigned to me as short, preliminary work where I was able to look at the socioeconomic aspect behind food for the first time. Stemming from previous projects in the early days of the CFSL, my work focused on studying food poverty with a computational approach. I started with three "theoretical" families generated from previous analysis of food insecure individuals. Each of these families was moved around three locations in South-Central Indiana, and I analyzed how their situation changed based on where they lived. I calculated an end of the month (EOM) monetary remainder (either positive or negative) by balancing their assets with their liabilities. In the end, I found that the EOM changed for each family in each location. Whether it be that some areas differ in the number food pantries/ grocery stores, transportation means or costs of living, it was evident to me that location can make a large impact on whether or not a family goes hungry. One major factor in determining food poverty that I was not able to consider in my first project was time. People who are living on SNAP (food stamps) benefits are often forced to utilize emergency food aid like food pantries to supplement the amount of food they bring in to their home. In fact, many families will go hungry without these pantries. The problem is these pantries tend to have very specific hours, do not clearly communicate with the public and are concentrated only in urban areas/ larger cities. My current work seeks to apply this knowledge to the research I completed last year. Currently, I am working with both Christopher and Vanessa to create "time tables" that match six theoretical families' working hours with the working hours of surrounding pantries. In creating these tables, I have found that many pantries are rather inaccessible to the populations that they are seeking to help because many of them are open only one day a week or for only an hour or two at a time. These time tables have been more complicated than originally anticipated because my computations require me to generalize hundreds of pantries and personally make choices about how families in poverty would act in choosing which pantries to utilize. This has shown limitations in my work that can only be fixed with a detailed ethnographic work, but that was never the intention for this project. In the next few weeks, I will be working on the paper I am presenting at the American Association of Geographers (AAG) Conference in April. I think my paper will find a unique place in the conference because it incorporates the aspect of time into geographical studies. As was my hope with the preliminary work I did for this research, I hope to show the faults in the systems we've put in place to help the food insecure. Certainly, income makes a big difference in one's access to food, but many have not considered the effect that location and time can make.
23 Comments
by Emma Freestone My project with the Critical Food Studies Lab is inspired by something I started working on last semester in my Food and Poverty class that focused on the cliff effects of poverty. Cliff effects describe the extreme loss of net worth once an individual is no longer eligible for benefits such as child care, Section 8 Housing, SNAP, etc. due to a marginal increase in income. For the research project we collaborated with Steve Thomas, director of Monroe County United Ministries (MCUM) and he became our mentor as he taught us about examples of cliff effects that he sees the patrons at MCUM struggle with daily. Our main goal of the project has been to research and compile a list of eligibility requirements for a variety of benefits including SNAP (food stamps), CCDF (child care voucher), Hoosier Healthcare, On My Way Pre-K, etc. in order to create a worksheet and spreadsheet for financial coaches to use as a tool to walk MCUM’s clients through and ensure that they can anticipate when they may be close to an eligibility cut off and prepare accordingly. Connected in an important way, is the research that Belén Rogers is doing with in-person, voluntary interviews at MCUM’s Client Choice pantry to listen to patron’s thoughts on how the pantry’s environments impact them, why they choose the foods they do, how they prepare the foods they choose, and if they choose the same food every visit. The overarching goal of this project is to compile the interviewee’s anecdotes in order to ascertain how to provide preferred food options in a more cost-effective and efficient way. I have been helping Belén conduct these interviews each week and we have received positive responses from individuals eager to participate and share their experiences. I also have started working on a project to research farmers in Monroe County and surrounding counties who have participated in gleaning. I plan to survey those who don’t glean to determine if they have interest but are disconnected and lacking support, discover to what extent food waste could be eliminated by gleaning, and see if a potential gleaning network could be mapped out between farms and food banks. Harriman Farms utilizes 225 acres spread out over several fields and the primary client that purchases his produce is Kroger, therefore if it doesn’t comply with a certain standard the food is not accepted. Ten thousand (100,000) pounds of produce was gleaned from Harriman Farms last season (Hoosier Hills Food Bank). I have been in contact with farms that are on the list of having participated in gleaning before with Hoosier Hills Food Bank and have been going through the list of vendors at the Bloomington Farmer’s Market. As I go, I have been gathering data on the locations of the farms so I will eventually be able to create an interactive map. My goals for this semester in the lab are to improve my GIS modeling skills and help analyze the research from the interviews at MCUM with Belén and write a paper with the findings. by Brian Healey So far, my year of research has been filled with copious amounts of spreadsheets, Facebook pages and Google street views, all in an effort to create an interactive database for farmers across the state of Indiana. This project consists of seven maps, each one filled with different layers of data points I have collected alongside Jodee Ellett, the head of this project. The areas that the maps cover range from Food Producers to Food Education, Technical Assistance and everything in between. We are mapping anything and everything an Indiana farmer could want or need all in one place. Collecting all of this data in one spot has never been done by the state before. The challenge of finding the information that I need is that it is scattered across different web pages and files buried deep within one of the hundreds of state websites and countless Facebook pages. This, is one of the problems Jodee and I have been hoping to solve with this project. Besides the monotony of looking at lists of different aspects of the food chain for hours on end, the work can be very interesting, and I am hoping that the final product will be widely used once it is up and running. Thankfully, the majority of the data collection work is behind me and the process of creating the maps has begun. As of writing this post, I have one of the maps fully completed with another nearing the same point. Seeing the endless flow of spreadsheets turn into a visible and usable map is an extremely rewarding experience. I got a sense of accomplishment when the first map was complete because despite only being 1/7th of the way through the project, I saw the light at the end of the tunnel. Recently, Jodee and I met with Eduardo Brondizio of the IU CASEL lab to discuss the process of getting our research out into the world. Eduardo and his team helped us visualize how our project will be presented. This meeting went great and lifted a weight off both of our shoulders as the destination of the maps was the last big unknown regarding the project. Now that the location of the final maps is taken care of, we can focus on the process of creating and refining the maps to the point that we are satisfied and hopefully to the point that the users are satisfied as well. One way we plan to maximize the ongoing accuracy and value of the project is our community initiative where we hope that members of each community the maps are presented to, help to provide feedback and information that would otherwise be unavailable. I hope that my work ends up being appreciated and used for years to come. I believe that farmers new and old will find this site helpful in furthering their livelihoods, whether that be by expanding their area of operation, getting routine assistance or finding new distributors. I think that this project has the potential to become a “go to” for Indiana’s farm community. by Belen Rogers Access to food does not mean access to choice of food. When “all our actions are carefully dictated to us” (Tirado18) as Linda Tirado, author of From Hand to Mouth says “you have no idea how strong the pull to feel worthwhile is. It’s more basic than food” (Tirado xviii). The act of choosing is valuable and acknowledges people’s worth. A pantry might be open at a certain time but people might only choose to go if they feel welcome and are able to choose the foods their household wants. But choices are often judged and restricted by policies. Assumptions of optimizations and weighted rational models that describe decision making are built into policy. These optimizations are almost consistently expected of a person: buying all necessary nutrients in a good-tasting but low expense diet is calculated into people’s Supplemental Nutrition Administration Program (SNAP) (food stamp) allocation. Taste preference for lobster, however, is not. I apply two different disciplines, geography and cognitive science, to studying behavior models of food choice. I study the impact of these choices that guide consumer supply and demand and affect the health and environment of ours and other current and future species. To do this, I focus on the decision making environments of a “client-choice” food pantry located in Bloomington. “Client-choice” pantries advertise a model that lets clients choose in order to avoid foods they are allergic to, that prevents food waste, and that recognizes dignity. Studying popular choices at food pantries can lead to insight into what foods people choose in an environment that is not financially restrictive. It can lead to insight into how order of food presented influences choice. I expect to learn about what foods people do not choose and why (e.g. people may not own the necessary appliances or because of the quality of food). I am particular about the method in which I approach my research. I talk and read about people and assume decisions of people of low income but I want to start listening to people. I seek voluntary contributions from pantry clients, responses that will hopefully reflect interviewees’ daily life. I will conduct interviews to learn about how the pantry’s environments impacts them, why clients choose what foods they choose, and if they choose the same food every visit. Nutritional information covers package labels; human, animal, and environmental ethics are considered in sourcing transparency, and social pressure is strong; decisions about food are loaded. I am interested in studying options, but I focus on choice and decision-making processes. Understanding cognitive decision mechanisms in the Critical Food Studies lab highlights predictive models of how geographical, social, political, and cultural environments shape habits. Decisions situationally correspond to those environments. It would be practical that these decisions were based on one factor considering human computational power and space and time restraints. Learning how choices are made will bring to light how restrictive some environments are, where decisions are implicitly and explicitly made for you because of your income. Tirado says, “junk food is a pleasure that we are allowed to have; why would we give that up?” (Tirado xv) while modern debates include the decision to ban soda on SNAP. This research will hopefully inform these debates and other policies. |
AuthorSThis blog features the current work of CFS Lab researchers in their own words. Archives
October 2021
Categories |