Food insecurity and hunger rose again in Ohio in 2023, according to the latest data from the Map the Meal Gap study.
The compiled data from 2023 shows that more than one in seven people in Greene, Preble and Montgomery counties lack consistent access to the nutritious food they need.
"More people are telling us that their wages aren't keeping up with inflation, it's not keeping up with food prices and this data kind of exemplifies that," said Amber Wright, marketing lead with The Foodbank Inc., which serves the Dayton region..
This data releases on a two-year delay to allow for data collection and analysis.
"They're looking at information from the USDA, they're looking at information from the U.S. Census Bureau and information from the Bureau of Labor Statistics in order to compile this data," Wright said. "They're also looking at average food prices for each area."
Some other the key findings from 2023 include:
- Around 1.8 million Ohioans were food insecure in Ohio, according to the study. That's about 15.3% of the state.
- Among those 1.8 million, only 44% qualified for SNAP assistance paying for groceries.
- Compared to data from 2022, The Foodbank Inc.’s service area saw about a 1% increase in food insecurity rates.
Wright said those numbers were lower during the pandemic due to additional SNAP dollars, stimulus checks and federal funding supports. Now, they are on a steady climb.
"You had a whole number of things that were really helping meet people where they were at and this shows that it was effective," she said. "And then when that went away between '21 and '22, that's when you see it spike back up. And this data is showing us that hunger is going to continue to climb."
While the number of children who are food insecure has dropped slightly, about one in five local children are still food insecure.
Wright said even though the increase in overall food insecurity rates seems small, it’s been a steady climb over the years.
“That one percentage point is actually representing about 8,000 more people that are in need of food assistance – none of this was actually surprising to us," she said. "Like we've already known that food insecurity has been going up because we see the people in our line.”
Wright said these numbers could be even higher because the data doesn’t represent certain populations.
“They are excluding college campuses and prisons," she said. "And we know that especially among college campuses — that is a huge conversation right now — hunger does exist.”
With federal funding cuts, Wright said the Foodbank needs the community’s support now more than ever to fight food insecurity.
"You might see, as our funding streams continue to dry up at the same time that assistance is growing, we're going to have to make some changes," she said. "The variety of our food might go down or when we would normally offer both watermelon and cantaloupe, you might only see watermelon. Or when we offered both chicken and pork you might see chicken. These are the trade-offs that we're going to have to make to ensure that food is reaching every corner of our community where it is needed."
