I attended the Wild Lights exhibition at the Columbus Zoo and Aquarium with my fellow IA scholars on Friday, November 16th, 2018. In order to gain free admission to the park, we had to donate five canned goods. While this was not the most strenuous of service events, it led to my deeper appreciation for my own food security and it got me thinking about the different kinds of service opportunities both here on campus and in the Columbus area.
The zoo is partnering with the Mid-Ohio Foodbank, an organization with the sole mission of ending hunger in central and eastern Ohio. With just under two million Ohioans struggling with hunger, the agency has a lot of work to do. However, they are up for the task, distributing over 69 million pounds of food annually.
While the night at the zoo was a lot of fun, after dropping off our food donations I could not help but think about the thousands of kids who struggle with hunger in our community. While food insecurity is a major international issue and is one that we have discussed as International Affairs scholars, it is also one that is prevalent on our own campus. After returning from the short trip, I did some research into different ways that I could potentially get involved in fighting hunger on campus. Some of the opportunities I found were through organizations like Buckeye Food Alliance, Food Rescue US at The Ohio State University, and Best Food Forward.
The Buckeye Food Alliance opened a food pantry in Lincoln tower in 2016 to ensure that their fellow Buckeyes had access to affordable and nutritious food. This was a big step for the group, as they listed one of their main motivations for the pantry as a 2014 study of Ohio State students which claimed that approximately 15% of Ohio State students (around 7,000) struggle with food security.
Food Rescue US at The Ohio State University has found their cause in the resolve of the issue of some foods being thrown out at groceries stores once they are deemed “unsellable.” To combat this, they have volunteers pick up excess the food that would have been discarded and bring it back into the Columbus community to distribute.
In Best Food Forward’s attempt to ease the pain of high produce prices, they gather their members and bulk order produce and distribute it among themselves. Doing this, they save around 50% on their purchases, which has saved them over $20,000 to date.
Researching these groups helped me to significantly narrow the scope of this issue. However, it is also important to step back and assess the problem on a larger scale. Food insecurity truly is an international crisis, and it is one that has been around for centuries. It is one that affects people from every country and continent. To be more specific, around 795 million in the world lack sufficient nourishment.
This is a topic that we have touched on throughout the semester, as it plays a major role in many international crises. It can be seen either as a byproduct of another issue (for example homelessness) or as its own public health problem. While there have been many actions taken to combat this issue, it is one that will be incredibly difficult to completely eradicate.
Learning more about food insecurity not only opened my eyes to the seriousness of the situation, but also to how I can do my part to fix it. Because I am going into a career in politics, food insecurity is a topic that I should be knowledgeable about, due to its presence in many other social issues. Getting more involved with this issue will also make me think deeper about different policy solutions that could be enacted to fix the issue. With food insecurity and hunger being one of our world’s largest problems, it is only right that I play a role in its resolve.