OSU Extension’s nutrition program for children and teens, which helps fight hunger and improve health, has ramped up nearly ten-fold in the past three years. Still, there’s even more work to be done. Read the story. As CFAES’s statewide outreach arm, OSU Extension makes the college’s expertise available to everyone living in Ohio. (Photo: SNAP-Ed program, Richland County, Ohio.)
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Ohio State President Drake’s ‘unprecedented commitment to food security’
Ohio State’s faculty-staff newspaper, onCampus, covered the “Vision 2020” speech by Michael V. Drake during his investiture ceremony March 31 as the university’s 15th president. It’s all good reading — click here — but scroll down especially to the fourth part, “Drake makes unprecedented commitment to food security,” as it’s right in CFAES’s wheelhouse. It’s one of our Signature Areas. And it stands to change more lives than you may think. Despite impressive hunger-fighting efforts and an Ohio agricultural industry worth $100 billion, “At this moment, blocks away, children may not know where they’re getting their next meal,” Drake is quoted saying. “This is unacceptable.” Read the coverage.
Fighting hunger, boosting farming in northeast Ohio
A recent USDA grant is good news for hungry people in northeast Ohio, for farmers in the region and for efforts to grow the connection between them. The Cuyahoga County office of CFAES’s outreach arm, OSU Extension, is involved. So is the Cleveland-Cuyahoga County Food Policy Coalition, which the Cuyahoga County office helps convene. Find details in an April 2 story in Ohio’s Country Journal. Read more about the coalition and its work fighting food deserts in Cleveland in the spring issue of CFAES’s Continuum magazine, coming in June.
Tackling hunger, growing more food in cities
There’s “increased recognition that a large percentage of urban residents in predominantly poor neighborhoods lack access to healthy food,” says the flier for today’s seminar by Christopher Peterson of the Institute of Environmental Sustainability at Loyola University Chicago. He’ll talk about that and more in “Addressing Issues of Food Security Through Integration of Curricula, Outreach and Service” at 4 p.m. Free. CFAES’s School of Environment and Natural Resources and Agroecosystems Management Program are the event’s co-sponsors.
Ohio’s food insecurity ranking may surprise you
Food insecurity in Ohio — basically, a measure of how many people don’t get enough to eat and how often — is higher than the national average, says a recent U.S. Department of Agriculture report. “We’re not talking about people who skip a meal to drop a few pounds,” says Irene Hatsu, food security specialist with OSU Extension, CFAES’s statewide outreach arm. “They’re skipping meals because they can’t afford more food.” Can more Ohioans fill their bellies, while also doing it healthfully? Hatsu thinks so. Read how she and OSU Extension are working to make it happen. (Photo: iStock.)
A good story for Thanksgiving
A new farmer has joined the profession. And he comes from a far different, but usually similarly green-colored, field: the gridiron. Center Jason Brown recently left the NFL to (1) start a 1,000-acre farm in North Carolina without having any farming experience going into it, and (2) use the farm to grow food to feed the hungry. Details on his story in, among others, People, Business Insider, the Boston Globe and the Sporting News. Also on CBS News, above.
Goal (75,000 meals): Met
Organizers say CFAES’s Stop Hunger Now meal packaging event, held yesterday (Nov. 24) and attended by 300 students, staff and faculty, was a big success. Check out a slideshow.
‘Stop Hunger Now’ for Thanksgiving
On Nov. 24, three days before Thanksgiving, CFAES will host a Stop Hunger Now meal packaging event, and you’re invited to help. You can register to be a volunteer here, and you can donate to the event here. The goal is to raise $21,750 and package 75,000 meals (each meal costs only 29 cents). Stop Hunger Now is an international hunger relief agency that distributes food to people in vulnerable countries. The event, says its website, is a “fun, hands-on way to make a difference.” (Photo: Stop Hunger Now.)