'Food dump': Efforts to tackle food insecurity in NWI now threatened by federal cuts

"They just dump things here that are cheap," said Graves. "And people can't really afford (to find quality food elsewhere). You go into the local store and you have a choice of a hot dog for 99 cents and they will go to that instead of (more expensive) broccoli or whatever." 

Graves is director of the Food is Medicine program at Faith Farms in Gary's Emerson neighborhood, a community just east of downtown marked by vacant homes and blighted buildings.

Across the street from Faith Farms and the Progressive Community Church looms the abandoned Emerson High School, a large, heavily damaged structure that caught fire twice in 2023.

Despite that — or perhaps because — the church is now a focal point for community members trying to access quality produce. 

Residents across Northwest Indiana who take part in Faith Farms' program receive biweekly food boxes with fresh meat and produce, much of it produced on the farm premises.

"This was such a blessing," said Gary resident Linda Peterson, who is a program participant. "I'm a diabetic, my sister recently got diagnosed with diabetes. I was eating a lot of processed foods. Our numbers were out of whack."

Thanks to the Faith Farms packages, Peterson said, she's been able to reduce diabetes symptoms and cholesterol levels for the first time in 10 years this winter.

Another program participant, Addie Smith, said she and several older church members ended up getting enrolled after Smith and her husband fell into the discomfiting status of making too much for food stamps, but still being stuck within a food desert.

"My health was better," Smith said, "and the meals are delicious. I lost weight."

Programs like Faith Farms' Food is Medicine are a lifeline for many residents; their list of 60 official participants goes well beyond Gary, and they end up feeding an additional 50 to 100 families, Graves estimates, through extra boxes and produce giveaways.

The high cost of meals, combined with the necessity of reliable transportation, mean that many residents in food deserts in Northwest Indiana are often in need of additional sources of food beyond what commercial businesses can provide.

"Certain areas are very bad for fruits and vegetables," said an East Gary resident, Dawn M., who owns a car but cannot walk due to a disability. "Sometimes at the gas station you might see some bananas, definitely nothing green. No collard greens, no cabbages, no onions: none of that stuff."

A map of food deserts compiled by the USDA pre-pandemic shows 30 such areas, stretching across The Region, from East Chicago to LaPorte.

Many residents along the South Shore rely on dollar stores for much of their grocery needs.

“The people who don’t have cars, this is where we come,” said Michigan City native Marie S., referring to a nearby Dollar General store. “There’s no grocery store nearby so they can walk here and get stuff. There’s this Dollar General and then there’s a Dollar Tree on the next block. These are the main stores people go to for grocery shopping.”

For fresh produce, she said that she takes a trip to another area on the bus or hopefully gets a ride from someone. 

“The prices are too high but this is all we have. The stores set the prices and whatever it is, we have to buy it if you want us,” she said. “But that’s why Dollar Tree is convenient for a lot of people because most of the stuff (food) is $1.25."

Marie S. added she would like to see a Save-a-Lot in her area. The nearest one is at least five miles - about 10 minutes - away.

“Without Dollar General and Dollar Tree, I don’t know what we’d do,” she said.

Food deserts are not just comprised of neighborhoods with no reliable access to quality produce. They also account for rural stretches further south in NWI where long distances between stores lead to food insecurity.

The precarity of food access in rural areas can come on suddenly: for example, Westville Meat and Grocery, in between Valparaiso and LaPorte, announced on March 18 that it would be closing at the end of the month, leaving Westville without a grocery store.

The good news is organizations, including Faith Farms, have helped foster a surprisingly robust response network to combat food insecurity around the Region.

Even during the winter, many local farms, including in urban areas, are utilizing season-extending ag infrastructure like high tunnels and greenhouses for urban growers, transportation networks and a continually expanding coalition of food delivery services and farmers markets aimed at getting produce into peoples’ hands.

“There is a lot of funding, which then demonstrates a lot of need,” said Kelly Anoe, President and CEO of the Legacy Foundation, which works, among other things, to help coordinate grants for organizations like the NWI Food Council, who are directly tied into tackling food deserts.

Unfortunately, many grant opportunities are disappearing due to new, abrupt federal funding cuts, which threaten a variety of programs and services aimed at getting quality, local food to communities, such as grade school students, who otherwise lack such access, food advocates have recently warned.

Local organizations, including the NWI Food Council, are working on creating a local food study and assessment, that will map out the full region and capture nuances around the problem of food insecurity.

“Farmers and nonprofits are really taking it into their own hands,” said Rebecca Koetz, farmer support specialist with the NWI Food Council. “There’s a lot of movement on urban soil health initiatives. Ag agencies are working to create literature. We’re tackling a lot.”

Koetz herself prefers the term “food apartheid,” which she believes more accurately captures the racially charged nature of many decisions around food access.

Additionally, many farmers markets in the region aren’t selling as much actual produce as they could, or should, said Becca Tuholski, the Local Food Access Coordinator for the Food Council, and a local farmer herself.

“A lot of markets we see popping up nowadays are craft-centered,” Tuholski said. “We’re hoping to work with markets to make them truly farmers markets.”

NWI Food Council co-executive director Anne Massie acknowledged that in communities like Gary, there needs to be a high level of sensitivity around cultural and socioeconomic differences, so that it is not a matter of 'saving' residents from food insecurity in a unidirectional, privileged manner. 

"Over the years, we've dealt with Gary residents who have a significant distrust of outsiders coming into the community to 'solve Gary problems,'" Massie said. "That is not what (the Food Council) is trying to do or what we are trying to convey."

Although, in many regions of the country, there is often disconnect between NGOs and residents on the ground, in the case of the Food Council, many staff are farmers in The Region, or have personally experienced food insecurity themselves.

The Council has also helped coordinate with farmers’ markets to get them to accept SNAP benefits for attendees. Currently, there are four markets in NWI, spread across all three counties, that take SNAP, and the Food Council is planning to onboard more this year.

One of those markets is the Farmed and Forged market that operates in LaPorte and Michigan City.

The Farmed and Forged program is able to triple EBT purchases up to $20, meaning users can get up to $60 in vouchers at the market, according to market founder and coordinator Mandy Krickhahn.

Last year, the market was able to process nearly $8,000 in SNAP sales between customers and vendors, on top of an additional $5,000 in donations via programs like Community Match SNAP funding.

"We are very excited to be able to serve residents and really promote food access," Krickhahn said one of the weekday markets in Michigan City. "Our vendors have to grow produce within a 100 mile radius, so when people purchase these products, it's more local, fresher and benefits the entire local economy."

Krickhahn praised Michigan City Mayor Angie Nelson Deuitch, among others, for being "strong supporters" of the Community Match SNAP program.

The Times was unable to reach Nelson Deuitch for comment on efforts to combat food insecurity in their city by publishing time.

The ability to support residents who struggling with food insecurity is also meaningful for vendors, said Allysa Bennett, who was selling dairy products at Farmed and Forged on behalf of Bennett Farms, based out of Edwardsburg, Michigan.

"It feels really good to be helping," Bennett said. "Fresh meat can be extremely pricey. It's nice to know that people can get this (using financial assistance). It's better than processed food that makes you feel like crap."

Despite concerns about grant funding freezes at the federal level, local-level financial support continues apace. The Legacy Foundation and the City of Gary awarded $85,000 to the Gary Food Collective Co-Op, which will be used to expand the co-ops program and give Gary residents access to fresh produce.

The Family Life Community Center, which operates the Gary Food Collective, said it has served over 8,000 residents over the past three months.

"Access to healthy, affordable food for our residents is a fundamental quality of life issue,“ Gary Mayor Eddie Melton said in a statement. “This program shows we can collaboratively address food insecurity while also providing education and entrepreneurship opportunities that benefit our community.” 

There are also significant training and education opportunities to help teach local residents how to grow produce in their backyard, or even become a full-time farmer.

That is how Graves initially gained the expertise to be the Faith Farms administrator and create the Food is Medicine program. Graves took a master gardeners' course at Purdue Extension and learned from elderly farmers, many coming from the south, who had decades of experience.

"When I started with Faith Farms I knew nothing about gardening or growing," Graves said. "I've learned a lot: we went from three hoop houses, to adding chickens, goats, ducks. Now we have temperature-controlled greenhouses."