A community of ‘doers’

By Mary Giunca

Posted Nov. 1, 2017 at 12:25 p.m.

North Carolina has a higher-than-average food insecurity rate — 16 percent, ranking it eighth among the United States for the number of people who lack access to enough food for an active, healthy life.

In comparison, a total of 13 percent of Americans were considered food insecure between 2013-15, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture Economic Research Service.

When the Appalachian Community explores a social problem like this, it doesn’t “just talk.”

“I’ve never been surrounded by so many doers,” Dr. Jacqui Ignatova said about the culture at Appalachian State University. “We don’t just talk here. We’re also committed to doing work that advances positive social change.”

Ignatova teaches in the Goodnight Family Department of Sustainable Development and was a co-organizer of the 2017 Food Summit that brought together people interested in relevant issues such as food insecurity and agrobiodiversity conservation.

The following stories explore how she and others at Appalachian use innovative thinking and action to approach the issue of how to feed America:

Food insecurity — it’s real and it’s a problem in the High Country

Nov. 1, 2017

A lot of people go hungry in the High Country for complex reasons. Dr. Adam Hege, a public health researcher, looks at the problem to see how residents cope in Watauga and Caldwell counties.

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Food Summit, other projects model how campus and community can work together

Nov. 1, 2017

Appalachian State University is known for innovative thinking and creative research, especially around sustainability. Its people also dig deep with community partners to find solutions to ongoing problems, including food insecurity.

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Is your plate half empty or half full? Students benefit from food pantry

Nov. 1, 2017

When hunger hit home for Appalachian students (almost half admitted to being food insecure one year), a group on campus went to work on a convenient, nurturing solution.

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New generation of students want action, not just awareness

Nov. 1, 2017

Millennials have been compared to the generation that came of age in the 1960s for their restlessness and desire for change. Simply educating millennials about an issue doesn’t cut it — they want sustainable change and instruction from their university on how to create it.

Read the story

Food insecurity at a glance

14 to 18 percent: Food insecurity in the High Country, a nine-county region in Western North Carolina

Source: U.S. Department of Agriculture Economic Research Service
16 percent: North Carolina’s overall rate of food insecurity

Source: U.S. Department of Agriculture Economic Research Service
8th in the nation: North Carolina’s rank among U.S. states in terms of food insecurity

Source: U.S. Department of Agriculture Economic Research Service
46.2 percent: Appalachian State University students who had experienced food insecurity in the previous year

Source: Spring 2016 survey by the Department of Nutrition and Health Care Management at Appalachian
2-3 per day: The average number of people who visit Appalachian’s food pantry, which is located in the Office of Sustainability
21.3 percent: The percentage of food purchased by Appalachian Food Services that’s local for the 2016-17 academic year

Community Feast - October 3, 2017

Watch scenes from the October 2017 Community FEaST (Food Engagement and Story Telling) event on Sanford Mall. Video produced by University Documentary Services.

Transcript

Carla Ramsdell: I’m part of a collaborative on campus called AppalFRESH, which stands for Appalachian Food Research for Equity Sustainability and Health. We met this summer to try to decide how we could best promote an understanding about food and the importance of a sustainable food system.

Charlie Wallin: There is 48 percent of this population in a study done that on this campus who at some point in time during the semester were food insecure, which means they don’t know where they’re going to get their meal or if they’re going to be able to eat so just to bring an awareness to a lot of these things that maybe people don’t have time to sit down and talk about. That’s why we’re trying to provide talking points. We want people to talk just like you would around a table at home hopefully with a family and just talk about some of these issues that we face in this area and the country as a whole.

Carla Ramsdell: And so, there was a lot of enthusiasm about this possibility and then we’d start to try to talk about other ideas and everything kind of kept coming back to the idea of trying to set up one continuous table on campus, gather community, faculty, staff, students around that table and so we just couldn’t move, couldn’t turn away from it. There was a lot of enthusiasm and we decided to just give it a try.

Charlie Wallin: We kicked around “Hey, what if we had different restaurants who brought in local chefs and partnered with a local farmer they’re using and each person had a different table with different items?” but, we thought logistically for the first one to see how it went, let’s just start out small, easy, simple, and we can grow it from there and do different things. We wanted stuff to where people could go out and participate in this just like you did years ago as families, just sit down at the table and it would just be family style and you were sharing everything. We wanted this to be local, we wanted people to go out and buy local products and we felt like this was the easiest way to do it. There’s many avenues around town for you to be able to pick up local vegetables that you could bring, local cheeses so, we just felt like that that was the best way and best avenue to showcase a lot of this and make it a true community event and it was a good starting point.

Carla Ramsdell: So, we brainstormed around some goals and chose three goals. The first was to build community around a common table about the importance of a sustainable food system, the second was to minimize waste, and the third was to maximize local sourcing of ingredients by educating the student groups on how we can be most responsible about those sourcings.

Charlie Wallin: I cannot remember the exact countage but there was very little that actually went to the landfill, it was barely a bag of trash. Everything else went to either recycling or composting so, I can’t remember the exact figures but I know it was huge reduction in what would’ve normally been done at an event on this campus or anywhere.

Carla Ramsdell: I just want to thank everyone that made this event possible. It was the first event, we kind of went out on a limb thanks to the enthusiasm of the students and the faculty and staff and the AppalFRESH collaborative. I think it was a fabulous event where people were able to come together around a table which is such a beautiful act and I hope maybe to continue this in future years.

About Appalachian State University

As the premier public undergraduate institution in the Southeast, Appalachian State University prepares students to lead purposeful lives as global citizens who understand and engage their responsibilities in creating a sustainable future for all. The Appalachian Experience promotes a spirit of inclusion that brings people together in inspiring ways to acquire and create knowledge, to grow holistically, to act with passion and determination, and to embrace diversity and difference. Located in the Blue Ridge Mountains, Appalachian is one of 17 campuses in the University of North Carolina System. Appalachian enrolls nearly 21,000 students, has a low student-to-faculty ratio and offers more than 150 undergraduate and graduate majors.

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Food insecurity at a glance

14 to 18 percent: Food insecurity in the High Country, a nine-county region in Western North Carolina

Source: U.S. Department of Agriculture Economic Research Service
16 percent: North Carolina’s overall rate of food insecurity

Source: U.S. Department of Agriculture Economic Research Service
8th in the nation: North Carolina’s rank among U.S. states in terms of food insecurity

Source: U.S. Department of Agriculture Economic Research Service
46.2 percent: Appalachian State University students who had experienced food insecurity in the previous year

Source: Spring 2016 survey by the Department of Nutrition and Health Care Management at Appalachian
2-3 per day: The average number of people who visit Appalachian’s food pantry, which is located in the Office of Sustainability
21.3 percent: The percentage of food purchased by Appalachian Food Services that’s local for the 2016-17 academic year

Community Feast - October 3, 2017

Watch scenes from the October 2017 Community FEaST (Food Engagement and Story Telling) event on Sanford Mall. Video produced by University Documentary Services.

Transcript

Carla Ramsdell: I’m part of a collaborative on campus called AppalFRESH, which stands for Appalachian Food Research for Equity Sustainability and Health. We met this summer to try to decide how we could best promote an understanding about food and the importance of a sustainable food system.

Charlie Wallin: There is 48 percent of this population in a study done that on this campus who at some point in time during the semester were food insecure, which means they don’t know where they’re going to get their meal or if they’re going to be able to eat so just to bring an awareness to a lot of these things that maybe people don’t have time to sit down and talk about. That’s why we’re trying to provide talking points. We want people to talk just like you would around a table at home hopefully with a family and just talk about some of these issues that we face in this area and the country as a whole.

Carla Ramsdell: And so, there was a lot of enthusiasm about this possibility and then we’d start to try to talk about other ideas and everything kind of kept coming back to the idea of trying to set up one continuous table on campus, gather community, faculty, staff, students around that table and so we just couldn’t move, couldn’t turn away from it. There was a lot of enthusiasm and we decided to just give it a try.

Charlie Wallin: We kicked around “Hey, what if we had different restaurants who brought in local chefs and partnered with a local farmer they’re using and each person had a different table with different items?” but, we thought logistically for the first one to see how it went, let’s just start out small, easy, simple, and we can grow it from there and do different things. We wanted stuff to where people could go out and participate in this just like you did years ago as families, just sit down at the table and it would just be family style and you were sharing everything. We wanted this to be local, we wanted people to go out and buy local products and we felt like this was the easiest way to do it. There’s many avenues around town for you to be able to pick up local vegetables that you could bring, local cheeses so, we just felt like that that was the best way and best avenue to showcase a lot of this and make it a true community event and it was a good starting point.

Carla Ramsdell: So, we brainstormed around some goals and chose three goals. The first was to build community around a common table about the importance of a sustainable food system, the second was to minimize waste, and the third was to maximize local sourcing of ingredients by educating the student groups on how we can be most responsible about those sourcings.

Charlie Wallin: I cannot remember the exact countage but there was very little that actually went to the landfill, it was barely a bag of trash. Everything else went to either recycling or composting so, I can’t remember the exact figures but I know it was huge reduction in what would’ve normally been done at an event on this campus or anywhere.

Carla Ramsdell: I just want to thank everyone that made this event possible. It was the first event, we kind of went out on a limb thanks to the enthusiasm of the students and the faculty and staff and the AppalFRESH collaborative. I think it was a fabulous event where people were able to come together around a table which is such a beautiful act and I hope maybe to continue this in future years.