In rural states, gardening and foraging helped prevent hunger during COVID: study

New research on people in rural New England shows that gardening, hunting, fishing and other HWFP activities are important tools for maintaining food security during extreme events, such as pandemics or climate changes.

Researchers from the University of Vermont and the University of Maine found that food insecurity and domestic and wild food production (HWFP) – gardening, hunting, fishing, foraging, and raising poultry or livestock “ backyard” – increased significantly during the COVID-19 pandemic, and those who undertook HWFP activities showed improved food security nine to 12 months later.

The document, published in Scientific reportssurveyed more than 1,000 people in rural Vermont and Maine (the two most rural states in the country) to identify their food security and food sources.

The researchers hope that policymakers will consider how the HWFP could lead to a more resilient food system. “Domestic and wild food production is not a silver bullet, but it is a potential solution that has been largely overlooked,” said Meredith Niles, an associate professor at the University of Vermont, who led the study.

Programs that support HFWPs are often overlooked by policymakers, but research suggests that these activities could strengthen food security, particularly during increasingly frequent crisis situations.

“Even in normal times, there are many barriers to accessing food, especially for people experiencing poverty. When the COVID-19 pandemic began, there were additional obstacles including travel restrictions, stay-at-home orders and supply chain disruptions,” Rachel said. Schattman, assistant professor of sustainable agriculture at the University of Maine.

“Even though there were a variety of food assistance programs, no one had really examined how self-provisioning such as hunting, gardening, canning, foraging, and raising animals of barnyard contributed to food security.”

There was anecdotal evidence early in the pandemic about people starting gardens and stories of shortages of canning jars, but Niles says this article brings quantitative data to support those stories.

“We were able to show, at scale and with significant data, that people who produced domestic and wild food, particularly gardening, at the start of the pandemic, were more likely to be food secure at nine to 12 months later,” Niles said. “It’s exciting because we haven’t really seen this scale of data before and across multiple time points to assess this problem.”

“We suspect that growing some of your own food through hunting, fishing, foraging and gardening contributes to people’s food security. This is the best evidence we have that growing your own food makes a difference ” said Sam Bliss, postdoctoral researcher. at the University of Vermont who participated in the research.

One of the key takeaways from this report is that people newly experiencing food insecurity during the pandemic appeared to be most able to recover from food insecurity through domestic and wild food production, compared to those who were also food insecure before the pandemic.

“Our team is really interested in understanding why chronically food insecure people, in particular, don’t seem able to use domestic and wild food production in the same way to improve their food security as others,” Niles said. “We have information about the barriers they face and are exploring further work to assess how to overcome these issues.”

“We need policies and programs that make growing our own food more accessible to the people who could benefit most,” Bliss said.