‘Summer hunger gap’ comes with extra challenge of distance in rural counties

The Maryland Food Bank deploys "mobile markets" to help families access fresh grocery options in rural areas. Photo by Danielle J. Brown.

The “summer hunger gap” is a challenge throughout the state, as low-income families who rely on schools to help feed their kids during the academic year lose access to those meals during summer break.

But it can be an even greater challenge in rural counties, where miles can separate families from the food they need and transportation options are limited.

“The biggest issue would be transportation,” said Pam Allen, executive director of Dorchester County’s MidShore Meals til Monday. “Down in the southern parts of the county, we have a lot of food deserts.

“We do have public transportation, but it’s definitely not like the Baltimore area, D.C. area,” Allen said. “Time between pickups could be a long time. So even if you get a ride … they’re going to have to wait an hour, hour and a half, before the bus comes back to pick them up and take them home.”

Rural counties across the state and across the country are more likely to face widespread food insecurity, according to Feeding America, a nationwide food bank network.

“Rural areas comprise less than two-thirds of all U.S. counties, but nine out of 10 counties with the highest food insecurity rates are rural,” according to a Feeding America report.

Other than Baltimore, the most food-insecure areas in Maryland are in Western Maryland and on the Eastern Shore, Feeding America reports.

Hunger can affect a child’s development and academic performance. And while schools are closed for the summer, school districts in rural counties often still play a role in providing summer meals to kids of low-income families. Sometimes that means continuing to provide meals at select schools in the county; sometimes it means taking the food to the kids.

That’s one approach being used by MidShore Meals til Monday, which sets up sites around Dorchester County where parents can pick up three to four days worth of meals at a time to take home to their families. Recently, it got a refrigerated van that will help it transport food to more locations in the county.

“It has changed the game for us,” Allen said. “These kids and families would not have access to this food if we did not have this vehicle.”

The refrigerated van can carry and deliver more food packages to distribution sites, and it can be used to provide emergency meal help when families unexpectedly need meal assistance.

Allen recently used the van to pick up pounds of extra corn from a local farmer, which will be included in some of their premade meals and handed out to Dorchester families.

Other rural communities face similar hurdles.

“The challenges facing rural communities are different than the challenges facing urban or suburban counties – lack of transportation, lack of resources,” said Meg Kimmel, chief operating officer of the Maryland Food Bank.

The food bank is a network of food pantries and meal distribution sites – MidShore Meals til Monday is a partner – that help struggling families receive food. Demand goes up during the summer months due to the summer hunger gap.

Kimmel says that some of the hardest to reach corners for the food bank are parts of rural Maryland – in Western Maryland, Southern Maryland and on the Eastern Shore.

“You’re out of school. You’re not getting your meals at home. You’re not in a summer program. What do you do? You have to somehow get to a grocery store or a dollar store or a food pantry to try to get food,” she said. “So we know that transportation is kind of the key driver of hardship in rural communities.

“That’s where our mobile markets come in,” she said.

The mobile markets are large refrigerated trucks set up like a supermarket so that families who live in food deserts can shop for fresh produce instead of receiving preselected meals. The Maryland Food Bank deploys its mobile markets to rural counties where distance is a factor.

“The gold standard is letting people choose what they want,” Kimmel said. “If somebody has kids that hate oranges but love apples, they can just take the apples … We really want neighbors to be able to choose the food that they like, that are right for their diets and their cultural preferences.”

Kimmel said that the Maryland Food Bank works as part of an “ecosystem” that is trying to provide food to low-income families during the summer.

For families that can get to the grocery, the recently announced, federally funded Sun Bucks program will provide qualifying families a total of up to $120 per child for the summer to offset the costs of groceries.

The Maryland State Department of Education also has a network of federally funded meal sites across the state under the Summer Food Service Program. Recent changes from the U.S. Department of Agriculture have allowed the program to expand from 76 Maryland meal pickup sites in 2023 to 112 sites this year.

Scott Germain is food and nutrition supervisor for Garrett County Public Schools and oversees the district’s Summer Food Service Program. Germain and his team spread out their operation to dozens of sites across the county to reach the kids in need.

“In rural counties, it’s really hard. We don’t have public transportation…We don’t have a bunch of kids come together in any one location. That’s why we go out and try to cover the county in 30 different locations,” Germain said.

“We do fire halls, we do apartment complexes … a state park. We do some parking lots,” he said. “We’re always looking for new locations, it’s just limited with equipment and staff. You can only do so much.”

But as with the other food assistance programs, Germain finds the day-to-day challenges and difficulties worth it to ensure that families and kids do not go hungry over the summer.

“There are some days it’s a little rough. We’ve had some warm days. And when it rains a lot, we’re still trying to hand out meals in the rain,” he said.

“It’s a lot of work, but when you get out and you see the students and the kids and the families that actually take advantage of it, and in today’s world where the cost of everything is just rising always, it’s great to see them get a little help,” Germain said.