BIZ BUZZ

Biz Buzz: 'Face of hunger' found in Iowa

Lynn Hicks
lhicks@dmreg.com
Kyera Reams cans homegrown vegetables when they are in season and plentiful, so that her family can eat healthfully all year. “I’m resourceful with my food,” she says. “I think about what people did in the Great Depression.” This image is from the August issue of National Geographic magazine.

National Geographic traveled to Iowa to capture "the new face of hunger."

The magazine's August issue includes several photographs from Osage, population 3,626, and other towns near the Minnesota border. The magazine shows families struggling with poverty, working a patchwork of jobs supported by food stamps, trips to food pantries, gardening and foraging in the woods.

The story, which is part of the magazine's multi-part series on food and hunger, features Jim and Christina Dreier, whose family is supported in part with money he makes applying pesticides to fields. They said their stamp benefits were cut 16 percent, to $172 a month, after Congress cut the program last year.

Photographer Amy Toensing said the magazine picked Iowa "because the state ranks as one of the highest recipients of farm subsidies, and yet has a large number of families who are 'food insecure.' "

"It's a cruel irony that people in rural Iowa can be malnourished amid forests of cornstalks running to the horizon," author Tracie McMillan notes in the piece. "… These are the very crops that end up on Christina Dreier's kitchen table in the form of hot dogs made of corn-raised beef, Mountain Dew sweetened with corn syrup, and chicken nuggets fried in soybean oil. They're also the foods that the U.S. government supports the most."

To supplement what they get from the food pantry, the cash-strapped Reams family forages in the woods near their Osage home for puffball mushrooms and grapes. This image is from the August issue of National Geographic magazine.

The magazine found the families in Osage through the Northeast Iowa Food Bank in Waterloo, which serves 16 counties including Mitchell County. About 12.5 percent of people in the region are food insecure — lacking reliable access to affordable, nutritious food. That's about the same as Iowa as a whole, according to data from Feeding America.

Cover of the August issue of National Geographic.

The rate for children is higher, about 20 percent for both Iowa and the 16-county region.

With 5 percent of its population on food stamps, Mitchell County seems better off than other areas featured in the magazine, such as Houston's Harris County (14 percent) and the Bronx, N.Y. (31 percent).

"We look good compared with other parts of the country, but there's a need," said Barbara Prather, executive director of Northeast Iowa Food Bank. "If you live in a rural community, it's often longer and harder to get to grocery stores."

The families in the piece struggle to find healthful food at the pantries, a problem Prather said her organization is trying to change. She urges donors to give cash and extras from their gardens. "We strongly encourage produce donations in the summer," she said.

Birthdays

Ray Cole, president of Citadel Communications, turned 59 on Monday. Wednesday's birthdays include Susan Voss, general counsel at American Enterprise Co. and former Iowa insurance commissioner, who's 59, and state climatologist Harry Hillaker Jr., 58. On Thursday, venture capitalist and philanthropist John Pappajohn will be 86, and Kerty Levy, president of Kemin Personal Care, 48.

State Sen. Janet Petersen will be 44 on Friday, and Nick Van Patten, president of Aluminum Distributors Inc., will be 51.Sunday's birthdays include Amy Jennings, executive director of the Greater Des Moines Leadership Institute, who will be 38; PR strategist Jamie Buelt, 54; Iowa's AARP director, Kent Sovern, 66; and former Des Moines MayorRichard Olson, 85.