In McDowell County 'food desert,' concerns about the future

But what used to be a predominantly older crowd has changed over the last five years or so.

Today, there are a lot of younger people, out of work as employment options narrowed in the county’s limits. Most noticeably, McKinney sees a lot more multigenerational and nontraditional families — grandparents raising grandchildren, aunts and uncles caring for nieces and nephews.

McKinney’s phone rings off the hook throughout the last nine days of each month. That’s about the time residents reach the end of their benefits from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, commonly referred to as SNAP or food stamps.

“They don’t last past two or three weeks into the month,” McKinney said. “When your benefits are up, you still have to eat. So they come here.”

McDowell County is classified as a “food desert” by the U.S. Department of Agriculture — one of many in West Virginia.

A food desert is an area where residents live without easy access to fresh, healthy food, including fruits and vegetables, according to the USDA. The classification considers the number of grocers or markets in an area that provide fresh food, the distance between these stores and the difficulty to reach them for consumers.

A change in U.S. agricultural policy has been degrading local food systems since the New Deal era, said Nicholas Stump, who has studied Appalachian food deserts and serves as head of reference and access services at West Virginia University’s College of Law library.

Two years ago, the Walmart in Kimball closed after nearly a decade in the community, leaving behind a gap in access to conveniently available, fresh food. That’s common in rural food deserts, Stump said; the globalization of the food industry means big stores come into a community and then eventually leave as the local economy falls.

The geography of regions like McDowell County — isolated, hard to access and without strong road networks or public transportation — can also contribute to the problem.

“To differing degrees, these things disproportionately impact rural areas. Because there is less money, these communities haven’t been able to construct a comprehensive food infrastructure,” Stump said. “The effect is pretty straightforward — there is no longer access to healthy food, so you either drive really far to get it, or you go without it entirely.”

More red tape

In McDowell County’s 535 square miles, there are two full-sized grocery stores where residents can buy produce and other perishables. Low-income, rural residents have a harder time visiting those stores, and meat and produce often cost more because it costs the stores more to ship the food in.

“In rural areas, food insecurity rates are higher, income is lower and there isn’t a high concentration of grocery stores,” said Brian Stacy, a SNAP specialist at the USDA’s economic research service. “People may have these SNAP benefits, but they may not have places to spend it. What good does that do?”

Per the U.S. Census Bureau, about 30 percent of McDowell County’s families participate in SNAP.

McDowell’s grocery stores are SNAP-certified, but a challenge arises for families who try to stretch these benefits as far as they can, to feed as many in their homes as they can, which often leads to health sacrifices, according to Seth DiStefano, policy outreach director for the West Virginia Center on Budget and Policy.

“SNAP means — it’s supposed to mean — access to fresh food,” DiStefano said. “If there isn’t fresh food, or if it’s too expensive, SNAP can’t serve its purpose. I think that’s what we’re seeing.”

On average, West Virginia households receiving SNAP benefits are granted $222 a month for food, according to the national Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Households with children receive an average of $368 a month.

This evens out to about $1.30 in SNAP benefits per person, per meal. According to Feeding America, a national nonprofit group focused on hunger relief, the average price of a meal in McDowell County is $2.65 — more than double the average amount given to SNAP recipients for each meal.

In the span of a year, McKinney said, her food pantry can provide food to more than half of McDowell County residents at some point. While resources exist for fresh food — like at Goodson’s, a family-owned grocery store in Welch — they’re scarce and can be hard to access for people living in the more rural parts of the county. What is there, McKinney said, is expensive, meaning SNAP benefits don’t stretch as far as they could in other areas.

“There is produce here — Goodson’s has all that,” McKinney said, “but [many] families can’t afford that stuff whether they’re on SNAP or not.”

The USDA ranks West Virginia 11th highest in the nation in the percentage of households facing food insecurity. Between 2014 and 2016, it was one of just three states where the percentage of people who are food insecure jumped more than 5 percent.

McDowell is listed as the most food insecure county in West Virginia by Feeding America, with more than 22 percent of its residents struggling to find a consistent stream of meals.

DiStefano worries this trend is on the rise, especially in rural communities that will be most affected by new, restrictive policies regarding SNAP. The most recent of these policies is a work requirement provision Gov. Jim Justice quietly signed into law late last month that states, as of Oct. 1, any “able-bodied” adult receiving benefits must work or volunteer 20 hours a week to keep receiving benefits.

The law would apply to any adult between the ages of 18 to 49 who is not disabled, mentally or physically, and who doesn’t claim any dependents. Those who don’t meet the work standards will only be eligible for SNAP benefits for three months every three years.

“One of the things we see when West Virginia tries restrictive policies like this, is that it just adds more red tape to what can already be a complicated system,” DiStefano said. “Someone can be perfectly qualified for these benefits, but not understand, and then they lose [the SNAP benefits] they need. It just adds a burden to the people.”

This rings especially true in rural counties like McDowell, DiStefano said, where residents may have difficulties contacting or receiving help from caseworkers at the Department of Health and Human Resources, the state agency in charge of SNAP.

DHHR representatives in several rural counties said they aren’t allowed to comment on policies, citing a mandate by DHHR officials in Charleston. Those officials did not respond to repeated requests for comment for this story.

Finding out the hard way

DHHR caseworkers — especially in rural areas — are spread thin, DiStefano said, and their resources can be inaccessible to many. This means people who need SNAP, and could qualify for it, will not get the help they need, and can end up falling through the cracks, adding to the number of food insecure in McDowell County.

A common example are the multigenerational families McKinney often sees, DiStefano said. Many grandparents or relatives are raising children that aren’t their own — a growing trend in areas hit hardest by the opioid epidemic, which McDowell inarguably is. These families, though, may not have legal documents that detail custody, meaning they may not receive the SNAP benefits they need to feed their entire household.

“If you don’t know you qualify for an exemption, how are you supposed to apply for that exemption?” he said. “All this added red tape does is make the program inaccessible to many who need it most. Punitive measures — restrictive measures — come down hardest on rural communities. We’re going to find that out the hard way.”

The new work requirement law — which is basically just an implementation of federal work requirements — does make exceptions for counties or cities that have an unemployment rate that is 10 percent above the national rate for one year, 20 percent above the national rate for two years or are labeled “labor surplus areas” by the U.S. Department of Labor. In West Virginia, 37 out of 55 counties are deemed such areas as of 2018, including McDowell County.

Under the law, these counties will be exempt from changes to SNAP until October 2022, but it’s unclear if there are plans at DHHR to extend the exemptions if counties continue to be classified as labor surplus areas.

The new legislation was passed by the Legislature following a pilot program in nine counties that followed similar policies. A drastic difference, though, is that the nine counties in the pilot program were counties that held the lowest unemployment rates in the state.

DHHR’s own analysis of the pilot program initially stated there was no indication that the policies lead to increased employment, diminishing a key argument for those in support of the bill during the legislative session. Out of about 14,000 people who were referred to SNAP’s education and training program, less than 260 gained employment.

In committee meetings before the legislation was passed, DHHR representatives rolled back some of these claims that were published in the agency’s initial analysis. It’s not clear what their reasons were.

Across the nine counties in the pilot program, about 5,400 people were removed from SNAP. But there’s no indication that was because of the job market, DiStefano said. Instead, he said he assumes those people are still in need of food, but now face even more difficulties to access it.

In a food desert like McDowell, if these policies are adopted in 2022, the challenge to access food will be even more difficult than it is today. Couple this with national issues like the Federal Farm Bill — which proposes to cut the USDA’s budget by 25 percent — and possible Chinese tariffs on dozens of farm products, and DiStefano worries we’re only going to see more grocery stores closing in small towns and counties.

That would mean food deserts will only expand, and people in these areas will face less chance for employment and less opportunities to find fresh food.

“There are a litany of studies — no one disagrees — everyone does better when they’re not hungry. Children enrolled in SNAP are healthier, more successful,” DiStefano said. “But what do we do when we can’t provide that food anymore, and on top of that, when we make it difficult to access the food that is there? These policies, especially in rural communities, are going to overburden food pantries and increase food insecurity. We need to reduce the red tape and do right by these communities.”