UVM researcher presents survey showing high hardship among food-insecure households in VT and ME

A University of Vermont researcher presenting to the Agriculture, Food Resiliency, & Forestry committee said data collected this summer from roughly 1,400 respondents in Vermont and Maine shows persistent and interconnected challenges for food-insecure households, including transportation barriers, medical costs and time constraints.

The researcher, identified in the meeting only as Professor (UVM), a professor in the Nutrition and Food Sciences Department at the University of Vermont, told the committee the sample was deliberately oversampled for low-income respondents to analyze differences between food-secure and food-insecure households.

Why it matters: The presentation framed food insecurity as tied to health care access and financial shocks that can persist for years. Committee members were given figures that officials and agencies can use to target programs or follow-up research.

Key findings presented included that about half of the survey respondents were classified as food insecure under the six-question U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) instrument used by the study, and that food-insecure respondents reported more adverse financial events during the pandemic era. “The average food insecure household faced 3 of these financial impacts compared to 1 for food secure households,” the professor said.

The presenter said 57% of households classified as food insecure in the sample reported participation in SNAP (the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program), leaving 43% of food-insecure respondents not enrolled in SNAP. The researcher added that food-insecure SNAP recipients in the sample reported they would need, on average, an additional $288 a month in benefits “to meet their family's food needs.”

Committee members and the presenter discussed the composition of food-insecure households in the sample: they are disproportionately younger, more likely to be women, more likely to include children or someone with a disability, and more likely to lack a car. The presenter emphasized that most food-insecure households in the sample were working: 62% had at least one full-time worker and 73% had at least one full- or part-time worker.

The study highlighted non-purchase food strategies used by respondents. Roughly two-thirds of respondents reported participation in some home or wild food production in the prior 12 months (gardening, hunting, fishing, backyard poultry, foraging or raising livestock); food-insecure households were more likely than food-secure ones to rely on hunting, fishing, foraging and backyard livestock, the presenter said.

Health care access and mental health: The researcher told the committee food-insecure respondents were more likely to face health-care access barriers—difficulty finding appointments, transportation limits, affordability and inability to take time off work—and had higher self-reported rates of diagnosed anxiety (about 55%) and depression (about 50%). The presenter also said roughly 15% of food-insecure respondents reported stopping or skipping medications because of cost.

Committee exchange and examples: Members asked for clarifications on definitions and sampling. The presenter cautioned that the sample was not intended to estimate statewide prevalence because of the oversample of low-income respondents. Several committee members and outside attendees described local access issues. A resident quoted in the survey from Bennington County said, “I will skip bills to make sure my family eats, but this puts us behind on bills,” a quote the presenter read to illustrate respondents’ tradeoffs.

Next steps and funding: The presenter said the team has ongoing USDA-funded research, can break out Vermont-only results on request, and is modeling how changing SNAP benefit levels at the state level would affect food security. She told the committee she could follow up with the chair, named in the meeting as Chair Durfee, with more detailed county-level or insurance-type breakdowns the committee requested.

Missing details and limits: The presenter noted some items the study did not resolve in the presentation: the sample design means the 52% figure is not the official rate of food insecurity in Vermont; the analysis on why eligible households do not enroll in SNAP is ongoing; and the slide materials include county-level identifiers for many quoted respondents but not individual names.

The committee paused for a short break after the presentation and indicated it would continue the conversation with additional witnesses.