Nearly 40,000 people experience food insecurity across Bradford, Clinton, Lycoming, Potter, Sullivan and Tioga counties, according to Feeding America’s most recent Map the Meal Gap estimates. To further examine the state of food insecurity across this six-county geographic region, the Central Pennsylvania Food Bank released the Northern Tier Community Hunger Mapping Report, which identifies strengths and opportunities for growth throughout the charitable food system and promotes policy and programmatic changes.

“Food insecurity has increased by more than 30% since 2021 in the Northern Tier of our 27-county service territory,” said Zach Zook, senior vice president and chief strategy officer at CPFB. “This issue impacts people across every community – the lowest food insecurity rate among all municipalities in these six counties is 8.9% and each county has a food insecurity rate between 13% and 15%.”

CPFB collected and analyzed more than 400 surveys among pantry visitors across the region and found that 30% of food pantry visitors in the Northern Tier experience very low food security, the closest measure of hunger in the United States. Households with children are particularly likely to face very low food security, with a rate of 45% among pantry visitors.

“Our research shows that the Northern Tier’s food pantries reduce experiences of hunger significantly, and that the effect is larger for households who can visit more than once per month,” said Shila Ulrich, chief executive officer of the CPFB. The impact of the charitable food network increases as clients visit food pantries more often, providing the foundation for one of the report’s recommendations- ensuring that all households have access to at least two pantries or food distributions per month.

Community Hunger Mapping is an integral, ongoing part of guiding CPFB’s ongoing mission of ending hunger in central Pennsylvania. The initiative will focus next on Centre County, the 16th county to be researched.

For more information about the Central Pennsylvania Food Bank, visit www.centralpafoodbank.org.