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On the outskirts of Savannah, Georgia, Wise Brothers Processing has a line of large refrigerators. Inside them sits a skinned deer, packed in ice, ready to be diced, ground or made into sausage, depending on the customer's order. The finished meat is wrapped and placed in the freezer so hunters can take it home.
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This is all pretty standard for deer hunters: the animals they shoot become meat to feed their families. But much of this meat is not returned to the hunters who brought it in; it is sent to a soup kitchen in the heart of Savannah.
“The charity we use feeds over 250 people three times a day,” said Debra Wise, who runs the business with the rest of her family. This year they sent 500 pounds of ground venison to the Old Savannah City Mission, she said.
The Wise Ones take part in a Georgia Wildlife Federation event. Hunters of the Hungry program. Hunters in Georgia are allowed to kill up to 12 deer a year, but many don't have a freezer to store them all or don't need that much meat to feed their families. Hunters for the Hungry allows them to make additional donations. The state recently increased funding to $350,000 annually, allowing it to expand the program from six processors to 56 and add freezer trailers to store additional meat. This year, the program has a goal of collecting 140,000 pounds of donations, which the state Department of Natural Resources estimates could feed 560,000 people.
“They reached out to us and asked if we would be interested in accepting the deer into the hunting program, and of course we agreed to it immediately,” Wise said. “Anything that can help someone, we are ready for it.”
Each processor donates meat and distributes it to their local community. Hunters for the Hungry is not specifically designed to combat hunger in rural areas, and some of the meat, including that of the Wise Brothers, goes to urban charities. But because most processors are located outside the hunting country, most of the donations remain there.
Across Georgia, nearly 15 percent of households are food insecure, meaning they have limited or uncertain access to adequate food. according to Feeding America. Some of the highest rates are in rural counties. Rural Hancock County, located between Atlanta and Augusta, has the highest rate of children facing food insecurity in the country, at 47 percent. Nationwide, 86 percent of counties with the highest rates of food insecurity are rural.
The level of hunger in rural areas contrasts sharply with the amount of food produced there. For example, in Georgia agriculture is largest industry. The state ranks first in the country in the production of broiler chickens, hatching eggs and groundnuts. produces significant volumes beef, dairy, corn and blueberries. But much of this food is produced on a large scale to supply the broader U.S. food system and goes to processors and distributors before it hits grocery stores, meaning most people who raise food and farm animals have to rely on grocery stores to buy food, just like people in big cities.
“Not every county or every region has all these different products, so we rely on a food system that is able, through processing and retail, to bring all these products together for the benefit of consumers,” said University of Georgia professor Vanessa Shonkwiler, who studies local food systems. “But back to food insecurity in our rural areas, this food system is not necessarily capable of reaching everyone.”
Collective reliance on this system also means that the effects of climate change – even in other parts of the country or in other parts of the world – can further undermine food security disrupting supply chains and making prices more volatile.
“There’s not necessarily a recipe that we can apply here and there,” Shonkwiler said. Because people are so spread out across rural areas, typical solutions like food pantries aren't always effective, she said.
“One size doesn't fit all. And it's really the collaboration between different organizations that makes it work or not,” Shonkwiler said.
Nonprofits, churches, universities, and other groups have taken many approaches to addressing rural hunger. Some of Shonkwiler's students recently conducted feasibility studies on various models, including a small neighborhood grocery store and a mobile food truck. Some non-profit organizations actually own small grocery stores. Another organization Shonkwiler is working with is preparing to try out a model that's working in Europe, in which a self-service grocery store is housed in a shipping container so people can access essential items without the added cost of staffing.
A common feature of successful efforts, Shonkwiler said, is the level of support from local leaders and the community who need to invest in the solution to make it work.
But even working models are now struggling after a 43-day government shutdown stopped the funding food aid organizations rely on. “The survival of the nonprofit is directly at stake,” Shonkwiler said.
Some have had to close stores or programs serving rural Georgia, at least temporarily, so they can continue feeding people in the long term. Other federal funding cuts have also hit rural food programs. For example, the USDA's Child Care Access and Nutrition Systems grant program funded a food bank, farmer's market, mobile kitchen and other programs in rural southwest Georgia, but it was canceled earlier this year, according to Georgia Sen. Jon Ossoff's office.
For people living in food deserts, living at least 10 miles from any supermarket and struggling to make ends meet, this means the resources they count on may not be available this holiday season.
But rural Georgians are finding other ways to help each other. In addition to the government-sponsored Hunters for the Hungry program, Wise Brothers Processing often donates meat to families in need. Recently, Wise said, a local church contacted them about a family with a sick child who needed help. They sent family venison and plan to send more in the near future.
“It brings joy to our hearts to know that we can help someone else even though we've had to get help before,” Wise said. “It’s just, you know, the Lord has blessed us and we’d like to bless us back.”
