Toting baskets or bags, or even pulling carts, people line up Saturday for free food at the mobile pantry provided by Food Finders Food Bank in the Journal & Courier parking lot at Sixth and Ferry streets. (Photo: John Terhune/Journal & Courier )
Between medical bills for his diabetes, electricity costs and automobile insurance, there isn't much room in Bob Corwin's budget for a trip to the grocery store.
Consequently, the 70-year-old retired truck driver is one of the estimated 17 percent of Tippecanoe County residents considered food insecure, meaning they lack regular access to sufficient food.
"If it wasn't for the food pantries, I'd be starving to death right now," Corwin said. "I go to every one I can get to."
Corwin and more than 29,000 others in Tippecanoe County depend on the loosely coordinated network of food pantries and other hunger-relief programs to survive.
And the number of this county's food insecure — and the frequency that they use such programs — continues to rise, according to a recently released, wide-ranging national study.
The Hunger in America study is conducted every four years by Feeding America, a charity network of more than 200 food banks. It's the nation's most comprehensive study of food insecurity and provides data on the food-insecure population at the national and local levels.
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