(gentle music) - Funding for this program is made possible by Highmark Blue Cross Blue Shield.

Thank you.

- Jehovah, we can come to you today to thank you for this meal.

- [Narrator] Sharing a meal is the most basic of human needs and comforts.

- What's for lunch?

- We have chicken, grilled chicken breasts, baked potatoes with broccoli.

- Yes, I think I'll do mac and cheese.

- And we also have yams.

(pasta rattles) - Yah, mac and cheese.

More peanut butter.

- [Narrator] But for too many of us, that everyday question, what's for lunch, has no easy answer.

In Western Pennsylvania, 300,000 people are food insecure.

(gentle dramatic music) - That means that they don't always know where their next meal is coming from.

- So it been times where, yeah, it been hard to kinda keep food on the table.

- I have learned how to be sparing.

- Imagine what that feels like.

- [Narrator] This crisis is not only about money.

It is also a problem of geography and access.

- Clarion is a food desert.

- The grocery stores closed up.

- You have to go far to get healthy stuff.

- We also talk about food swamps.

Those are communities that do have food available, but it's typically fast food or unhealthy food.

(metal clangs) - In our land of plenty, where a fast bag of food can be found most anywhere, there always have been hungry people.

- And I seen the suffering of people.

- [Narrator] And then came the pandemic.

- [Audrey] Each one of those was a family.

- [Melvin] Yeah, you don't want people to notice you're going through.

- [Audrey] It was a giant spotlight and, and a wake-up call.

- [Narrator] In this richest of countries, people woke this morning to empty shelves.

This is the story of families who struggle to fill them and of many neighbors working to help.

(tape screeches) In pantries, on farms.

- [Steve] We're able to donate enough apples to feed 25,000 households.

- [Narrator] In community gardens.

- [Female Interviewee] I think we have to learn how to feed ourselves.

- So if we don't get this right, every aspect of our lives will be affected by this.

- [Narrator] Many families can't afford healthy food, and some can't get to it.

(buzz engine hums) Food insecurity has reached a crisis.

- [Woman Purple Shirt] There are whole communities that are starved.

(bird squawks) (gentle music) - How's your arm.

- It's fine.

- So I can't hit it yet then?

- In a centuries-old log cabin in a quiet leafy corner of Greene County, Marilyn and Billy Sisk are enjoying a late summer breeze And thinking about lunch.

- [Marilyn] I would make a curry or maybe a soup.

- [Narrator] Whatever Marilyn decides to cook, she'll need some help filling the pantry.

(mournful music) For the first time in their lives, the couple have found themselves food insecure, a bland euphemism for a serious problem, that has cast a shadow of worry over their lives.

They met over the internet, Billy in South Carolina, and Marilyn in Great Britain.

Married and back in the States, they both had jobs.

Marilyn was a retail clerk and Billy a bricklayer.

- [Billy] I like to do all these arches and circles and, you know, all the fancy work pretty much I like to do 'cause it's like art to me.

- [Narrator] And then a jolt of bad luck.

- [Marilyn] We had a car accident.

We got rear-ended while we were stopped at a red light, and he, he literally wrecked his rotator cuff.

- [Narrator] Billy is now on disability, and Marilyn has a bad back.

- [Marilyn] So we've gone from being a two-workin', two-wage family to relying on benefits.

- The last two years has just been horrible for me, 'cause I can't do nothing.

(gentle uplifting music) - [Narrator] Today, Marilyn will drive a few miles from home to get help.

She will have lots of company.

The Corner Cupboard Food Bank provides hundreds of food boxes every month.

On this day in August, Marilyn waited in a line that stretched across the Greene County fairgrounds.

- [Woman Gray T-Shirt] Rebecca, you need a bread?

- Yes, thank you.

- [Marilyn] Last year, when we were trying to get his disability, we had not one penny coming into the house, and we just went to one car.

- Bye; see you later.

- [Marilyn] We really pulled the belts in.

(gentle music) - [Billy] So, how'd you get on?

A lotta people there?

- Yeah.

Here you can carry these three bags in with your, - Can carry those in for sure.

- With your left hand.

We have beans, peanut butter, corn, two corn.

For two years now, we've had to learn how to survive.

I mean, people think they see what we live in, and they think, "Oh, they're all right; they're all right."

Two green beans.

You still gotta pay your bills, regardless of whether you've got an income coming in or not.

So we always make sure that what's owed is paid first.

Vegetable soup.

You have to have the internet here because there's no service, no cell, cell phone service to speak of.

Fruit and nut mix.

So the phones only work through the internet.

UHT milk; that lasts.

So food comes very far down the line.

(gentle music) - [Narrator] The boxes held enough food to keep Marilyn and Billy fed for weeks, cereal for breakfast and bread for lunch, and canned beef for dinner.

Just enough to give them one less thing to worry about.

- So yeah, these food banks, they are a God-send, (gentle uplifting music) especially to people, young unmarried mothers, things like that; they survive on these things.

They need them; it can happen to anybody.

(sizzling) - [Narrator] In a backyard in Glassport, the sound of chicken (drumming) sizzling on the grill (hi-hat tings) is mixing with the sound of drumming, wafting up from the basement.

(drum beats) (hi-hat tings) - [Narrator] While Veronica Baker tends to Sunday supper, her son, DeMarcus, is getting in some noisy practice.

- [Veronica] It doesn't bother me; I don't mind it.

A lotta times, you know, I enjoy it.

- [Triana] You try and let me get that itty bitty piece right there?

- [Narrator] This early fall afternoon found Veronica and her children in some of the most difficult times they'll ever face.

Veronica, a single mother, has breast cancer, a health crisis made worse by food insecurity.

You have a secure income, and you think you're okay, and then out of the blue, you're not okay.

(dramatic music) You're, you don't know how you're gone feed your family.

- [Narrator] A year ago, this family was thriving.

Mom working as a medical biller, daughter, Triana finishing her senior year of high school, and DeMarcus playing in a band.

And then the cancer and the fear that came with it.

- [Veronica] For the most part, I tried not to show it.

- [Narrator] What followed was a cascade of events that hit hard.

- And I have to call off and go to chemo, or when I have to do testing or anything like that, that's shortening my hours.

- [Narrator] Smaller paychecks mean less money to buy food, which, for a cancer patient, has to be the right food.

- [Veronica] They said, "if you switch up your diet, "that does help you fight cancer."

They cost so much.

You know, it, it don't make any sense that the healthier food cost more than the food that's not healthy.

- [Woman Black Shirt] You have tomato sauce, soups.

- [Narrator] Veronica is loading up on groceries at the Healthy Food Center at Allegheny General Hospital.

She was referred here by her doctors, a kind of healthy food prescription based on the understanding that food is medicine.

- [Woman Black Shirt] So these are always a little bit different, but it looks like we got nice cantaloupes, some onions, potatoes, cucumbers.

- [Narrator] The food she'll take home will help fight her illness and feed her kids.

- [Veronica] So, that stretch out my food for us, because that way, when I am coming up short, (mournful music) that help me out, where we're able to keep food in the house.

I would feel less than a, a parent not to be able to feed my kids.

That would make me feel really bad.

Kinda get, encourage them to just keep focused on their things that they have going on.

And to just let them know that, you know, I will be all right; I'm still fighting.

- [Narrator] Among the most dramatic images from the early days of the coronavirus pandemic, were the lines of cars inching their way toward the food bank.

(car doors slam shut) The scenes were alarming, but those on the front lines know that food insecurity has long been a major problem in our community.

(tape screeches) - [Lisa] There's so many people who are struggling.

The mission of the food bank was so important to me that no child goes to bed hungry, that no senior has to choose between buying medicine and buying food.

(gentle music) - [Narrator] That dilemma is part of daily life for as many as 300,000 people in western Pennsylvania.

About a third of them are children.

In Duquesne, the Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank is moving millions of pounds of fresh and packaged food through its massive and chilly warehouse.

(forklift engine hums) From here, the food is trucked to a network of smaller food pantries in both urban and rural areas.

The goal is to close what the food bank calls the meal gap, which reflects how many households go without any one of the three healthy squares a day: breakfast, lunch, or dinner.

When the food bank started keeping track in 2015, the gap in western Pennsylvania was 54 million meals that never got to a family's table.

Since then, the food bank has been able to supply 35 million meals a year, but there's still a great need.

- Yeah, there's so many people who could very easily with one car repair, a medical bill, any other kind of extra expense, will find themselves in line.

- [Narrator] And it's not just about money.

- [Audrey] And that was a very, very limited view of what food insecurity means.

- [Narrator] Audrey Murrell directed a study called the "Food Abundance Index."

It took a comprehensive approach to the ways in which Pittsburgh's neighborhoods are cut off from healthy food.

- But when we started really pulling back the layers and looking at it from the complexity that it is, it really means paying attention to not just food sources, but food policy, and food access, and health and wellbeing.

- [Narrator] And that means providing the right kind of food where it's needed.

- So we want quality food.

We want fresh food.

We want healthy food, not just any food.

412 Food Rescue is a non-profit whose volunteers retrieve and then share food that would otherwise be wasted.

(forklift motor hums) Their trucks arrived in the city of Clairton around the same time the coronavirus arrived.

- [Melvin] Let's see, oh, onions, look like.

Okay, oh, potatoes, some nice looking potatoes.

I'm glad I stopped, actually, 'cause this is nice food.

I was coming up for my nieces.

They're single parents.

People deem this as you come up here; it's a handout.

But you never know what situation may arise to where we might all need help.

(tape screeches) - Early summer brought spikes in coronavirus cases up and down western Pennsylvania.

In Erie, Allegheny Health Network joined with the local pantry to get food to those quarantined after positive COVID tests.

- They don't know how they're gonna go out and get food for their children because the whole family is now in isolation and in quarantine.

(knocking) - [Alexander] There's a lot of stress and anxiety about what's going on in the world.

And it just helps give a little peace of mind to be able to feed somebody who's not able to get the food for themselves.

(gentle music) - [Narrator] And along with the need comes a stigma.

The pandemic landed on even financially stable families, causing layoffs, illness, and isolation.

- Almost overnight, we saw a dramatic increase in the number of people in need of food assistance.

They were coming to our front door.

They were asking for help.

They were desperate.

(mournful music) - [Narrator] In the 12 months before the pandemic, the food bank distributed 40 million pounds of food.

During the first three months of COVID alone, the food bank already had provided 25 million pounds.

- [Audrey] Each one of those cars in that long line was a family whose livelihood and whose sense of wellbeing had been disrupted.

You know, I can remember growing up, you know, and, and Sunday dinner was really a family time.

It was a time for us to all sit down and gather and make connections.

Those are part of the building blocks of who we are as families.

Imagine what it means when families can't provide that, when parents can't provide that for their children.

Imagine what that feels like.

- [Narrator] The hunger has been around us all along.

The pandemic made us take notice.

- I see it as the alarm clock went off.

There have been people who've been crying for this.

- And there's no reason in this country that people should go to bed hungry.

- [Narrator] For Melvin Long and his family, there will be fresh food on the table.

- So we know what we're having for dinner today.

We're gonna have potatoes and onions.

(bell rings) - [Narrator] Clairton, Pennsylvania is a city with at least 18 churches, but not one full service grocery store.

- And the business just wasn't here, so they closed up.

(gentle music) - [Narrator] Donna Hudson grew up here when Clairton was a bustling town with a busy steel plant and 20,000 residents, and just about every one of them could walk to a food store.

- We had Kroger, we had Food Mart, we had the A and P. We had, oh, Haines Supermarket.

- All the stores up here was open.

Everything that I ever needed was right up here on this Main Street.

- [Narrator] At one time, there were eight grocery stores in town; as people moved out, so did the stores.

The last one closed in 2004.

- I would say this is definitely a food desert.

- [Narrator] A food desert is a community that doesn't have a full service grocery store.

- Well, food deserts are typically in lower income communities, where a grocery store chain has decided it's not viable.

- [Narrator] Remove a grocery store from a community that's already struggling, and the residents will find themselves stranded.

In Clairton, 28 percent of residents live at or below the poverty line.

As many as 14 percent of residents don't own a vehicle.

For them, the closest supermarket can be a jitney or bus ride away.

And then how did you get everything back home?

- In both of my arms.

Five bags on each arm.

- [Narrator] Dahlia has a car now and drives out of town to shop, but families without transportation rely on dollar stores, which are convenient and inexpensive, but lacking in healthy products.

- [Audrey] I'm not saying that dollar stores don't play a role, but they cannot be the primary or the only source of food in a community.

They're often filled with highly processed food.

(upbeat dramatic music) - [Narrator] And to make matters worse, food deserts often are adjacent to food swamps, communities with few or no grocery stores, but many fast food outlets.

- Within $5 to $10, you could feed a family, but the problem is the nutritional value.

It may be filling, but it's not nutritionally filling.

So the body itself, it's starving for, for micronutrients and macronutrients.

- [Narrator] Dr.

Amit Bhargava treats patients with diabetes and other conditions related to poor diet.

- [Dr.

Bhargava] Patients may present with obesity.

They may present with hypertension.

We can tell a patient to eat more fruits and vegetables, for example, but if they do not have access or limited access to fruits and vegetables, then they're not able to do so.

- [Narrator] He's especially worried about children who grow up in food deserts.

- [Dr.

Bhargava] Children's palates are being damaged because they're being exposed to certain foods that they get accustomed to.

When you are exposed to this early on, I think that becomes your way of life and perception of what eating should be like.

- Put one on your plate just to make it look like you're eatin'.

- [Narrator] Veronica Baker knows her son is a picky eater, but since her breast cancer diagnosis, both her children are learning the importance of healthier meals.

- There's a huge difference when you have any type of cancer and eat healthy.

- Okay, so could you use a box of fresh produce, just an assortment of fruits and vegetables?

(gentle music) - So if you wanna look at food as medicine, the staff here are the pharmacists, and they're counseling and teaching about the medicine.

- [Woman Black Shirt] All right, and our canned fruit here, you get to choose four of these.

- I've seen my patients who have been diabetic, who are no longer diabetic because they've changed their diet.

They've got access to better food, and they exercise more.

- [Narrator] That kind of help is essential, not just in hospitals, but in food deserts.

Big supermarket chains say they can't survive in towns like Clairton.

People here are finding other ways to solve the problem.

- [Woman Green Shirt] Okay, is there anything else that you would like; that's it?

- [Narrator] The nonprofit Produce Marketplace is one example.

Community groups joined forces to raise money to bring nutritious food to Main Street.

- [Felix] I would use the word fresh, whether it's fresh fruit, fresh vegetables, fresh cut cheeses, no soda pop, no chips, no candy, nothing like that.

We're just filling in the gap of freshness for all of our residents.

- [Narrator] A few blocks away, people are bringing healthy food to Clairton in another way: by growing it themselves.

- And these are called what again?

- These are called pole beans.

- [Narrator] Madge Bristow-Norman is tying up beans in her plot at the Clairton Community Garden.

- As I grow my garden, I will share my garden because there are those that don't have the means to get a nice ripe tomato.

(gentle uplifting music) - [Narrator] Small gardens like these have become part of the urban landscape.

Some are tucked away in backyards.

- [Woman Red Shirt] These ones right here are purple cayennes.

- [Narrator] Every corner of Lavante' Allen's backyard in Pittsburgh's Homewood neighborhood is making food.

- [Lavante'] You don't see a lot of gardens.

You don't see a lot of greenery like this in this neighborhood.

Gardening isn't as scary as people think.

I definitely encourage it because it gives you a new freedom, a new sort of authority in your life where you're like, "Huh, "I can just go outside and get "whatever I need for my family."

(car engine hums) - [Narrator] Homewood has been without a grocery store for 25 years.

You might call this greenhouse an oasis in the middle of a food desert.

- We say food apartheid because it is a part of stematic injustice towards black people and brown people.

- Raqueeb Bey is standing in a green space, that only three years ago, was a blighted vacant lot.

The Homewood Black Urban Garden acquired the land from the City of Pittsburgh and got to work.

- [Raqueeb] It took us all that season just to keep the brush down; we started planting last year, and this year we'll be plantin' all year long.

- I love okra, not only for its pods, the vegetable itself, but the flower.

- [Raqueeb] My younger children, since they've been doing this since they were toddlers, is they have a love for the food that they grow.

And last year we started with two beehives.

And this year we had four.

- [Narrator] All of it is tended by volunteers from the neighborhood, and then sold to the community at a weekly farm market.

- Okay, yeah.

- They have the best collard greens in the city.

- [Narrator] The group plans to open a non-profit grocery store here in 2021.

It will be another example of what resourceful people can do when they work together.

- We can't always rely on outside entities to help us.

We have to take community responsibility and leadership ourselves.

(leaves rustling) (gentle uplifting music) - [Steve] It's one of my favorite things to be able to walk through the orchard, especially in the evening time.

The air is cool.

- [Narrator] Steve Johnston is the sixth generation to live on Apple Castle Farm in Lawrence County.

- [Steve] My great grandfather, my great, great grandfather, my great, great, great grandfather, they were able to have the same experiences of, of growing fruits and growing vegetables, providing them for our local community.

- [Narrator] Apple Castle is one of 40 farms that donate fruits and vegetables to the Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank.

- Sometimes because they produced more than they can sell, and sometimes it's, they've produced products that are smaller than a retail venue would prefer.

- [Narrator] Apples, peaches, sweet corn, and other crops make their way from here to thousands of homes across western Pennsylvania.

- Even where I live.

I'm in the middle of the, the country, and there's lots of food insecurity.

- [Narrator] Why do you think there are not more home gardens?

- Just take so much time and effort.

And we've just gradually moved away from growing our own produce.

Farming, in general, is a very hard lifestyle.

There's a lot of hours.

There's a lot of demands on you.

However, it is really rewarding to be part of agriculture, to be part of an industry that's able to help feed our country.

- Here's a big good one.

- In Carmichaels, Greene County, six year old Ibby Kelly and her mom are in their garden picking tomatoes.

- [Ellie] Do you wanna check out tomatoes over here too?

- Found another.

- [Narrator] It's not just large farms that keep food pantries stocked with fresh produce.

Smaller family gardens are helping too.

- [Ellie] We have 105 acres, and this is just our quarter acre garden that we use to raise food for our own freezer through the winter, and then enough extra plants that we can share.

- [Ibby] There's one right over here that's the darkest one of all.

- [Ellie] And so more than anything, I wanna be able to teach my two daughters what it is to share and support others.

- Eh.

- You got it.

- [Narrator] It is likely that vegetables grown in this garden will one day be on dinner plates in that log cabin a few towns away.

While lunch was cooking on the stove, Marilyn was painting a landscape mural.

It's been a way to bring in some extra money during lean times.

- It was only the painting that kept our head above water.

- [Narrator] And if there comes a time when even the painting income dries up, Marilyn and Billy know their community will be there to help.

(gentle music) - I won't say we would starve to death without them, but they are a big help to us, a very big help.

(mournful music) - [Narrator] For generations, artists have captured the warm essential bond between family and food.

- Food is much more powerful than just nutrients.

You know, food is community, the ability of people to be able to gather around food.

- [Narrator] In our country, there's more than enough land, more than enough sunshine and blue sky to grow the food, and more than enough helpers to feed every one of us.

- [Audrey] We don't need to produce more food.

We just need to be better at distributing and getting it into the hands of people that need it.

- [Ellie] It's living into what we're called to be and do in loving our neighbors.

- [Veronica] There's no reason for anyone to go hungry, especially our kids.

- [Audrey] It's not just feeding families, but it's helping families to thrive.

So if we don't get this right, every aspect of our lives will be affected by this.

But I have confidence, we will get this right.

- Please continue looking after our family, protecting us.

Amen.

(gentle music)