Hungry Heartland documents the challenges — and triumphs — of Kansans when affordable food isn't easily accessible.
By MARCIA LOCKE
K-State College of Arts and Sciences
MANHATTAN — The story of food insecurity in rural Dighton, Kansas, isn't about when the town's only grocery store burned down in January 2024, but what happened next.
Neighbors immediately worked together to coordinate grocery runs to other towns, and those other grocery stores soon began offering food delivery service. A Dighton community member later opened a space on Main Street to provide access to fresh fruit and vegetables a few times a week.
It was an incredible story of a Kansas community's resilience in the face of potentially becoming a food desert, and one that Io Schmalzried, a recent graduate in social transformation studies and mass communications, got to tell about her hometown through a photo essay as part of the Hungry Heartland storytelling project at Kansas State University.
The project, led by an interdisciplinary team of faculty members and students in the College of Arts and Sciences, is asking—and showing—why healthy and affordable food is out of reach for many people in the nation’s breadbasket. The project aims to both educate about food insecurity and give students real-world experience producing impactful multimedia stories.“
The Hungry Heartland project not only tells moving stories of solutions to food access issues but also helps students learn more deeply how these issues affect their neighbors, classmates and families in every corner of Kansas,” said Tom Hallaq, associate professor in the A.Q. Miller School of Media and Communication. “Students gain valuable, faculty-mentored experience as the stories and artwork they produce become catalysts to spark conversation and change in those communities.”
The six-year project has produced art exhibits, academic articles and a Silver Telly Award-winning documentary called, “The Empty Breadbasket: When the Land that Feeds the World Cannot Feed Itself,” directed by Hallaq and the late Ian Punnett, professor in the Miller School. It aired on Topeka public television’s KTWU in 2022.
A more recent partnership with the social transformation studies department’s Engaged Stories Lab has strengthened the project’s power of storytelling.
“The Hungry Heartland documentary is one of the star storytelling projects of the lab,” said Valerie Padilla Carroll, interim head of the social transformation studies department. “Through the work of engaged students and faculty, this documentary is collecting and archiving important Kansas stories of resilience and empowering Kansas community members to share their food access challenges and triumphs.”
The Hungry Heartland project recently received its second Interdisciplinary Research Grant from the university’s Chapman Center for Rural Studies. The grant encourages scholars to collaborate across different fields, showcase rural Kansas communities and bring awareness to obstacles faced by them.
Other project directors are Shreepad Joglekar, Lindy E. Bell Head of the department of art, and Han Yu, professor of English.“Projects like Hungry Heartland exemplify the College of Arts and Sciences’ mission to prepare students for responsible citizenry and career success and contribute to the betterment of society,’” said Chris Culbertson, dean of the college. “Our students and faculty examine some of society’s most pressing challenges—like food insecurity—to make a difference for Kansans, the nation and the world.”