On Jan. 31, the Iowa Department of Education announced it was seeking sponsors for its 2025 summer meal and snack sites as a part of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Summer Food Service Program, or SFSP.

This program provides nutritious meals to children in low-income neighborhoods during the summer and children who do not have access to school-sponsored lunch programs like free or reduced-price lunches, which 41.8 percent of K-12 students in Iowa are eligible for.

Local sponsors, which typically include schools, universities, organizations, camps, and government agencies, can offer mobile meal sites in order to increase accessibility for families.

Accessibility is a key factor considering 111 communities in Iowa meet the criteria to be classified as rural food deserts, according to a project by Jordan Burrows from the Iowa Waste and Reduction Center.

Natoshia Askelson, an associate professor in community and behavioral health at the University of Iowa College of Public Health, said living in a food desert creates a lot of additional stress for people who not only have limited access to food but also might have to spend more time thinking about transportation, the shelf-lives of food, and the prices of food.

“People who have to access food in rural areas have to drive further. That increases the amount of time that they spend getting food, which then decreases the amount of time they have to prepare food and the amount of time that they have to devote to their families and their jobs,” Askelson said. “So, a larger percentage of their time is really about being able to get food and find food.”

This challenge leads to purchasing predictable, highly processed foods over fresh produce due to their cheaper price and longer shelf-life. However, these foods are typically higher in sodium and fats, which can lead to health issues if not properly balanced in a person’s diet.

“[In rural towns] you also have higher rates of preventable illnesses, such as diabetes and obesity, because people don’t have access to fresh fruits, fresh vegetables, meats, and dairy,” Peggy Stover, an associate professor and director of the Marketing Institute at the UI, said. “It does impact quality of life and the health of the residents in the community.”

In 2024, SFSP had 527 meal and snack sites across Iowa that served nearly three million nutritious meals to children, according to a press release from the Iowa Department of Education.

These sites include schools, churches, community centers, parks, libraries, housing complexes, and camps that qualified to participate in the program by being located in low-income neighborhoods where at least 50 percent of children living there were eligible for free and reduced-price meals, or they served primarily low-income children.

Askelson said summer feeding programs in rural areas typically struggle to find people who are able to work at the meal sites, and children might have issues being able to get to meal sites if their parents are working during the summer.

While some places have volunteers who drop meals off at the homes of participants, rural areas have to be more creative in getting meals to children, especially when transportation is an issue.

One organization working to remove barriers caused by transportation issues is Horizons. Horizons provides necessary services to Iowans living in Johnson County and Washington County including their Financial Wellness Center, Meals on Wheels, and their Neighborhood Transportation Services programs.

Meals on Wheels and the Neighborhood Transportation Services are especially valuable to vulnerable communities who may struggle to access a nearby grocery store and nutritious meals. Within the last fiscal year, Horizons was able to provide between 800 to 1,000 meals a day, Jim Miller, the director of development at Horizons, said.

“We help feed people, we help counsel them financially to keep them in their homes, and we give them transportation,” Miller said. “So, we’re talking about basic human needs of food, lodging, and transportation.”

While not classified as a rural town, many in Iowa City face barriers to accessing food due to a lack of transportation, including many college students without cars. And many students decide to opt out of purchasing meals through UI.

“A lot of dining halls try to serve healthier foods, so when [students] don’t have access to that, they’re more likely to order from fast food restaurants,” Apeksha Adhikari, the basic needs manager at Food Pantry at Iowa, said.

The UI currently offers its Hawkeye Meal Share program to combat food insecurity among UI students, but meals are limited and only offered to eligible students who apply to the program. The Food Pantry at Iowa, however, provides produce and groceries to all students regardless of income and is a valuable resource to students who struggle to access cultural foods.

“Sometimes, people from a different culture, their food desert is their ingredients or their meals are not really around Iowa City,” Adhikari said. “That’s one of the biggest things that the food pantry is working on, especially with the multicultural houses. We’re trying to make sure we’re buying food that they use and that they’re able to provide that to other students.”

RELATED: Iowa’s food pantries hit record high numbers this summer

Programs like Meals on Wheels, Neighborhood Transportation Services, and food pantries all work alongside summer meal programs to address the immediate issue of feeding people and providing access to food. However, Askelson believes more needs to be done to address the issue of food deserts in Iowa.

“Kids have to be fed,” Askelson said. “I think long-term, we need to think about how we increase our local food system so that it’s possible for people to be able to get food that was grown in their area and that doesn’t have to be transported far.”

Stover described a domino effect that food deserts can have in rural towns and said the negative impact they have on a town’s economy can further negatively impact the overall social infrastructure.

“If you don’t have a grocery store, then chances are you can have a really difficult time attracting additional businesses to that town,” Stover said. “The way that impacts the community is the loss of services. That includes police departments, fire departments, ambulances, and schools.”

As Askelson said, meal programs are essential short-term solutions to addressing the issue of food deserts and food insecurity. But Stover believes increasing access to grocery stores and locally grown food in rural towns are two long-term solutions that should be considered.

“One of the things that needs to be done is for the government to provide incentives for individuals who are interested in opening a grocery store in small towns,” Stover said.

Efforts are currently being made to address this. House File 59 has been introduced to the Economic Growth and Technology Committee, which would provide local grocers matching grants of up to $200,000 to reinvest in local grocery stores. Stover said this will hopefully incentivize grocers to open in rural communities where there are currently no grocery stores.

“It’s going to take the coordination of both the business community and the government to help residents with this problem,” Stover said. “Especially here in Iowa, there are a lot of small towns where there are no grocery stores, and people are being forced to drive 20 to 30 miles to get to the nearest one.”