Visioning Provisioning is a project that investigates and creates a visual representation of the food provisioning practices of food insecure New Yorkers. Food provisioning is defined as the “mental, physical and emotional labor involved in providing food for oneself and one’s family.” It is required daily, and made more difficult by socioeconomic and geographic constraints (Meierotto and Castellano, 2020). This project explores the possibility of using maps to visualize the labor involved in sourcing food for families living with food insecurity. My prior research has shown that food insecure households expend an excess of time and energy each week figuring out how to stretch resources, such as limited funds, limited transportation, SNAP benefits, and food distribution opportunities. This project is born from my experience teaching food systems to undergraduates and seeing how for those who have not experienced food insecurity, the labor involved in food provisioning is much easier to comprehend when represented geospatially. My ambition for this project is to conduct create a resource that opens eyes to the often invisible lived experience of individuals navigating New York City’s food systems. With qualitative data collected through in-depth interviews, photo logs and food journals, I have created maps that chart food provisioning routes of the participants in my study. These maps include the costs associated with locations, and visual and textual insight about the impact of the process on emotional and physical wellbeing. However, in some cases, the map proved to not to be the ideal representation. In those instances, I have used timelines and direct quotes to illustrate experience.
It is a failure of our food system that some New Yorkers must spend an undue amount of time and energy providing food for their families. I believe representing this failure is imperative for fighting narratives about individualized responsibility for food insecurity and diet-related diseases. The potential for this project extends beyond the classroom, as it could become a tool for food policy analysts and advocates. It is my most ambitious hope that creating a resource for students and change makers to see this process is a step towards reforming the food system.
