Building Sustainable Futures: Food (In)security and Sustainability as Flourishing in Higher Education

Since 2020, food insecurity has been on the rise in the USA. In 2022, 12.8% (17 million) of households were food insecure (Economic Research Service of USDA, 2022). However, students in higher education experience much higher levels of food insecurity than the general population. Additionally, students face unique challenges in meeting basic needs such as housing, transportation, textbooks, and materials for classes. To manage this growing crisis, the number of food pantries on college campuses has exploded from only 80 pantries in 2013 to nearly 800 in 2023 (Edelman, 2023). The current situation of rising food insecurity and pantry-based solutions will not be sustainable for creating educated, skilled, and flourishing future generations of citizens and workers. Students who are hungry cannot take advantage of a quality education. In the findings, I show how students normalised their needs and discussed food insecurity as having a compounding effect on meeting other basic needs. I analyse the data using a sustainability-as-flourishing model and the values of the Indigenous Regenerative Ecosystem Design (IRED) framework (Johnston, 2022). By viewing the findings through these lenses, I encourage scholars and policymakers to identify current problems with how higher education institutions manage food insecurity among their populations and to consider new ways of building sustainable futures for students.