According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, one in seven Kentuckians is food insecure. In some of the more severely affected counties, it balloons to one in five. That figure
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Concerns about food shortages and the dangers of grocery shopping during the pandemic drove more Kentuckians to try their hand at home gardening in 2020, according to the Kentucky Department of Agriculture.
In a Kentucky Department of Agriculture survey of 230 garden growers, 45% gardened for the first time in 2020, up from 34 percent in 2019. Department spokesman Sean Southard said many people tried gardening for the first time because of the coronavirus pandemic.
“At the beginning of the pandemic, the Kentucky Department of Agriculture got a lot of questions from constituents about food supply and the safety and stability of our food supply, especially with some of the pressures we saw on our supply chain,” Southard said.