Indiana's second annual Hunger Summit is spreading out. On September 2, the event will run simultaneously at the Indiana State Fairgrounds in Indianapolis, Purdue University Fort Wayne, and the University of Southern Indiana in Evansville, a deliberate expansion meant to reach communities far beyond the state capital where the summit began just last year.
The inaugural gathering, held in 2025 at the Indiana State Fairgrounds, drew 260 attendees, according to WISH-TV. That turnout far exceeded organizers' initial hope of gathering just 100 participants from across the food value chain. Heidi Spahn, founder and task force chair of the Indiana Hunger Summit, told the station that the vision for a statewide event had been in development for four or five years before it finally launched in 2025.
The stakes behind the expansion are stark. Feeding America has estimated that nearly 1 million people in Indiana do not know where their next meal is coming from, per the report cited by WISH-TV. Spahn said food insecurity affects residents in every county in the state, touching children, adults, and seniors alike.
A Statewide Problem Demands Regional Hubs
By adding regional hosts at Purdue Fort Wayne and the University of Southern Indiana, organizers say they're expanding access for people who couldn't easily travel to Indianapolis. The three simultaneous locations — Carter Hall at USI, the International Ballroom at Purdue Fort Wayne, and the Farm Bureau Building at the Fairgrounds — give northern, central, and southern Indiana their own dedicated hubs, according to the event page from host organization AgrIInstitute.
Registration runs $25 per person and includes lunch, with AgrIInstitute offering ticket scholarships for those with financial constraints alongside corporate sponsorship tiers reaching up to $10,000 for so-called Nourishment Partners. Individuals and organizations can register directly through the AgrIInstitute website. The summit runs from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. and aims to connect people from agriculture, government, education, health care, and local communities — what Spahn describes as the full food value chain, including farmers, producers, and last-mile distributors.
From Talk to Tangible Plans
Spahn told WISH-TV that the summit is moving from conversations to solutions in tackling food insecurity across Indiana, and she's invited organizations and individuals to attend, network, and collaborate. The event's structure backs that up: every participant is expected to leave with a clear, actionable plan to implement a measurable food security initiative within 30 days, according to the state's own event listing on IN.gov. Keynote speakers this year include Feeding America CEO Claire Babineaux-Fontenot and Hoosier farmer Kip Tom, a former U.S. Ambassador to the UN Agencies for Food and Agriculture.
The numbers underscore why organizers are pushing for speed. Feeding America's 2025 Map the Meal Gap report found Indiana's food-insecure population climbed from 950,220 in 2022 to 1,033,890 in 2023 — the first time in at least five years the figure topped 1 million, according to data reported by Gleaners Food Bank of Indiana. Gleaners also reported that 56% of food-insecure Hoosiers earned incomes above the SNAP eligibility threshold in 2023, meaning working families squeezed by inflation are often shut out of federal assistance and left to lean on charitable pantries instead.
Children Bear the Heaviest Burden
Hunger hits Indiana's kids especially hard. While the state's overall food insecurity rate stood at 13.9% in 2022, child food insecurity reached 18.2%, affecting more than 327,000 children statewide, per Feeding America. More recent county-level data sharpens that picture further: Feeding America's 2026 Map the Meal Gap study, drawing on 2024 figures, identified Vigo County as having the second-highest child food insecurity rate among all 92 Indiana counties, as reported by MyWabashValley.com.
The problem doesn't stop at the state line. Regional food bank data from this year put child food insecurity in Indiana's tri-state border region at 20.7%, tracking closely with Ohio's 20.8% and trailing Kentucky's 25.3%, according to Hoodline's recent coverage of cross-border relief efforts along the Ohio River. That regional overlap is part of why organizers argue food security requires coordination across county and state lines, not just within Indianapolis.
State Dollars Already Flowing to Food Banks
State government has already put some money behind the effort. In July 2025, the Indiana State Department of Agriculture and Lt. Gov. Micah Beckwith allocated $2 million in state general assembly funding across Indiana's 11 regional food banks to support local pantries and soup kitchens, according to the agency's own announcement. Spahn's summit is framed as the next step beyond that funding — turning dollars and data into coordinated, community-level action plans that community leaders and people from across Indiana will bring home when they gather on September 2.
