Using AI to Track Food Insecurity in South Carolina

In 2024 over 650,000 people in South Carolina experienced food insecurity. To help address this crisis, Openfields, a social innovation consulting firm, launched the South Carolina Food Insecurity Media Tracker, an AI-powered tool designed to bring real-time insights to food security advocates.

As a collaborating organization of the Bloomberg American Health Initiative, Openfields used an Initiative grant to develop the Media Tracker through its social intelligence platform, Orchard. This Tracker scans local news coverage on food insecurity and related risk factors, identifying emerging trends, community-driven solutions, and evolving best practices to address the issue. Over the past year, this tool has gathered important information from a substantial number of local stories across four regions in South Carolina that are now available through a public dashboard.

Since its launch, the Media Tracker has enabled Openfields to identify several emerging trends related to food insecurity in South Carolina, including: The dual burden of inflation on residents and service providers, the rising tide of food insecurity on college campuses, and the challenge of attracting grocery stores to areas with low food access. 

The tool also underscores the gaps in food insecurity coverage. With the decline of local journalism, under-resourced communities often lack representation in media reports, making it harder to track their struggles and successes. Additionally, food insecurity coverage frequently focuses on immediate needs—such as emergency food assistance—rather than the broader systemic causes that fuel hunger in the first place.

Building on the success of the Media Tracker, Openfields partnered with Furman University’s Institute for the Advancement of Community Health to capture the broader scope of food insecurity in the state by developing a statewide map detailing food insecurity risk, health outcomes, and community resources using census data. In May 2024, South Carolina’s Department of Social Services approved funding for the mapping project. This map offers a critical complement to quantitative data collected through the census and allows policymakers to track food insecurity by county. 

By bringing attention to food insecurity in real-time, the Media Tracker aims to empower advocates, policymakers, and community leaders with the knowledge needed to push for lasting change.