Fresno State Joins Kansas State For Hungry Heartland Project

A full harvest doesn’t always mean a full plate.

That contradiction took a group of Fresno State journalism students to Kansas, where they joined Kansas State students for the Hungry Heartland documentary project. Together, they looked at why people struggle to get enough food in two major agricultural regions and how communities are working to close that gap.

“I really wanted to be a part of something that was bigger than myself, and also to learn more about what was happening in my state,” Kansas State senior Hailey Vardiman said. “Living here my entire life, like, I’ve only known Kansas.”

The Hungry Heartland project began at Kansas State in 2018 after professor Tom Hallaq, a professor in Kansas State’s Media and Communication Department. learned that almost one-third of Kansas residents live in a food desert, meaning they have limited access to affordable and nutritious food. 

Years later, a reconnection with college classmate Cheryl Gardner gave them both an idea.

“So we started then talking about how can we partner and tell the story, bridge the story between Kansas and California’s Central Valley,” Hallaq said.

Both Kansas and Central California are major agricultural regions. Hungry Heartland set out to document why food insecurity still exists in places that produce so much food and how affected communities are working to overcome it.

For Gardner, the trip was also about giving students a chance to learn a new skill.

“Understanding how to work in the field and how to drop down alongside team members that you may not know…and produce the content that you need to produce, you know, meet that end goal,” said Gardner, a professor in Fresno State’s Media, Communications and Journalism Department.

The hard-nosed work ethic and pride in where people were from is a similarity that stood out between Kansas and the Central Valley.

Representing Fresno State and California more than 1,000 miles away was something the group didn’t take lightly. Some Kansas State students had never heard of Fresno, some thought California was full of cities like Los Angeles or San Francisco, and most were surprised that some of us brought work boots on the trip.

The trip gave students from both universities a chance to learn more about each other’s regions while working together to tell stories rooted in agriculture and food access.

For now, the Fresno State students are turning what they gathered in Kansas into finished documentaries, with the goal of publishing them before the end of 2026.

To stay up to date on the project, you can follow Hungry Heartland California on social media.