Posted on 11/22/2007 7:27:08 AM PST by Diana in Wisconsin
Operators of free food banks say they are seeing more working people needing assistance. The increased demand is outstripping supplies and forcing many pantries and food banks to cut portions.
Demand is being driven up by rising costs of food, housing, utilities, health care and gasoline, while food manufacturers, wholesalers and retailers are finding they have less surplus food to donate and government help has decreased, according to Lisa Hamler-Fugitt, executive director of the Ohio Association of Second Harvest Foodbanks.
"I've been doing this for 20 years, and I can't believe how much worse it gets month after month," she said.
Diana Blasingame has lately found herself having to go to a free food pantry once a month to feed herself and her teenage daughter.
"I'm pretty good at making things stretch as far as I can, but food is so high now and I have to have gas in my car to do my job," said Blasingame, 46, who earns $9 an hour as a home health aide. "I work full time, but I don't have health insurance and sometimes there just isn't enough to pay bills and buy food."
"We have food banks in virtually every city in the country, and what we are hearing is that they are all facing severe shortages with demand so high," Ross Fraser, a spokesman for America's Second Harvest — The Nation's Food Bank Network, the nation's largest hunger relief group, said Friday. "One of our food banks in Florida said demand is up 35 percent over this time last year."
The U.S. Department of Agriculture's annual hunger survey released Wednesday showed that more than 35.5 million people in the United States were hungry in 2006. While that number was about the same as the previous year, heads of food banks and pantries say many more people are seeking their assistance.
Tony Hall, vice president of the Food Bank of Southwest Georgia, estimates a 10 percent to 20 percent increase in demand for food in the 20-county area the organization serves. He cites cutbacks by local companies, rising fuel costs and the lingering impact of a March tornado that tore through Americus, Ga., destroying or damaging hundreds of homes.
"We really didn't rebound from that," Hall said Friday. "We're definitely down in donations. Each year the demand gets bigger and bigger."
Supplies are down to a little over 8 million pounds of food from a peak of about 12 million pounds two years ago at Hocking-Athens-Perry Community Action, which provides food bank services in 10 counties in southeast Ohio.
"We've lost factory jobs and many service jobs don't pay a livable wage," said Dick Stevens, director of the organization's food and nutrition division. "We see a lot of desperation in families who are trying to figure out how to pay higher fuel and utility costs and still put food on the table."
Most food banks and pantries aren't optimistic about the coming winter.
"November weather has been relatively mild, and you haven't seen the cost of home heating fuel added to what a family has to deal with," said Evelyn Behm, associate director of the Mid-Ohio Food Bank, which supplies food to pantries, soup kitchens and other charities in 20 central and eastern Ohio counties. "Those prices, we all know, are going up substantially this year."
At the Society of St. Vincent de Paul food pantry in Cincinnati, clients now get three or four days' worth of food instead of six or seven.
"We are trying to stretch our resources to help more people," said Liz Carter, executive director of the society. "But it's so difficult when you see the desperation and have to tell them you just don't have enough to give them what they need."
Officials with the Regional Food Bank of Northeastern New York, which serves nearly 1,000 agencies in 23 counties, also are worried.
Through the end of August, the food bank was down almost 700,000 pounds of USDA commodities that include basic essentials such as canned fruit and vegetables and some meat — food that is very difficulty to make up in donations, Executive Director Mark Quandt said.
"We're bracing ourselves for a very tough winter, especially with home heating fuel prices at record highs in the Northeast," Quandt said. "People living in poverty or near poverty just can't sustain those types of increases."
Ethanol is a bad joke.
It has 75% of the BTU’s of Gasoline and they charge us the same price for it.
Then there is the matter of tying our energy markets to our agricultural markets.
It’s insane
I’m harshing his Thanksgiving L0L.
He thinks I’m not thankful.
For the record, I am thankful.
I just call a poke in the eye a poke in the eye. L0L
Bivalves are good!!!!
I’m currently paying $20 per 100 for clams, $35 per 1/2 bushel for oysters, $10-11 per pound for scallops (no shells) and I haven’t bought crabs in a while because we were catching our own, so I don’t know the current price.
An oyster casserole would would be awesome for the table today!
Here in central PA, the Boy Scouts have, as usual, worked hard to collect a massive amount of donated food for the local food banks.
Yes, the same Boy Scouts that the PC crowd have been driving away in Philadelphia.
Actually what Pat was suggesting, turning part of my barn into a chicken coop and raising some chickens wouldn’t be all that expensive, it is just not something I wish to get involved in.
Butchering the chickens myself wouldn’t be all that problematic, it’s just not something I want to do.
We do our own butchering when it comes to deer. And I’m looking forward to that in the coming weeks, because those danged things got what little of my crops survived the drought this summer.
slow roasted is good too - over an open fire :)
LOL. Get laying hens, then. Just a tool for turning feed grain into protien (eggs)...
For some reason we didn’t think of oysters, so we don’t have any today.
2 years ago I added some to my stuffing and it was awesome. I gave some to a friend who had never had it before (neither had I) and she was amazed at it.......but what was really funny about that is that I had bought my oysters from her. Her husband is a waterman and we buy much of our fish and seafood from the seafood market they own.
So, as i said earlier, my seafood doesn’t come from China :) LOL!!!!!
Nah - easier to just nail bambi — that I fed all summer.
Need to go check on my bird!!!!
Oyster dressing rocks!
Or to work and stopping having kids they can't afford to support.
And you didn't call me!!??!!
It was in the late 80’s...I think you were underage. ;)
You can free-range chickens and use little feed but here you would lose most of them to hawks, owls, fox, and coyotes.
I have raised some hogs and saved a little on the meat by buying the feed in bulk and doing my own cut/wrap but its not that cheap.
I wind up with 75 -85 cents/ pound in the meat, but its better pork than the store stuff.
My wife and I volunteered at an organization in Oklahoma City when we lived there that gave “assistance” to those in poverty. We quit when we learned that the “clients” were taking whatever they could and selling it. The “charity” did no means testing and many of those in “poverty” saw the handouts as a second source of income.
Absolutely, without a doubt.
Years ago one the gals I worked with had a chicken farm and she used to let us know when the company was coming to pick up the birds. so we would all tell her how many we wanted and for 69cents per bird we had fresh chickens --- the 69cents was what her neighbor charged to slaughter and pluck the birds. It was the best chicken I had ever eaten in my life.
LOL!
Flattery .......... music to my ears!
Happy Thanksgiving my friend!
Tell themom, happy t-day!
May G_D bless us all for another year.
Wow, and I thought my 40 mile a week commute was a bummer. (5 mile one way X 4 day work week) I spent like $20 last payday to fill up my 4X4. Even at $3/gal, no big. Home heating gas is another matter altogether.
Live on a farm and drive to the city to work or something? I am curious.
I have heard of some folk in Kali-foor-nneeeaa who drive 75 miles one way to work at McDonalds - but thought that was limited to the Lompoc/Santa Barbera AO.
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