Food Pantries Struggling with Shortages

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."

"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."

It’s ironic - I have Internet now but ran out of heating fuel this evening. We haven’t paid off the last delivery completely and so.... but Internet and cable will be the next thing, I’m sure.

Right now, we’re struggling. I’m in school, which, when I’m done will double my earning potential. But school has to be paid for. And I have to drive an hour one way to get there (no classes closer for this) so I’m spending way more in gas each week. And because I’m in school FT, I am able to work less. H’s OT has been cut back to nothing. Now is the heating season. Christmas is a few weeks away. DS#2 has already outgrown his sneakers from the beginning of school in August. We brought the leftover turkey home from my mom’s, we’ve eaten it every day since, tonight we had turkey tacos and now the carcass is in the stewpot making stock and I figure I can get 2, possibly 3 meals out of it this week!

“He didn’t cite any difference between those who are truly needy and those who mooch. I trust His judgment in those matters because in essence the mooches are stealing from the truly needy. I’d hate to be on of those mooches on Judgment Day.”

Well said! :)

“...if we only had a socialist prez like hillary...”

You mean the one that wants to “take things away from us...for the Common Good?” LOL! I know. She is the stuff of nightmares, no doubt!

I didn’t think that you were picking on the SVdP Society. I just wanted to point out that around here (Ohio), the Society gives food and/or financial assistance only to those who are truly needy. The conference at my parish has a small food pantry where it stores the food that it gives away but we don’t stockpile huge stores of food, only what we would be giving to clients in the immediate future. I don’t know why the Society up in Madison would need a larger food pantry unless it is randomly giving away food to anyone who asks for it. I hope it isn’t operating like one of those food banks that opens it doors to the public and has long lines of people queuing up to get free food.

“I don’t know why the Society up in Madison would need a larger food pantry unless it is randomly giving away food to anyone who asks for it.”

‘Madistan’ is on the list of Sanctuary Cities. That means, no one asks you for “your papers” in any way, shape or form. Here are the others. I’m betting that Food Pantries are Big Business for them, as well.

Anchorage, Alaska
Fairbanks, Alaska
Chandler, Arizona
Fresno, California
Los Angeles, California
San Diego, California
San Francisco, California
Sonoma County, California
Evanston, Illinois
Cicero, Illinois
Cambridge, Massachusetts
Orleans, Massachusetts
Portland, Maine
Baltimore, Maryland
Takoma Park, Maryland
Ann Arbor, Michigan
Minneapolis, Minnesota
Durham, North Carolina
Albuquerque, New Mexico
Aztec, New Mexico
Rio Arriba County, New Mexico
Sante Fe, New Mexico
New York, New York
Ashland, Oregon
Gaston, Oregon
Marion County, Oregon
Austin, Texas
Houston, Texas
Katy, Texas
Seattle, Washington
Madison, Wisconsin.

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