With gas prices skyrocketing along with grocery costs, many people are looking to charity food for the first time, and more are arriving on foot. US inflation is at a 40-year high and gas prices have been rising since April 2020, with the national average cost briefly reaching $5 a gallon in June. Skyrocketing rents and the end of federal COVID-19 relief have also taken a toll on finances. Food banks, which had begun to see some relief as people returned to work after the pandemic shutdown, are struggling to meet the latest need even as federal programs provide less food to distribute, grocery store donations are down and cash gifts don’t go nearly as far. Thomasina John was among hundreds of families lined up in several lanes of cars that circled the block on a recent day outside the St. Mary’s Food Bank. Mary’s in Phoenix. John said her family had never visited a food bank before because her husband had easily supported her and their four children with his construction work. “But it’s really impossible to get by without help,” said John, who hitched a ride with a neighbor to share the cost of gas as they idled under a hot desert sun. “The prices are too high.” Jesus Pascual was also in line. “It’s a real struggle,” said Pascual, a janitor who estimated he spends several hundred dollars a month on groceries for him, his wife and their five children, ages 11 to 19. The same scenario is being repeated across the country, where food bank workers are anticipating a difficult summer, keeping ahead of demand. The spike in food prices comes after state governments ended COVID-19 disaster declarations that temporarily allowed increased benefits under SNAP, the federal food stamp program that covers about 40 million Americans. “It doesn’t look like it’s going to get better overnight,” said Katie Fitzgerald, president and CEO of national food bank network Feeding America. “Demand really complicates supply challenges.” Charitable food distribution has remained well above the amounts given before the coronavirus pandemic, even though demand eased somewhat late last year. Feeding America officials say second-quarter figures won’t be ready until August, but they’re hearing anecdotally from food banks nationwide that demand is soaring. The Phoenix food bank’s main distribution center handed out food packages to 4,271 families during the third week of June, a 78 percent increase over the 2,396 families served the same week last year, a St. Mary’s Jerry Brown. More than 900 families line up at the distribution center each day for a government emergency food box filled with goods such as canned beans, peanut butter and rice, Brown said. St. Mary’s adds items purchased with cash donations as well as food provided by local supermarkets, such as bread, carrots and pork chops for a combined package worth about $75. Distribution by the Community Food Bank of Alameda County in Northern California has increased since reaching a pandemic low earlier this year, increasing from 890 households served on the third Friday in January to 1,410 households on the third Friday in June, he said. the marketing manager. Michael Altfest. At the Houston Food Bank, the largest food bank in the US, where food distribution levels earlier in the pandemic briefly peaked at a staggering 1 million pounds a day, an average of 610,000 pounds are now being given daily. That’s up from about 500,000 pounds a day before the pandemic, spokeswoman Paula Murphy said. Murphy said cash donations haven’t gone down, but inflation ensures they won’t go as far. Food bank executives said the sudden surge in demand has taken a toll on them. “Last year, we expected a decline in demand for 2022 because the economy was doing so well,” said Michael Flood, CEO of the Los Angeles Regional Food Bank. “This issue with inflation came up quite suddenly.” “A lot of them are working people who have done well during the pandemic and maybe even seen their wages go up,” Flood said. “But they also saw food prices rise beyond their budgets.” The Los Angeles bank gave away about 30 million pounds of food in the first three months of this year, slightly less than the previous quarter, but far more than the 22 million pounds given in the first quarter of 2020. Feeding America’s Fitzgerald is calling on the USDA and Congress to find a way to restore the hundreds of millions of dollars worth of commodities recently lost with the end of several temporary programs to provide food to people in need. USDA commodities, which generally account for up to 30% of food distributed by banks, accounted for more than 40% of all food distributed in fiscal year 2021 by the Feeding America network. “There is a critical need for the public sector to buy more food now,” Fitzgerald said. During the Trump administration, the USDA bought several billion dollars worth of pork, apples, dairy, potatoes and other products in a program that gave most of it to food banks. The Food Purchase & Distribution Program, designed to help American farmers hit by tariffs and other practices by US trading partners, has since ended. $1.2 billion was authorized for fiscal year 2019 and another $1.4 billion was authorized for fiscal year 2020. Another temporary USDA Farmers to Families program that provided emergency assistance provided more than 155 million boxes of food to families in need across the US during the peak of the pandemic before ending on May 31, 2021. Right now, there is enough food, but there may not be in the future, said Michael G. Manning, president and CEO of the Greater Baton Rouge Food Bank in Louisiana. He said the high cost of fuel also makes it much more expensive to collect and distribute food. The USDA’s Coronavirus Food Assistance Program, which included Farmers to Families, was “a gift” to the Alameda County Community Food Bank, providing 5 billion pounds of goods in a single year, the Altfest spokesman said. “So the loss was a big hit,” he said. Altfest said up to 10% of people now looking for food are first timers, and a growing number are showing up on foot rather than in cars to save gas. “The food they get from us helps them save already overstretched budgets for other expenses like gas, rent, diapers and baby formula,” she said. Meanwhile, the bank’s food purchases have soared from a monthly average of $250,000 before the pandemic to $1.5 million now because of food prices. Exploding gasoline costs forced the bank to increase its fuel budget by 66 percent, Altfest said. Supply chain issues are also a problem, requiring the food bank to become more aggressive with procurement. “We used to reorder when our inventory was down to three weeks worth, now we reorder up to six weeks out,” Altfest said. She said the food bank has already ordered and paid for whole chickens, stuffing, cranberries and other feast items to distribute for Thanksgiving, the busiest time of year. At the Mexican American Opportunity Foundation in Montebello east of Los Angeles, workers say they see many families along with elderly people like Diane Martinez, who lined up on a recent morning on foot. Some of the hundreds of mostly Spanish-speaking recipients had cars parked nearby. They carried cloth bags, cardboard boxes or pushed carts to pick up their food packages from the distribution center served by the Los Angeles bank. “Food prices are so high and every day they’re going higher,” said Martinez, who expressed gratitude for the bags of black beans, ground beef and other groceries. “I’m so glad they can help us.” —- AP video reporter Eugene Garcia contributed from Montebello, California.
Follow Snow:
