When Kelly Wilcox first drove her 2017 Dodge Grand Caravan into the food pantry near her home in Payson, Utah, one thing immediately struck me. It’s a new model of Toyota and Honda sedans and minivans. “There were a lot of people in cars like me, and they had kids in their cars,” she said.
The mother of four young sons didn’t know what to expect when she visited Tabitha’s Way Local Food Pantry for the first time this spring. She knew she needed her help. Her husband had lost his job. He soon found a new job as his manager of accounts, but inflation was not enough. Wilcox, 35, said she “hasn’t caught up with her bills yet.” To keep her children fed this summer, she has been making regular visits to the pantry, she said, barring changes such as lowering or raising food prices. Her husband, which will be needed in the near future.
The Tabitha’s Way location in Spanish Fork, Utah, a suburb of Provo with a population of about 44,000, served approximately 130 households each week and provided essentials such as fresh food and formula. That number surpassed her 200 this year, serving underpaid people like Ms. Wilcox and her family.
Rising food insecurity is not a sudden wave of unemployment like it was in 2020 when the first wave of the pandemic brought the economy to a halt. It’s about inflation, with rising prices for housing, gas and especially food. Food prices rose 10.4% year-on-year, the biggest 12-month rise since 1981, according to the latest report on consumer prices.
Food banks are trying to meet these needs while coping with declining donations. It also addresses the growing awareness among those who need help that food banks are an option in some cases.
Last month, 25 million adults had at least not eaten enough in the past seven days, according to Census Bureau data. This was the largest number since just before Christmas 2020, when the pandemic continued to wreak havoc on the economy and unemployment was nearly double what it is today.
a Research conducted After a sharp decline in 2021, food insecurity rose in June and July this year to roughly the same levels reached in March and April 2020, according to the Urban Institute. About 1 in 5 adults, he reports, have experienced food insecurity in the past 30 days. Of working adults, 17.3% said they experienced food insecurity, compared with 16.3% for him in 2020 (the most recent survey had 9,494 respondents, and the margin of error is his was 1.2 percentage points).
On a local level, these trends are reflected in what Tabitha’s Way director Wendy Osborne is seeing in Utah. “More and more people have jobs. They work but they don’t earn enough,” she said.
Osborne said most of the families who received food from Tabitha’s Way had one or more jobs. “I keep hearing, ‘I’ve never had to use a food pantry. I’m not someone who needs help, I’m someone who has helped people,'” she said.
Thousands of cars lined up outside food banks and pantries were one of the iconic images of the first phase of the pandemic. At this time, the economy shrank after a nationwide shutdown. The federal government provided additional funding and additional food. An individual donor donated money.
“At first there was a big response from the charity, and the government response was very strong,” he said. Elaine Waxman, an expert in food insecurity and federal nutrition programs at the Urban Institute in Washington. But the end of heightened unemployment, stimulus packages and monthly child tax credit payments, combined with inflation, means the problem is starting to strike again. Just as the need has risen again, this time donations have fallen.
Inflation FAQ
What is inflation? Inflation is the loss of purchasing power over time. So your dollar won’t go as well tomorrow as it did today. This is usually expressed as annual fluctuations in the prices of commodities and services such as food, furniture, clothing, transportation, and toys.
“We are handling the crisis well. We will rise to the occasion,” Waxman said. “But if the crisis continues, we don’t know what to do.”
feeding america, Largest network of food banks In the country, which helps supply small pantries on the front lines where customers receive food, 65% of affiliates surveyed said they reported an increase. Offered in numbers from May to June. Only 5% reported a decrease.
At the same time, cash donations, which were a big help at the start of the pandemic, are declining. Domestic office revenues in the first quarter of this year were down nearly a third to $107 million from $151 million a year ago.
“You’re in the middle of a fight and people are leaving the scene,” Claire Babineau-Fonteno, CEO of Feeding America, said in an interview. Told.
Feeding America’s network includes 200 food banks and 60,000 food pantries and meal programs. In the four months for which data are most recently available, February through May, 73% of Feeding America food banks surveyed said food donations decreased, and 94% said food purchase costs increased 89% said they paid more. Transportation for obtaining or delivering food.
By the first three quarters of fiscal 2022, it had received 1.14 billion pounds of food from federal commodity programs, according to Feeding America.
The varying pressures on the emergency food system are evident in Tabitha’s Way. Food drive donations in the first half of 2022 were down nearly two-thirds compared to the same period last year. Grocery donations from grocery stores and restaurants were less than a quarter of what he was the year before. Cash donations dropped from about $1.1 million to less than $700,000.
Like consumers, pantries spend more money on the food they buy. Fuel to receive donated food will cost more, even if it’s slightly down from its recent highs. Labor costs for drivers and skilled staff are also rising as Utah’s unemployment rate hits his 2%. Osborne said the average hourly wage for his employees has risen from $16 a year ago to more than $20 for him. “We don’t want our employees to be food insecure,” she said.
“It’s no surprise that there was a lot of attention nationally during Covid, but unfortunately things haven’t changed, and they’re unfortunately getting worse right now, especially with all the inflation,” Osborne said.
The long lines at food banks early in the pandemic, and the cataclysm that hit everyone all at once, may have done something to shake off the lingering stigma of the emergency food system. .
“I thought there would be a lot of off-brand and ready-to-eat foods,” said Antarza Boiseau, a 24-year-old certified nursing assistant at a nursing home in Hartford, Connecticut. Instead, a mother of two young children found her pantry, a local food offering squash, shrimp and brown rice.
“You can eat sumptuous meals from the food pantry,” Boiseau said. “It’s not like you can get the bare minimum of expired leftovers.”
She started attending Food Pantry in 2021 after learning that her income was too high to qualify for SNAP benefits, sometimes called food stamps.
“I was wearing a big sweater and a hat. I didn’t want anyone to see me,” she said of her first visit to the food pantry.
Now, as inflation continues to push prices higher, she’s turned to food aid for healthy eating and encourages others in need to seek help as well.
Boiseau started posting tick tock video about her positive experience. She said to her friend: Let her go with her ID. “
Others new to the pantry have gotten through the heights of the pandemic’s shutdown without needing this kind of help, but inflation is getting harder to navigate.Ileana LeBron Cruz (44) Years old) is a health coach and also works at a dog hideout. She lives an hour west of Seattle with her husband, a Costco supervisor, and her three children. Their combined household income is about $120,000. “We live pretty much paycheck to paycheck,” she said.
Recently, LeBron Cruz found himself searching for free food options in his area after unexpectedly spending hundreds of dollars traveling to Oregon following a family emergency. rice field.
When she got home from that trip, she saw an empty refrigerator. “I get my paycheck on Thursday. It’s Tuesday. I don’t have it,” she said when she realized.
“If something happens with the way inflation works, it’s like a double blow,” she said. “If the same thing had happened six months ago, it wouldn’t have been so bad,” she said.
As LeBron Cruz said tick tock Video with over 390,000 views: “Breaking the stigma — no need to be ashamed!!!!!” She said she received some negative reactions to the video, but needs help I was also contacted by a mother who said,
“I definitely want to go feed your baby,” she said.
