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    Food Banks, in a Squeeze, Tighten Belts
    By Katie Zezima
    The New York Times

    Friday 30 November 2007

    Manchester, NH - Food banks around the country are reporting critical shortages that have forced them to ration supplies, distribute staples usually reserved for disaster relief and in some instances close.

    "It's one of the most demanding years I've seen in my 30 years" in the field, said Catherine D'Amato, president and chief executive of the Greater Boston Food Bank, comparing the situation to the recession of the late 1970s.

    Experts attributed the shortages to an unusual combination of factors, including rising demand, a sharp drop in federal supplies of excess farm products, and tighter inventory controls that are leaving supermarkets and other retailers with less food to donate.

    "We don't have nearly what people need, and that's all there is to it," said Greg Bryant, director of the food pantry in Sheffield, Vt.

    "We're one step from running out," Mr. Bryant said.

    "It kind of spirals," he added. "The people that normally donate to us have less, the retailers are selling to discount stores because people are shopping in those places, and now we have less food and more people. It's a double, triple, hit."

    The Vermont Food Bank said its supply of food was down 50 percent from last year. "It's a crisis mode," said Doug O'Brien, the bank's chief executive.

    For two weeks this month, the New Hampshire Food Bank distributed supplies reserved for emergency relief. Demand for food here is up 40 percent over last year and supply is down 30 percent, which is striking in the state with the lowest reliance on food banks.

    "It's the price of oil, gas, rents and foreclosures," said Melanie Gosselin, executive director of the New Hampshire Food Bank.

    Ms. Gosselin said household budget squeezes had led to a drop in donations and greater demand. "This is not the old 'only the homeless are hungry,'" she said. "It's working people."

    Lane Kenworthy, a professor of sociology and political science at the University of Arizona, agreed, saying: "The overall picture is that household incomes are kind of stuck. There's very little way to increase income, and most people have a very heavy debt load. Any event that increases your costs is really, really troublesome, because you're already stretched thin."

    The food bank in Manchester delivers provisions to a housing project each week, and on a recent Monday, Matthew Whooley, 26, of Manchester, was waiting in line with his wife, Penny, and their four children.

    "Every week there's less and less food," Mr. Whooley said. "It used to be potatoes, meat and bread, and last week we got Doritos and flour. The food is getting shorter, and the lines keep getting longer."

    In part, food banks are suffering because farmers are doing well. The food banks rely on supplies from the federal Agriculture Department's Bonus Commodity Program, which buys surplus crops like apples and potatoes from farmers.

    "Right now, the agricultural economy is very strong and the surpluses aren't available for us to purchase," said Jean Daniel, a department spokeswoman. "Certainly we're empathetic, but unfortunately we cannot count on those bonus commodities every year."

    Supplies from the surplus program dropped to $67 million worth last year, from $154.3 million in 2005 and $233 million in 2004. Figures for this year are not available, Ms. Daniel said.

    Food bank operators are lobbying for passage of a farm bill currently stalled in the Senate that would raise emergency aid for food banks to $250 million a year, from $140 million. That figure has remained steady since 2002.

    Susannah Morgan, executive director of the Food Bank of Alaska said, "The biggest problem is that the federal government's programs are dropping as need is growing."

    Ms. Morgan said the decline has affected rural Alaska, where native tribes run most food pantries. She said about 10 percent of the state's rural food banks have closed because there is not enough federal help coming in.

    "They don't feel staffing and heating is worth it for the small amount of food," Ms. Morgan said.

    Further complicating the picture, Ms. Morgan and others said, is tighter inventory monitoring, which has left many stores with less to donate.

    "They know exactly what they have, down to the can," said Darren Hoffman, a spokesman for the Los Angeles Regional Food Bank, whose supplies are down 11 percent this year. "They can track a lot better and don't order in bulk. Efficiency has kind of been the enemy of the food bank."

    Extra food - items that are not selling or seasonal inventory that is no longer needed - is now often sold to low-cost retailers, said Tim Viall, executive director of the Greater Stockton Food Bank in Stockton, Calif.

    "We're getting fewer canned goods than last year from retail grocers, because they're selling it to warehouse food stores," Mr. Viall said. "We're putting more reliance on canned food drives, and we're trying to ramp up the fresh fruit and produce. We are in the heart of one of the most productive agriculture areas in the world, and we're trying to take advantage." In places where community donations are down and there are no food manufacturers to solicit, pantries and food banks are making difficult choices. The Society of St. Vincent de Paul food pantry in Cincinnati is giving families less food this year because there is not enough. It has started to ask smaller families to take fewer products.

    "Donations are down, and people who need help is up," said Liz Carter, executive director of the food bank. "So what are we going to do. We just made the decision that instead of giving people six or seven days worth of food, we're going to give them three or four days of food, which is a drop in the bucket."

    Ginny Hildebrand, executive director of the Association of Arizona Food Banks, said many pantries were facing similar situations.

    At a recent conference for food bank employees, Ms. Hildebrand said, "Everybody was saying the same thing. They're all hit by an increase in demand, all hit by the impact of the higher costs of food, and all hit by federal reductions. We just don't have the quantity of products available that we used to."

    Ross Fraser, a spokesman for America's Second Harvest, which distributes more than two billion pounds of donated food and grocery products annually, said the shortages at food banks were the worst the organization had seen in 26 years.

    "Suddenly it's on everyone's radar," Mr. Fraser said. "Food banks are calling us and saying, 'My God, we have to get food.'"

 

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    Hunters Help Supply Meat for Food Banks
    By Susan Gallagher
    The Associated Press

    Friday 30 November 2007

    Helena, Mont. - When Frank Moran shot a mule deer during a hunting trip in Montana, there was no question what he would do with the venison. Moran took the deer to a meat processor, paid $70 for butchering and returned home to Sacramento, Calif. When the venison had been ground and wrapped, it went into a freezer at the Gallatin Valley Food Bank in Bozeman.

    In the coming months, the Montana food bank and other charities nationwide will distribute thousands of pounds of game meat provided by hunters. Sportsmen have donated their kills for years, but this hunting season the meat comes at a time of rising need, with food banks across the country reporting increases in the number of people asking for help.

    "Believe me, (game) is a valuable product," said Ross Fraser of America's Second Harvest - The Nation's Food Bank Network, a Chicago-based relief organization with more than 200 food-bank affiliates nationwide. "High-protein foods are the hardest foods for our food banks to come by."

    Fraser said he does not know how much game is donated to food banks. In Montana, the Butte Emergency Food Bank reported it received 7,500 pounds of game in 2006 and nearly as much this year, including meat from six elk killed illegally and confiscated by state wardens.

    Moran, a retired school facilities planner, shot his deer Nov. 19 during a professionally guided hunt that was a gift from his son.

    "Based upon the time I was going to be in Montana, if I'd wanted to have it butchered and packaged and ready for me to take home, I didn't have that kind of time," Moran said recently. He would have donated the meat to charity anyway, he said.

    The Department of Agriculture reported this month that an estimated 35.5 million people in the United States lacked the money to buy food during at least some point in 2006. The figure, which does not include homeless people, is up from 35.1 million in 2005.

    Food bank operators say their client lists are growing.

    The Food Bank of Southwest Georgia has estimated an increase of between 10 and 20 percent in requests for assistance. The Butte Emergency Food Bank had 1,238 clients listed in October, the largest number for that month in at least three years, manager Joanne Cortese said.

    Some food banks in Ohio and New York are concerned about reductions in their supplies, as is the New Hampshire Food Bank, which has reported a reduction of 40,000 pounds compared with last year.

    The Montana Food Bank Network recently tried to step up donations of game by launching Montana Hunters Against Hunger, encouraging sportsmen to donate wild meat and covering the tax-deductible costs of processing. Some processors also give discounts when preparing game that will be donated, and sometimes the charities help cover the bill. The hunting group Safari Club International also provides assistance.

    At the Butte food bank, a qualifying household with one or two people can get 50 pounds of free food - about a week's supply - every 30 days. Of that, 1 pound will be meat, likely game.

    Cortese, who received a bill of $847 for the processing of the six confiscated elk, said she was happy to have stocked the freezer with about 1,000 pounds of meat for such a price.

    The Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks requires that donated game be from a legal hunt and that no money can exchange hands. The state imposes no meat-inspection requirements on donated game and said it had no documented cases of health problems associated with the meat.

    For ease in processing and fairness in distribution, game destined for food banks is packaged as ground meat.

    "We can't really give steaks to one family and ribs to someone else," Cortese said.

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    On the Net:

    America's Second Harvest: http://www.secondharvest.org

 

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    Barely Getting By and Facing a Cold Maine Winter
    By Erik Eckholm
    The New York TImes

    Saturday 24 November 2007

    Milbridge, Me. - They have worked since their teens in backbreaking seasonal jobs, extracting resources from the sea and the forest. Their yards are filled with peeling boats and broken lobster traps.

    In sagging wood homes and aged trailers scattered across Washington County, many of Maine's poorest and oldest shiver too much in the winter, eat far more biscuits and beans than meat and cannot afford the weekly bingo game at the V.F.W. hall.

    In this long-depressed "down east" region, where the wild blueberry patches have turned a brilliant crimson, thousands of elderly residents live on crushingly meager incomes. This winter promises to be especially chilling, with fuel oil prices rising and fuel assistance expected to decline. But many assume that others are worse off than themselves and are too proud to ask for assistance, according to groups that run meal programs and provide aid for heating and weatherizing.

    "One of our biggest problems is convincing people to take help," said Eleanor West, director of services for the Washington Hancock Community Agency, a federally chartered nonprofit group. "I tell them, 'You worked hard all your life and paid taxes and are getting back a little of what you paid in.'"

    Over the last half century, Social Security, Medicare and private pensions have lifted most of the nation's elderly. In 1960, one in three lived below the poverty line; now fewer than one in 10 do. But in Washington County, the poverty rate among those 65 and older is nearly one in five and many more live only a little above the federal subsistence standard in 2007 of $10,200 for a single person and $13,690 for two.

    For thousands on fixed incomes, fuel assistance may decline while Social Security checks are scarcely rising.

    Viola Brooks, 81, worked in fish and blueberry factories while her husband worked in textile and logging jobs. Now widowed, she gets $588 a month from Social Security, supplemented by $112 in food stamps and one-time fuel aid of more than $500 for the winter.

    But this year, that fuel aid will not fill a single tank. The average house cost $1,800 to heat last year, and minimal comfort this winter may require closer to $3,000; trailers will require somewhat less. Electricity and rent already take up most of Ms. Brooks's income.

    "I'm broke every month, and the trailer needs storm windows," she said. "I cook a lot of pea soup and baked beans and buy flour to make biscuits."

    "Some day I'd like to go to a hairdresser," Ms. Brooks said of a dream deferred. Still she says she enjoys her lovebirds and cats, and points out that "some people have it worse."

    Jobs for the elderly, a growing trend nationwide, are virtually nonexistent in these hamlets. Many people survive with help from a range of programs including food stamps, Medicaid, disability and energy assistance; others suffer silently, long used to hardship and fiercely independent.

    In a pattern still common, older people here often held a series of seasonal jobs, usually without benefits. They worked on lobster boats and dug clams or bloodworms (to sell for bait) from spring to fall, raked wild blueberries in August, harvested potatoes and then made Christmas wreaths for mail-order companies to mid-December. Wives often worked in sardine canneries or in blueberry processing.

    "By their 50s, their bodies start breaking down," said Tim King, director of the community agency at its headquarters in Milbridge, adding that high rates of smoking, obesity and diabetes also contributed to early aging. The aid programs define those as 60 and over as elderly.

    Because of their irregular careers and payments into the system, many people get Social Security benefits far below the national average of more than $1,000 a month.

    Velma L. Harmon, a 79-year-old widow, receives only $220 a month from Social Security and has a grand total of $85 to live on each month after she pays her subsidized rent and utilities at her apartment complex in Machias, one of a growing number of such federally aided facilities for the elderly.

    She is grateful for free lunches provided by the Eastern Agency on Aging, another government-financed group, but too proud to apply for food stamps that would give her a bit more spending money. "Trying to buy Christmas presents, that's the hardest thing," said Ms. Harmon, who has a mangled finger from her years of snipping sardine heads in a canning factory.

    The preoccupation right now is soaring fuel prices: cheaper natural gas is unavailable in this region, and wood heat is often impractical or insufficient. But because of limited federal money, average fuel assistance for the 46,000 low-income Maine families expected to apply will probably decline to $579 this year, from $688 last year, said Jo-Ann Choate of the Maine State Housing Agency.

    "Low-income people aren't even going to be able to fill up a single tank of fuel oil," Ms. Choate said. "They already wrap themselves up in blankets during the winter. This year they'll be colder."

    The disabled, and there are many, may have it hardest. Dolly Jordan of Milbridge has a history of two bad marriages, a bone-crushing auto accident and poor health, and looks and feels older than 61. With osteoporosis, arthritis, diabetes and obesity, she spends most of the day in a wheelchair and uses a combination of a gripper, a broom and a cane to make her bed or hang her laundry.

    Come winter, she hangs a blanket over the front door of her little red wooden house, where she has lived alone the last 10 years and which sits on concrete blocks with no foundation. She turns the heat off at night to save fuel.

    Her disability payment is $623 a month, plus she gets just $10 from the state and $74 in food stamps. After paying the housing tax and her utility bills, she said, she must watch every remaining penny. A daughter drives her to the distant town of Ellsworth for cheaper shopping.

    Like many, she keeps a police scanner on as a diversion and, unable to afford cable, she watches the same videos over and over - her favorite is "On Golden Pond."

    "I wish for bedtime to come," she said. "The days are so long."

    Easing down a ramp to her mailbox is a perilous 15-minute ordeal. Still, she said, "I wait for Fridays."

    "That's junk-mail day, and I read all the ads. That's my best day."

    She added, "There's always older people out there who have it harder."

    Frederick and Kathleen Call, in Harrington, are in their 60s and live in a 1970s trailer with buckling walls. They live on his disability check - he has had six heart attacks - and food stamps and fuel assistance. Like many others in the region, they buy all their clothes at a church-run thrift shop. They spend their days playing board games and rummy and watching squirrels on their porch.

    "We used to go to the food pantry for a free box," Ms. Call said, "but I saw an old woman who looked like she really needed it. She was thin and cold. I gave her a blanket. We haven't gone for free food for years."

    Some people here seem to have sunny outlooks no matter what. In the fishing village of Jonesport, Elizabeth Emerson, 87, is hard of hearing and has a titanium knee but is spry and irrepressively cheerful.

    She lives in the tiny house her husband, a trucker, built in 1949, and has a view of the gravestone where her name is already etched next to his. Having a daughter nearby, and a total of 52 grand-, great-grand and great-great-grandchildren, whose pictures fill the walls and the refrigerator door, helps in ways practical and emotional.

    Ms. Emerson said she "thoroughly enjoyed" the 25 years she spent working as an aide in a nursing home, and she demonstrated the yodeling she used to perform on command for one patient.

    Each day she walks with her dog, Sabrina, down to the stony beach where her family once swam. "I saw moose tracks the other day," she exulted. "Here is where I used to pick heather."

    With her Social Security payment of $683 a month, she refuses to feel impoverished.

    "I was never a person to be extravagant," Ms. Emerson said, adding, "I don't play beano," using the local term for bingo.

    Besides, she said, she can still afford an indulgence here and there. "My greatest vice," she added, "is Hershey bars."