At Linn County food pantries, demand is up — but so is inflation

While cuts to federal funding for food assistance have not been as severe as some feared, they have combined with two other factors already posing challenges to local food pantries: a growing demand for more help, but inflation cutting into the supply.

The Emergency Food Assistance Program, run through the U.S. Department of Agriculture, constitutes about 20 percent of the food that the food reservoir at the Hawkeye Area Community Action Program, based in Hiawatha, receives and then distributes to food pantries throughout Eastern Iowa.

HACAP’s food reservoir director, Kim Guardado, said none of the federal funding for that program has disappeared.

“That’s the program that’s in the farm bill, and it has mandatory funding by an act of Congress, so in order for anything to change … it would need to be changed in the farm bill,” Guardado said.

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The farm bill, which is supposed to be updated every five years, languished in Congress last year amid a partisan fight over issues that included food benefits. The current farm bill was extended until September, giving Congress --- now controlled by Republicans — more time to pass a new version.

There are a few other food programs run through the USDA that have been cut. Those programs include the Commodity Credit Corporation, which accounted for about 4.5 percent of HACAP’s food distribution last year, and the Local Foods Purchase Assistance program, which was responsible for less than 1 percent of HACAP’s food distribution last year.

Guardado also said that even though funding for the Emergency Food Program has not decreased, the food bank has seen less food coming through that program for the same reason it has had a harder time in recent months purchasing food on its own: inflation.

“The government still is putting the same amount of money into the program. We’re just getting less food out of it, like every other person,” Guardado said.

“Unless we find a way to supplement what we're providing … it probably does mean a little bit less food for partners, which is really scary, I think, for a lot of us, because we know that the need continues to increase. More people are visiting pantries, and if you have less food and you're trying to feed more people, that math doesn't work.”

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Increasing demand at food pantries

Food pantries across Eastern Iowa that rely on HACAP for their food have been seeing a marked increase in demand.

The Andersen Public Library in Center Point opened a small food pantry in August 2023, serving 34 households in its first month. That number increased each month, and in March it served 95 households. As of last Monday, it had served 105 households so far in April, according to library Director Janine Walters.

“I would say that it's about 40 percent families and 40 percent elderly. The other 20 percent, I have teenagers that are going to college. They're living on their own. I know of four of them sharing an apartment that has one bedroom, and that's the best that they can do. They use the pantry to supplement their food,” Walters said.

Mugisha Gloire, executive director of United We March Forward, a nonprofit in Cedar Rapids that operates three food pantries, said it has seen a similar mix of demographics, with an average of about 4,000 visits per month.

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The nonprofit’s Summit pantry opened in 2020 after the derecho as people in the mobile home communities of Grand View Village and Summit View Village, operated in southwest Cedar Rapids by Hames Homes, found themselves without refrigeration and struggling to find food, and asked for help from the owners.

“The need for food never has stopped,” said Barbara Hames-Bryant, president of Hames Homes.

Many of the pantry users come from those mobile home communities, but about 40 percent of the people served live outside those communities, according to Kelly Hitchman, the Hames Homes community coordinator manager.

“This isn’t just a Hames community pantry, this is for the whole of Cedar Rapids,” Hitchman said.

The pantry gets most of its food through HACAP and through donations from businesses like General Mills. Hitchman said the pantry hasn’t seen a recent decrease in the food its able to get, but meat, dairy and other perishable foods have always been sparse.

United We March Forward also buys food itself on occasion — usually spending a couple hundred dollars per month on the pantry — but Gloire said the more help it gets from other food providers, the better.

“As a nonprofit, allocation of funds is always critical. We need to have partners, or corporations, who are willing to donate. How can we prevent food from going to the landfill?” Gloire said.

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The pantry in the Center Point Library was able to initially rely fully on HACAP for its food supply, Walters said, but with the increase in demand in the last few months, she has seen a slight decrease is what has been available and the pantry had to find other sources. Luckily, community members have been generous.

The Center Point First Christian Church, which is just up the road from the library, has multiple volunteers that handle financial contributions to the pantry and collect food donations from parishioners. The Center Point American Veterans Legion and the nonprofit Friends of the Library also regularly hold food drives and make donations. The pantry also receives regular weekly donations from the local Dollar General store, a partnership that HACAP helped establish.

“It’s heartbreaking that we have to do this, and we see so many people struggling, but I am so grateful that my community has been behind this and that they’re willing to step up and help,” Walters said.

Walters decided to open the pantry after the library had started providing snacks for the several kids who would spend their afternoons after school there before heading to church activities or other extra-curriculars. Walter said she was surprised by how quickly the snacks were eaten, and she noticed that kids often put extras in their bags to take with them. She said she started to worry about how many kids in the community might be hungry.

Around the same time, Walters got a call from HACAP, asking if the library would be interested in putting in a food pantry that would be open whenever the library is open. There was only one other pantry in the area, at a church, but it required setting up an appointment to use. Walters said the library had a small space she figured could be converted into a pantry, so she decided to take the jump.

“I have an 11-year-old child that comes in with her brother, and she has a list. She looks for things that are nutritious. … Their mom’s working two jobs and is barely paying rent,” Walters said. “One woman told me that both her and her husband lost their jobs this month. They have six kids, and they need something to tide them over until they can get food stamps. … Another family that came in, it’s a single mom, and she just can’t make her paycheck go far enough. They’ve cut her hours at work because they can’t afford full-time employment for people anymore.”

‘This really isn’t about food’

HACAP’s Guardado said that situations like the ones Walters shared from the Center Point pantry are not uncommon. Pantries across HACAP’s service area are seeing increased traffic this year, but Guardado said the solution needs to go beyond just finding more food to give out.

“This really isn’t about food. … We're just seeing it come out as food, because people know that they can get food from a food pantry. If I can't make ends meet, nobody's going to help me put gas in my car, but I know where I can go get food to help feed my family,” Guardado said. “So, it's really about dollars, and it’s about our policies that drive what families have for income and how families spend their money.

“We're going to keep doing what we're doing as far as feeding people. … But I think we really need to talk more, as a community and as a society, about the other policies that affect families and how that drives people to food pantries to get food.”

Comments: (319) 398-8328; emily.andersen@thegazette.com