Empty Shelves: Are local food pantries surviving the crunch?

November 20, 2007

Waterbury Record

by Monica Mead

“Too much turkey” is a common refrain as bountiful Thanksgiving meals take center stage around the nation tomorrow.

Even in Vermont, roasted birds and candied yams are plentiful in nearly every home.

But hunger and poverty don’t take a holiday, and some Vermonters will make do with little or no food. It’s only getting worse, say those who fight hunger, even here in Waterbury.

Adele Yandow, former director at the Waterbury Area Food Shelf, said the shelf is keeping up with demand, but more people than ever before are in need of food.

“Every year we’ve seen it grow,” she said, noting that the working poor make up the fastest growing segment of the shelf’s clientele.

Sis Sabin, the shelf’s director, agreed.

“Our numbers are up and they do not seem to be declining,” she said. The shelf served about five individual clients back in 1992, but that number now exceeds 2,000 individuals each year, “and I don’t see things getting any better,” Sabin said.

Many needy people work for minimum wage; coupled with rising fuel and heating costs, it makes for tough choices.

At Duxbury’s “Elf” Shelf, the town’s free food pantry, a similar theme unfolds.

“It’s the very high cost of living, and the lack of good-paying, available jobs,” said Ruth Haskins, the pantry’s founder, of the increased need for food.

Some of her clients choose between filling the gas tank to get to work and filling their bellies, she said, “and that’s sad.”

Since starting Duxbury’s food shelf in 2004, the number of households served has almost doubled, Haskins said.

About 135 Duxbury households have been fed so far this year. Local need is on the rise and only mirrors a statewide trend.

Where’s the food?

The Vermont Foodbank, which funnels food through 270 outlets in Vermont such as the Waterbury and Duxbury shelves, is facing winter with depleted supplies, leaving food pantries scrambling.

Officials at Vermont’s only food bank raised the alarm two weeks ago, asking Vermonters to donate directly to local shelves instead of the Barre warehouse.

“We need to get these food shelves filled,” said Judy Stermer, communications specialist for the Vermont Foodbank. “Those are the front lines. That’s our first priority.”

The problem, she said, is two-fold: more hungry people and less food.

“We’re seeing an increased need for food in the state,” said Stermer, who, like Duxbury’s Haskins, attributes the rise in need to the loss of sustainable jobs and rising fuel costs.

“The cost of living is up,” Stermer said. “Folks that are living right on the edge most of the year are having to access food.”

In fact, the number of people using free food sites around the state is up about 30 percent since last year, she said.

In Washington County, the working poor make up nearly 40 percent of all those getting emergency food, according to the food bank.

And, while more than 3,600 people in Washington County participate in the federal food stamp program, those who qualify for it exceeds 6,700.

Last year, the food bank distributed 6.5 million pounds of food to shelves and free food sites around the state.

Still, food supplies are down, especially from the federal government.

Most of the food bank’s donations were commodities from the United States Department of Agriculture — cheese, peanut butter, and dried goods — but this year, the amount given to the Vermont Foodbank plummeted by about 70 percent.

Federal commodities given dropped from $1 million in 2003 to $300,000 in 2006, and so far this year, Vermont has received only $180,000 in such commodities, Stermer said.

Commodity food is the only form of federal aid received by the food bank. Foodbank volunteers are hopeful the 2007 federal farm bill, which determines how much in federal commodities will be given next year — will help turn the tide.

The bill, said Stermer, is on hold until after Thanksgiving, but they’re banking on getting double the amount of commodities next year.

“I’m hopeful it’s going to stick,“ she said, “but we have a way to go yet.”

Meantime, local shelves feel the strain, and have to make do.

“It’s gone down considerably from what it was,” Yandow said of commodity food.

The Waterbury pantry has “enough backup,” said Sabin, “but we don’t get as much as we used to.”

In Duxbury, Haskins said last month the shelf got only canned green beans: This month it was canned potatoes and rice.

Where once juice, pasta, and vegetables were plentiful, there’s little to be had now, she said.

Like those statewide, the Waterbury and Duxbury food shelves receive no funds directly from the state or federal government.

In addition to commodity food from the Vermont Foodbank, donations of food and money from citizens and businesses keep pantries stocked.

The Waterbury shelf hasn’t faced supply problems so far, said Yandow, due in no small part to area benefactors.

“This is a remarkable community,” she said, noting that some residents donate fresh, seasonal vegetables from local gardens. “They don’t forget us,” she said.

Sabin said there were plenty of Thanksgiving turkeys this year, and, hopefully, they’ll be set for Christmas, too.

Not enough turkeys

That’s not the case in Duxbury where, as of last week, only six families were getting birds.

According to Haskins, who collected “turkey points” on grocery bills from the Shaw’s supermarket to get turkeys, it’s the first year the tiny shelf won’t have turkeys for every family that needs them.

Duxbury’s food shelf did get something of a boost when Lori Morse, a teacher at Crossett Brook Middle School, organized a two-week food drive that ended last Wednesday.

Haskins wasn’t sure how many pounds of food the school’s 300 students collected, but it was enough to fill a 4-by-6-foot storage shelf.

“I was so excited,” Haskins said.

The event was capped with a mid-day procession of students who marched every item from the school’s Duxbury campus to the food shelf at the town office on Route 100.

The gift may last only six weeks, but was “incredible,” nonetheless, Haskins said.

She said an anonymous $150 donation came in late last week, but is already set aside to buy Christmas fare.

“It won’t be much this year,” Haskins said of Christmas meals, “but it’ll be there.”

She said it’s understandably harder for people to give when they’re feeling strained to pay higher bills as well.

Stermer, of the Vermont Foodbank, agreed.

“People think about hunger at this time of year,” she said, “but it’s tough when we’re all feeling the pinch of the cost of living.”

November 20, 2007

Press Room