Coronavirus: US food banks are overrun, as surging hunger meets dwindling supplies

Members of the Washington National Guard help out at food banks across the state. PHOTO: AFP

OMAHA - In Omaha, Nebraska, a food pantry that typically serves as few as 100 people saw 900 show up on a single day.

In Jonesboro, Arkansas, after a powerful tornado struck, a food bank received less than half the donations it expected because nervous families held on to what they had.

And in Washington state and Louisiana, the National Guard has been called in to help pack food boxes and ensure that the distributions run smoothly.

Demand for food assistance in the United States is rising at an unprecedented rate, just as the nation's food banks are being struck by shortages of both donated food and volunteer workers.

Uniformed guardsmen help "take the edge off" at increasingly tense distributions of boxes filled with cans of chicken noodle soup, tuna fish, and pork and beans, said Mr Mike Manning, chief executive at the Greater Baton Rouge Food Bank.

"Their presence provides safety for us during distributions," he added. Mr Manning, who has worked at the food bank for 16 years, including through Hurricane Katrina, said that he has never witnessed such a combination of need, scarcity and anxiety.

"'Crazy' pretty much sums it up," he said.

"I've never seen anything like it," said Ms Stacy Dean, vice-president for food assistance policy at the Centre on Budget and Policy Priorities, a left-leaning research organisation in Washington, DC.

She has studied food security for more than a quarter-century.

"People love the phrase 'the perfect storm,'" she added, "but nothing is built for this."

Feeding America, the nation's largest network of food banks, with more than 200 affiliates, has projected a US$1.4 billion (S$2 billion) shortfall in the next six months alone.

Last week, Mr Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, announced that he was donating US$100 million to the group - the largest single donation in its history but still less than one-tenth of what it needs.

The coronavirus is everywhere in America, and so is the hunger.

More than a million people have viewed drone footage of a miles-long line of cars waiting for food last week along a bend in the Monongahela River leading to the Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank.

A spokesman for the organisation, Ms Beth Burrell, said that 800 cars were served that day.

Another distribution this week drew even more.

Close to 10 million Americans reported losing their jobs in the second half of March. The true number of newly unemployed is almost certainly higher, and many have little or no buffer against the sudden loss of income.

Even before the current economic crisis, the Federal Reserve found that four in 10 American adults did not have the savings or other resources to cover an unexpected US$400 expense.

While Congress passed a sweeping economic recovery package last month that promised payments of up to US$1,200 to most American adults, it remains unclear when the funds will arrive.

Adding to the problem, school closings across the country mean that many families who relied on free or subsidised school breakfasts and lunches to keep their children fed are facing even greater need.

A NEARLY TENFOLD RISE IN FOOD COST

At exactly the moment that more Americans find themselves turning to food charities, the charities are facing shortages of their own.

They rely on a volunteer labour force, one that skews heavily towards retirees.

Across the country, older volunteers are sheltering at home for their own health and safety - sometimes by choice and sometimes at the government's direction.

Perhaps more alarmingly, many of the organisations that typically donate large volumes of food have themselves shut down.

Restaurants, hotels and casinos have closed across the country. And grocery stores, which ordinarily share unsold inventory that is approaching its best-by date, have less to donate because their worried customers have been stripping so many shelves bare.

"When Americans began stocking up on toilet paper, pasta, dried beans and anything else they could get their hands on, supermarkets no longer had that excess, nor the time, to do the kind of shelf sweeps to check what they could give," said Ms Janet Poppendieck, an expert on poverty and food assistance. She is also the author of "Sweet Charity? Emergency Food and the End of Entitlement."

The result is that food banks are buying what they used to receive for nothing.

At Food Bank for the Heartland in Omaha, the amount of food donated for March dropped by nearly half. The food bank typically purchases US$73,000 of food in a month this time of year but has spent US$675,000 in the past four weeks.

In New York City, where more than 8.6 billion kilos of food are distributed under normal circumstances and the virus poses an enormous test to the system, 49 per cent of respondents to a recent Siena College poll in the city said they were concerned about being able to afford food.

DUMPSTER ORIGINS

Food banks are large warehouses or distribution centres that supply local storefronts known as food pantries but also hand food directly to some individuals.

They are a relatively recent feature of American life.

Mr John van Hengel founded the nation's first such organisation, St Mary's Food Bank, in Phoenix in 1967 after a conversation with a woman who looked for food in dumpsters to feed her children.

The concept spread around the country, and Mr van Hengel established the national network that became Feeding America in 1979.

Food banks are distinct from the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Programme (Snap), formerly known as "food stamps", which helps recipients purchase their own groceries.

Roughly 40 million people rely on the programme, though a recent Trump administration rule change was expected to push 700,000 people from the rolls before the coronavirus crisis began.

By Feeding America's own estimates, Snap dwarfs food banks as a source of sustenance for needy Americans, providing nine meals for every one from its nationwide food bank network. But the sudden surge of demand has outstripped Snap's ability to process new applications.

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The coronavirus crisis, with layoffs soaring everywhere simultaneously, will probably test the nation's food banks like none before.

'Hungry People Are Hungry Each and Every Day'

Ms Christina Wong, director of public policy and advocacy at Northwest Harvest, an independent food bank in Seattle, said that the group was using up the food in its warehouse down to what it had secured during a holiday food drive.

The food bank's bulk purchasing operation, used to paying 25 US cents on the dollar, is having to compete on the open market with grocery stores and is starting to have to pay full cost.

Her group estimated that Washington state had gone from 800,000 people struggling to put food on the table to 1.6 million since the outbreak began.

Before the crisis, Northwest Harvest had tried to create a dignified experience for clients, as close as possible to shopping at a conventional grocery store, with an emphasis on fresh, local food.

"We've reverted to handing out a box of food," Ms Wong said, with macaroni and cheese, canned chicken and peanut butter in a typical container.

Based in Las Vegas, Three Square Food Bank previously distributed food through 180 pantries across Clark County.

Since the outbreak - and the sudden closing of nearly all of the city's gambling and tourism attractions - the organisation has restructured, with 10 pantries and 21 new drive-through distribution sites.

Mr Larry Scott, Three Square's chief operating officer, said that the group had expected 200 to 250 cars a day at each drive-through.

They're getting between 500 to 600 cars instead, with lines up to 6km long.

"Every day, we distribute everything that we bring to a site," Mr Scott said.

An initial glut of high-quality food from shuttered casinos is basically gone, Mr Scott said. Now his food bank is burning through an extra US$300,000 to US$400,000 a week in cash to buy food.

He said that he saw no relief in sight.

"What we do today has to be repeated again tomorrow, and the next day, and the next day," he said. "Hungry people are hungry each and every day."

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