Food pantry donations fall as demand rises

CARBONDALE, Ill. -- Margie Parker used to fill the boxes people take home from her food pantry with at least two weeks' worth of staples -- canned meat, fruit juice, and plenty of carbohydrates.

Those days are over. Like other pantries for the poor in Illinois, Parker's in this Southern Illinois town is barely providing enough to feed a family for a week, and what's there isn't as nutritious as in the past: fewer canned goods and other protein-rich food, and little of the instant potatoes that used to fill her storeroom to the ceiling.

"We try to give out enough for balanced, nutritious meals, but we're totally at the mercy of what we get in donations," said Parker, as she stood in her half-empty storeroom in the basement of the University Baptist Church.

And like at other food pantries across the region, donations are down -- from the federal government and private industry alike.

Sending less

The U.S. Department of Agriculture, whose Emergency Food Assistance Program used to supply a major part of food banks' inventories, sent 27 percent less to Illinois' nine food banks in the third quarter of 2002 compared to the same period a year earlier, said Tom Green, spokesman for the Illinois Department of Human Services, which administers the program in Illinois.

Green's department allocated $500,000 "to bolster the state's food supply" for the poor in the wake of the reduction, Green said.

Because food charities and food banks receive a different mix of donations, from local food drives, fund raisers or from the federal government, the drop in USDA donations affects each differently.

The decrease has meant an 80 percent drop in USDA donations at the Carbondale pantry and a 54 percent drop at the Eastern Illinois Food Bank in Urbana, which feeds some 24,000 people a month through 200 charities, officials at those organizations said.

Federal donations have in the past comprised most of the food on the Urbana and Carbondale charities' shelves, and often the most nutritious, said officials from both organizations.

"We're able to fill the gap" partially with additional, private donations, said Eastern Illinois Food Bank Director Linda Wulf. "But the question is, how long can we sustain it?" she said.

Ethel Colson, 63, of Makanda, who waited in line recently at the Carbondale Pantry, said it was the first time she didn't see extra food lying on tables for people to pick through while they waited for their boxes to be filled.

Affecting other states

The decline in USDA donations has also affected other states. The St. Louis Area Food Bank, which supplies 400 charities in Missouri and southwestern Illinois, including Carbondale's, has seen a 50 percent drop in USDA donations over the past six months, said Frank Finnigan, the food bank's director.

Donations from corporations have decreased as well, Finnigan said.

Technological improvements in manufacturing and marketing have helped companies limit their overproduction and other miscalculations that used to result in tons of extra food, he said.

Kellogg Inc., for example, had about 10 percent less food to donate in 2002 than it did the year before, said Tim Knowlton, a spokesman for the Battle Creek, Mich.-based company.

Charities are soliciting donations from new sources but are getting food that pantries cannot always distribute effectively.

"Pantries that were relying on USDA products now must adjust to more perishable donations from us, (such as) fresh produce," said Finnigan of the St. Louis Area Food Bank.

Fresh food donations spoil far sooner than canned or packaged goods.

"Most (hunger) agencies are churches or other volunteer organizations, and they don't have large freezers or refrigerated vehicles" to keep the donations good for long, Finnigan said.

John Rice, a spokesman for the Agriculture Department, said the agency "intends to currently meet its commitment on entitlement commodities," referring to the program in which the government buys surplus commodities to support prices and sends the food to the hungry.

But food bank officials contend plans by the Bush Administration to take $937 million out of the emergency-food program to assist livestock producers who have been harmed by drought may make that difficult.