Region's food insecurity grew significantly in 2020

The battle against hunger in Southeast Missouri intensified in 2020 as the COVID-19 pandemic — and loss of income — forced thousands of families to tighten their budgets and become “food insecure.”

The Southeast Missouri Food Bank, which provides food to 140 food pantries, soup kitchens and shelters in 16 Southeast Missouri counties, reported Wednesday it distributed a record 16.35 million pounds — or 8,175 tons — of food in 2020, an increase of more than 3 million pounds above the 12.9 million pounds it distributed in 2019.

To put it another way, the food bank distributed 13.6 million meals to thousands of Southeast Missouri families and individuals in 2020.

The Sikeston-based food distribution center also organized 432 mobile food distribution events in 2020, which was nearly 200 more than the 234 that were held the previous year.

“If anyone had told us at the start of 2020 that we were going to distribute more than 16 million pounds of food and hold nearly double the number of mobile food distributions, we probably would have said, ‘No way, we don’t have the resources for that,’” said Joey Keys, the food bank’s chief executive officer.

Keys said he realized in March that last year wouldn’t be “business as usual” at the food bank as the COVID-19 outbreak spread to the Midwest, forcing businesses close and lay off, fire or furlough thousands of employees, many of whom remain without jobs.

Higher need in Southeast Missouri

“The counties we cover have some of the highest rates of hunger and poverty in the state, and the pandemic only made that worse,” Keys said. “When the pandemic hit, and we started seeing double the number of people needing food assistance because of lost jobs and wages, we rallied quickly and kept up that pace during pretty much the whole year.”

According to Feeding America, of which the Southeast Missouri Food Bank is an affiliate, one in five people and almost one in three children are considered food insecure in Southeast Missouri.

“Our rates are among the highest in the state,” Keys said. “If you rank all Missouri counties by hunger rates, our area has seven of the state’s top 10.” Those counties, all among the 16 served by the Southeast Missouri Food Bank, are Pemiscot, Ripley, Dunklin, Wayne, New Madrid, Mississippi and Butler.

In Cape Girardeau County, where the food bank works with two dozens agencies and food pantries, it’s estimated 17.6% of the county’s overall population, and 23.4% of the children in the county, are food insecure. Those numbers represent increases of more than 5% among the county’s total population since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic and more than 9% among children.

Mobile pantries and pre-packaged boxes

Mobile food distributions, in which pre-packaged boxes of food are distributed in drive-through fashion, were a cornerstone of the food bank’s 2020 response to the ongoing need for food assistance.

“With a mobile (distribution), we are able to get food quickly into the more remote parts of our service area, including those communities that may not have a brick-and-mortar pantry,” Keys said.

Wherever possible, food pantries converted their distribution services to drive-through operations, which helped limit person-to-person contact that could have helped spread the virus.

“Without our network of pantries, our mobile partners and, of course, our donors, I don’t know how we would have been able to meet the need,” Keys said. “We saw both grocery and freight prices increase 20 to 40% while food donations were dropping. Food banks and grocers everywhere were competing for the same products. It was a perfect storm.”

The food bank estimates its serving about 40% more families than it did before the pandemic, going from about 63,000 people per month to between 85,000 and 90,000.

The increased demand, Keys said, will likely continue for several years even after the pandemic ends.

“Our concern now is on being able to maintain our response,” he said. “If you look at what food banks saw after the 2008 recession, it took two to three years before the number of people seeking services was back to pre-recession levels, so we expect higher rates of people needing assistance during 2021 and possibly 2022.”

By the numbers

In 2020, the Southeast Missouri Food Bank:

• Provided monthly boxes of food to 5,350 senior citizens.
• Partnered with 32 school districts to provide weekend backpacks of food to 1,167 students living in food insecure households during a 36-week school year.
• Distributed 2.57 million pounds of produce, dairy and protein products through the federal Farm to Family program created specifically to address the pandemic’s “double whammy” of increased food insecurity and market losses to food producers.
• Distributed 611,890 pounds of fresh produce donated by area farmers and growers.
• Completed 744 SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) applications helping link eligible people to food on a regular basis.

In addition to the counties mentioned above, the Southeast Missouri Food Bank also serves Bollinger, Carter, Madison, Perry, Reynolds, Scott, Ste. Genevieve and Stoddard counties.

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