SEMO Food Bank responds to increased food insecurity due to coronavirus

The Southeast Missouri Food Bank in Sikeston, Missouri, has stepped up efforts to acquire and distribute food in recent months, to help address shortfalls in people’s food budgets due to COVID-19 disruptions.

Lisa Church, chief advancement officer with the food bank, said one visible portion of the food bank’s response is the mobile food pantries, which have increased from about 15 to 20 per month to more than 50 each month in April and May.

With each mobile, Church said, 200 to 300 families receive 25 to 30 pounds of food, depending on what’s available.

That adds up to about $2,500 of food distributed at each mobile food pantry session, Church said.

“It’s the cornerstone of our whole response,” Church noted.

Since the food bank serves 16 counties, Church said the mobiles rotate each week to attempt to reach the areas with the highest need, most consistently.

“Southeast Missouri already has very high rates of food insecurity,” Church said, with 1 in 6 families and 1 in 5 children experiencing food insecurity. That means there are not resources in that home to access enough healthy food to adequately nourish the family, she said.

“Since coronavirus hit, unemployment skyrocketed,” Church said. “Along with that, we are seeing an incredible increase in need.”

While the exact increase varies from county to county, overall, Church said, the increase is from 50% to 100%.

“It’s scary,” Church said. “I can only imagine the desperation these families must feel.”

Church said it’s not uncommon for families to live paycheck to paycheck, so missing a couple of paychecks has a profound effect, and has put a lot of people in a precarious situation.

Increased need, increased prices

SEMO Food Bank has a network of more than 100 member agencies, Church said, including food pantries, soup kitchens, homeless shelters, domestic violence shelters and more.

“A lot of our member agencies are reporting more people, in some cases double or triple the amount that usually comes to the pantry,” Church said, and that includes a lot of “first-timers,” or people who have never needed food assistance before.

“People are nervous about doing that. They may not know the process, how to access food, and there’s a stigma attached,” Church said. “It’s hard for people, and we really want to be aware of that.”

Since the increased response began in mid-March, SEMO Food Bank has distributed about 2 million pounds of food, Church said, about 700,000 pounds of which were distributed through the mobiles.

“As a comparison, that’s more than double what we distributed at this time last year,” Church said.

That food has to come from somewhere, and that’s a significant challenge facing the food bank now, Church said.

“We have probably spent $271,000 in buying food since this started in mid-March,” Church said. That’s more than five times what was spent in the same eight-week time frame in 2019, Church said.

Church said it’s scary, because the food bank is not only having to buy more food because of increased demand, but the food bank’s grocery store partners aren’t able to give as much as they could previously, due to their own increased demand.

“We have some really good grocery partners in this area, and they donate their excess to us,” Church said. That includes produce that is too close to its expiration date to sell but is still good, for example, or an item that didn’t sell well, or a need to make room for inventory changes.

But now, “grocers are having a hard time keeping their own shelves stocked, so those donations are down about 60%, and we’re paying five times more to purchase food because of that,” Church said.

About a month ago, Church said, the food bank bought two tractor-trailer truckloads of canned soup for $25,000 each.

“That will last us maybe through the first part of June,” Church said.

Around that same time, the food bank also bought a load of peanut butter — 36,700 jars for $50,000.

“Now, that same load would cost $92,000,” Church said. “We’re having to buy more food at increased prices. Those are the kinds of things that make us really nervous, because we know we’ll need increased funds to keep responding in the manner we have been.”

Church said the community response has been great. Individuals and corporations have made donations, and some grants have been received through Feeding America,” referring to a U.S.-based, nationwide not-for-profit organization dedicated to supporting food pantries and other community-based agencies, “but the need is still higher. That worries us.”

Uncertainty

Looking ahead, Church said, it’s hard to know what shape the food bank’s assistance will take.

“When you have a disaster, you break that down into phases,” she said. “Right now, we’re still in the response phase, and at some point will transition to the recovery phase.”

The 2008 recession saw greatly increased need, Church said, and that took two to three years before the need for assistance went back to pre-recession levels.

“With COVID-19, no one knows exactly what to expect on all sorts of levels,” she said.

Furthermore, typically, in a disaster situation, it’s localized.

“For the most part, you have one group of people in one geographical area who need support,” Church said, “but this has been nationwide.”

If the food bank’s warehouse had been damaged in a tornado, for instance, Feeding America would respond, as would other nearby food banks, sending reinforcements of supplies and staff members.

“This isn’t like that,” Church said. “We’re all going through that same uncertainty of not knowing exactly what will be next.”

Staffing is another logistical concern, Church said.

“Kudos to our warehouse staff, those people who oversee the warehouse, order the food, receive it, pull the orders for the pantries and get the food back out, pull the orders and pack the boxes for the mobiles. They have done an awesome job.”

Church said the food bank was fortunate in that, early on, they received a grant from the Missouri Foundation for Health, which has been a great partner to food banks for a long time, so they were able to hire 12 workers who had lost their jobs due to the coronavirus, for a 10-week period.

That’s especially helpful now, as “we don’t feel it’s safe to bring in our volunteer groups to pack our boxes. It’s great to have these folks to do that for us.”

Church said if people want to help, the best way is to donate money, either online at semofoodbank.org or by mail at P.O. Box 190, Sikeston, MO 63801.

“We can acquire more food with the dollars donated than people can in the grocery store,” Church said.

Food bank president and CEO Joey Keys added, “There are so many unknowns right now, and we’re doing our best to fulfill the need as we see it.”

Church added that the food bank can also help with SNAP, or Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, registration — formerly known as food stamps.

“Typically, we do about 40 registrations per month,” Church said. “Since mid-March, we’ve done 250 registrations.”

More information is online at semofoodbank.org.