The North Texas Food Bank and its more than 200 partners are expecting to lose about 22 million pounds of food next year as they struggle to meet unprecedented needs without resources from three key government programs.
Concerns about the reductions come as coronavirus cases and hospitalizations are reaching their highest levels ever and other relief programs are running out, including a national eviction moratorium that is expiring at the end of the year.
More than 50 million people across the country will face food insecurity by the end of the year, up from 35 million in 2019, according to a Feeding America analysis. That’s about 1 in every 6 people, and the analysis shows that 1 in every 4 children will face such scarcity.
“Food insecurity is twice as high as before the pandemic. We’ve had a lot of federal aid, and that’s all going away at the end of the year,” Feeding Texas CEO Celia Cole told the Texas Tribune. “We are facing a kind of a food cliff, and we are worried of how long we are going to be able to keep up with demand without the help of the federal government.”
With the deep losses from the three government programs, which are financed by federal and state governments, North Texas food banks and pantries will be forced to find food in other ways, said Valerie Hawthorne, director of government relations at the North Texas Food Bank.
One of the three initiatives, the U.S. Agriculture Department’s Emergency Food Assistance Program, has provided more than 32 million pounds of food to the North Texas Food Bank since 2019 as the federal government has purchased excess supplies from farmers and other producers because of the trade conflict with the Chinese government. About 17 million pounds were given to the food bank in 2020.
The resources from that program are set to run out this month, with no sign of renewal, Hawthorne said.
“We knew this was coming to an end,” she said. “But we didn’t know that there was going to be a pandemic and how critical that food source was going to be.”
From May to December of this year, the food bank also received 2.7 million pounds of food from the Agriculture Department’s Farmers to Families Food Box Program. The boxes were prepackaged, so the food bank staff hasn’t had to build and pack them, Hawthorne said. But that program is also set to expire this year.
A program within the Texas Department of Agriculture that pays for surplus food from farmers was cut by 44% after Gov. Greg Abbott required state agencies to cut their budgets by 5% in response to the pandemic, Hawthorne said. The steep reduction in the surplus program will result in the loss of 2.7 million pounds of fresh produce.
“It’s frustrating because our government sources have looked to food banks to be that charitable lifeline to families who need food right now,” Hawthorne said. “They put the trust in us, they gave us the resources — they did all of that, and then, they’re gone.”
The Food Bank is a charity partner of The Dallas Morning News, whose Dallas Morning News Charities supports North Texas nonprofit groups focused on helping the hungry and homeless.
The cutbacks mean the North Texas Food Bank’s partners may have less variety in the food they can offer the needy. Or they have to search for alternate sources, said Cindy Shafer, CEO of the Network of Community Ministries, which serves 14 ZIP codes within the Richardson ISD.
Before the pandemic, the organization served about 170 families a week. Now it’s handling about 150 a day, Shafer said. The enormous increase will make it difficult to plan for next year.
“While the community has been great, the Food Bank has been great, we don’t know what’s sustainable,” she said. “We don’t know what the real need is going to be. We don’t know what our real budget is going to be.”
Even with the prospect of a COVID-19 vaccine ending the pandemic in 2021, it could take more than a year for unemployment and food insecurity to return to more typical levels, Shafer said.
The nonprofit has been helping people this year who have never sought food assistance before.
“We have people coming through the lines for food that have been donors,” she said.
Shafer regularly goes where food is being distributed to talk to people in need, but she stopped for a while when the pandemic began.
“There were people that knew me from the community, and they were embarrassed that they were there for help,” she said. “I think that that stigma has lessened over time, because I think that more and more people are realizing that a lot of people are in the same boat. It’s nothing to be embarrassed about.”
The pandemic has been disastrous for many families in West Dallas and Oak Cliff, the communities that Brother Bill’s Helping Hand focuses on, said director of operations Courtney Cuthbert.
“We’re seeing their families devastated by COVID,” she said.
People the organization serves have lost family members, as well as their jobs, to the illness, Cuthbert said.
Brother Bill’s Grocery Store — which switched to a drive-through operation in March — has provided about 1,587,000 pounds of food so far this year. That’s about 700,000 pounds more than in 2019, she said.
“We’re hoping and praying that going into 2021 … that we’re able to still continue meeting this need,” she said. “The need is going to increase, which means our donations will need to increase.”
The North Texas Food Bank has waived handling fees during the pandemic, freeing up more for Brother Bill’s and other partners of the Food Bank.
At the Pleasant Grove Food Pantry, it has been more difficult to keep up a volunteer base than it has been to ramp up service to more families, said Martha Doleshal, pantry coordinator and president of the board of directors at the Pleasant Grove Food Pantry.
Most of the volunteers for the food pantry are in their 60s, 70s and 80s, which puts them at higher risk of serious coronavirus complications. Even so, the pantry has been able to recruit enough people to get the work done, Doleshal said.
“All of our volunteers try to recruit other volunteers everywhere we go, or every time we talk to somebody,” she said. “This is my take on it: God sees that we’re doing good. God sees that we need help to continue doing good, and God sends that help to us.”
The pantry is serving about 240 families a week, up from about 150 before the pandemic.
Doleshal fears that the need in North Texas could get worse as COVID-19 cases surge and lead to rollbacks in the capacity for some businesses, including restaurants.
People who are looking for help are “not where they are due to bad choices,” she said. “They’re where they are because of bad circumstances that they have no control over. They’re ordinary people, just like the rest of us.”
Cheryl Jackson, founder of Minnie’s Food Pantry in Plano, said it has served more than 33,000 people a month during the pandemic, up from the usual 5,000.
“We’re standing in front of thousands of people every week trying to provide them with meals and we’re trying to be careful,” she said. “We were needing masks and all that, so I had to put out a call for protection because we’re just as essential.”
Because Minnie’s also transitioned to drive-through service for the pandemic, Jackson said she is working to connect people with other services that help with other needs.
The message she wants to deliver is that “it’s OK not to be OK.”
“There are a lot of people right now that never thought they would need food assistance, and that’s why we’ve been here,” she said. “That’s why we’ve been in existence all this time: to be able to serve you.”
To survive, communities need to rally to help their neighbors, she said. And that’s getting tougher as the demand collides with the declining supplies.
“During the first quarter of the year, that clock is going to be ticking really loud,” Jackson said. “I just pray that we are able to provide something as simple as a meal for the people in our community. This shouldn’t even be a question that we have to have, but it’s a question that will need to be answered come January.”
How to help
Brother Bill’s Grocery Store: brotherbillshelpinghand.kindful.com/?campaign=1059534
Minnie’s Food Pantry: minniesfoodpantry.org/donate or text MINNIES to 41444
Network of Community Ministries: thenetwork.org
North Texas Food Bank: ntfb.org/give
Pleasant Grove Food Pantry: pleasantgrovefoodpantry.org/donate
