Food banks proved vital during the COVID pandemic, serving a greater number of people than they ever had before. With that, many have undertaken expansion projects to build capacity to serve, whether that be in the expansion of refrigerated storage or moving into the preparation of food. At the same time, the same supply chain issues that have driven up costs for the entire food sector are also now impacting food banks in cost, both food and transportation, and availability.
https://apnews.com/article/coronavirus-pandemic-business-health-atlanta-utah-beb8c68cfad61e8bf8dc11e315169864
Food banks embark on expansions with lessons from COVID
By SUDHIN THANAWALA
November 4, 2021
ATLANTA (AP) — Food banks across the country are pursuing major expansion projects driven in part by their experiences during the pandemic, when they faced an explosion of need.
“So many people who had never had to ask for help found themselves in a position of needing it and not knowing where to go,” said Ginette Bott, president and CEO of the Utah Food Bank. “It was like somebody flipped a switch.”
Even though demand for fresh and packaged provisions has dropped from pandemic peaks, the need remains far above pre-pandemic levels.
Feeding South Florida is planning a large new plant to increase its produce supply. Two North Carolina food banks flush with cash from billionaire philanthropist MacKenzie Scott are set to build new structures that will double their capacity to store food. The Utah Food Bank is adding space in Salt Lake City and is also set to erect new food warehouses elsewhere in the state.
And in Georgia, the Atlanta Community Food Bank moved into a 345,000-square-foot (32,000-square-meter) warehouse billed as the world’s largest food bank. The move preceded COVID-19, but officials say it was a boon during the pandemic.
“We have never, ever, including during the pandemic, been able to touch everyone who needs (help),” said Claire Babineaux-Fontenot, CEO of Feeding America, a national network of most food banks in the U.S. “But what we’ve come to understand better than we ever have before is what we’re capable of and how do we think through the long game.”
In Utah, one of two new warehouses will be near a Native American reservation that was a challenge to serve during the pandemic, said Bott. The second site will offer free dinners to kids, a population that suffered acutely from food insecurity when schools that provided meals went virtual.
Overall, the food bank will more than double its storage capacity after it incurred additional costs for extra space needed during the pandemic, Bott said. She estimated the new projects would cost roughly $40 million.
As part of its own expansion, the Food Bank of the Albemarle in northeast North Carolina is making sure it has enough generators in case a hurricane or tornado knocks out power, said Executive Director Liz Reasoner.
Meanwhile, Feeding South Florida is planning to build a 50,000- to 80,000-square-foot (4,600 to 7,400-square-meter) plant to freeze and package produce. The goal is to take in more crops during the growing season and then make them available year-round, said CEO Paco Velez.
“There’s still a lot of produce that goes to waste,” he said.
The projects come amid persistent food insecurity in the U.S. despite the country’s slow crawl back from the economic fallout of the pandemic. Feeding America’s food banks provided a record 6.6 billion meals between July 2020 and June 2021, up from 5.2 billion the year before, the organization said.
On a recent weekday, a dozen cars lined up well before opening time at the Toco Hills Community Alliance, a food pantry in a well-off suburb northeast of Atlanta. Volunteers in masks waited under a white tent to load canned fruit and vegetables, fresh produce and meat and other groceries into trunks as drivers came through one at a time.
Helen Moody, a 60-year-old disabled U.S. Army veteran, has relied on the pantry for groceries since 2017. Moody said she and her husband live off $2,000 a month and do not qualify for federal food assistance.
“We’re on a real tight budget,” she said. “When we come over here, then we’re able to have just a little bit for other things, just a little leeway because other than that you have no breathing space.”
The community alliance buys some of its food from the Atlanta Community Food Bank at deeply discounted prices. The food bank’s expansion has given it access to a wider variety of food products, said Lisa Heilig, the alliance’s executive director. A few months ago, she was able to offer guava, a fruit familiar to some of the Hispanic immigrants who use the pantry.
The Atlanta Community Food Bank’s new facility near Atlanta’s international airport has a food storage area equal to roughly five and a half football fields. A tour of the facility last month provided a glimpse of the advantages a larger site provides.
Forklifts carrying large pallets of food moved freely around the expansive floor, their drivers beeping gently to warn passersby. Nearly three dozen docking doors allowed trucks to deliver and pick up food with no wait times. In a separate area, volunteers in masks checked the expiration dates of cereal boxes, canned soup and other groceries.
Food banks rely heavily on volunteers, but many could not safely accommodate them during the pandemic and had to find alternate sources of help.
The new location has allowed the food bank to distribute tens of millions of additional pounds of food.
“There’s just a large number of our neighbors, who by virtue of rising housing costs, rising health care costs and other pressures that they face, need help meeting all their basic needs,” said Kyle Waide, president of the Atlanta Community Food Bank. “And we think that pressure is going to be here indefinitely even without the pandemic.”
NY Times
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/27/business/economy/food-prices-us.html
Higher Food Prices Hit the Poor and Those Who Help Them
Many households are being forced to adjust their shopping lists or seek assistance. But food banks, too, are feeling the pinch.
By Nelson D. Schwartz and Coral Murphy Marcos
Oct. 27, 2021
With food prices surging, many Americans have found their household budgets upended, forcing difficult choices at the supermarket and putting new demands on programs intended to help.
Food banks and pantries, too, are struggling with the increase in costs, substituting or pulling the most expensive products, like beef, from offerings. What’s more, donations of food are down, even as the number of people seeking help remains elevated.
Even well-off Americans have noticed that many items are commanding higher prices, but they can still manage. It’s different for people with limited means.
“Any time someone is low income, that means they’re spending a higher percentage on needs like food and housing,” said Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach, director of the Institute for Policy Research at Northwestern University. “When prices go up, they have less slack in their budgets to offset and they are quick to fall into hardship.”
Higher transportation and warehousing expenses lead the list of causes, along with rising labor costs at meat processing centers and other nodes in the food supply chain.
To be sure, there are some winners as a result of the cost squeeze. While meat prices are up sharply for consumers, prices for cattle and other livestock haven’t moved as much. The result is buoyant profits for beef processors, Mr. Swanson said.
“This is not going to go backwards anytime soon,” he added. “As soon as producers and retailers get these price increases, they are very sticky.”
Behind the scenes, logistics expenses have jumped even more sharply than prices for foodstuffs, along with the costs of unglamorous items that few gave much thought to a few years ago.
Covid’s impact on the supply chain continues. The pandemic has disrupted nearly every aspect of the global supply chain and made all kinds of products harder to find. In turn, scarcity has caused the prices of many things to go higher as inflation remains stubbornly high.
Almost anything manufactured is in short supply. That includes everything from toilet paper to new cars. The disruptions go back to the beginning of the pandemic, when factories in Asia and Europe were forced to shut down and shipping companies cut their schedules.
First, demand for home goods spiked. Money that Americans once spent on experiences were redirected to things for their homes. The surge clogged the system for transporting goods to the factories that needed them and finished products piled up because of a shortage of shipping containers.
Now, ports are struggling to keep up. In North America and Europe, where containers are arriving, the heavy influx of ships is overwhelming ports. With warehouses full, containers are piling up. The chaos in global shipping is likely to persist as a result of the massive traffic jam.
No one really knows when the crisis will end. Shortages and delays are likely to affect this year’s Christmas and holiday shopping season, but what happens after that is unclear. Jerome Powell, the Federal Reserve chair, said he expects supply chain problems to persist “likely well into next year.”
A refrigerated truck shipment from California to New York that cost $2,500 to $3,000 before the pandemic now goes for $10,000, according to Mr. Swanson. Big wooden pallets used to move meat or vegetables that sold for $7 to $9 are now priced at $25 to $30 apiece.
To make matters worse, less food is being donated. With prices so high, retailers are no longer as willing to give away meat, said Mr. Slater of Gleaners. “We’re really struggling to get meat donated at no cost,” he said. “It’s gone to almost zero.”
Instead of cutting back, some people are working longer hours to maintain their dining habits. Dominic Kapustka of Aurora, Colo., is turning to overtime to make up for the extra spending on food.
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