From Canned Goods to Fresh, Food Banks Adapt

December 10, 2008

By KATIE ZEZIMAPublished: December 9, 2008

MADISON, Wis. — Vanessa Rosales comes to the St. Vincent de Paul Food Pantry here rather than others for one reason: She can choose what food she brings home, rather than being handed a bag filled with random groceries.

Shoppers like Dorothy Richmond pick their own vegetables at the St. Vincent de Paul Food Pantry in Madison, Wis.

The pantry, which looks like a small grocery store, is indicative of broad changes going on at the nation’s food banks and food pantries.

No longer simply the domain of canned corn and peanut butter, food banks are preparing ready-to-eat meals, opening their own farms and partnering with institutions as varied as local supermarkets and state prisons to help gather and process food. They are also handling much more fresh produce, which requires overhauling the way they store and distribute food.

Pantries, which distribute the food donated to food banks, are also acting as social service clearinghouses. Many are handing out information about screenings for breast and cervical cancer and sending volunteers out to sign up people for food stamps.

And as demand continues to rise, food banks are trying to feed more people with less food.

“It’s not just handing out a box here or there anymore,” said Peggy Grimes, executive director of the Montana Food Bank Network, which covers the state. “A lot of effort goes into thinking outside the box. It’s becoming the focus of food banking.” In Madison, thinking of new ways to dispense food was a necessity. The pantry used to pack and distribute food, only to find the bags of groceries discarded at a bus stop around the corner.

“It’s not that they were ungrateful,” said Ralph Middlecamp, the pantry’s director. “They just knew they wouldn’t eat it.”

Many who left the food were recent immigrants who “don’t relate to canned food,” Mr. Middlecamp said.

The pantry now gives each person an allotted number of points, which they use to pick out items. Bread is free; eggs are three points, ham four, a giant tub of salsa six.

“We want to help accommodate the dignity and preferences of the people,” Mr. Middlecamp said.

Ms. Rosales used some of her points on apples, meat and milk for her three children.

“I’ve been to pantries before where they give you things you don’t need,” said Ms. Rosales, who was recently laid off from her job as a preschool teacher. “This way you can pick what you’re going to use, rather than saying, ‘What am I going to do with this?”

Years ago, food banks would ask the same question about large-scale donations of produce and meat, which would quickly spoil.

As consumers buy fewer canned products and more fresh vegetables, retailers have responded by meeting their needs.

Consequently, the surplus product that stores donate to food banks switched to fresh food from canned, nonperishable items. Tighter inventory controls have also left some stores with less to donate.

Food banks and pantries are buying industrial-size freezers and refrigerated trucks to store food. Some have opened gleaming industrial kitchens where culinary students, volunteers or convicts in work-training programs prepare meals.

The Nashville Food Bank built a federally certified manufacturing facility, where it churns out 50-gallon drums of tomato sauce, along with stews, chili and other food. Most is pumped into heat-sealed plastic bags, cooled and frozen. The food bank distributes the packages to pantries around the country.

“All an agency needs to do is pop it into boiling water, and then warm it up, cut it open and serve it to a client,” said Jaynee Day, executive director of the food bank.

At the Vermont Foodbank in Barre, a walk-in freezer holds hundreds of frozen meals like chicken à la king and French bread pizza that are made in an adjacent kitchen from produce gleaned from grocery stores and local farms. Many times ingredients are added to help increase certain types of nutrients, like broccoli for calcium.

Vermont recently joined a growing group of food banks with their own farms, distributing the produce they grow to clients in need or using it to make meals.

Ms. Grimes of the Montana Food Bank Network said, “We deal with so much more produce now.”

She has become a partner with the Montana State Prison, where inmates can much of the donated and bought produce, meat and fish, as well as beans and pasta.

“It helps us by allowing us to accept product donations we might have had to pass up,” Ms. Grimes said, “just because we didn’t have ability to get them distributed throughout the state in the short lifespan that they had.”

The vastness of Montana makes food banking even more difficult, as it can take days for a shipment to reach a rural pantry.

In some communities, the pantry is the only social service agency for hundreds of miles.

“We’re really focused in two directions,” Ms. Grimes said. “We feed people, but we look at ways to get people to a place where they don’t need emergency food. You can’t just keep feeding people without looking for ways to help make their life better.”

In central Florida, teams with laptops and food stamp applications are going to food pantries and signing up people for the program. The teams are also notifying people that they may be eligible for an earned income tax credit and other government services.

“They’re not applying for them,” said Dave Krepcho, executive director of the Food Bank of Central Florida. “There’s a lack of awareness and a lack of transportation. Access isn’t easy.”

Signing people up for benefits is more crucial than ever, as more working-class people are finding it difficult to make ends meet and are coming to food banks for help.

“I keep hearing that demand is up and up and up,” said Ross Fraser, a spokesman for Feeding America, which provides more than two billion pounds of food annually to food banks around the country. “I heard one person saying they’re feeding schoolteachers.

The needle is moving higher up the socioeconomic class, and people making more money are needing emergency food assistance.”

Bill Bolling, founder and executive director of the Atlanta Community Food Bank, said he had “never seen anything” like the current economic situation.

“I’ve had people call me personally who have been donors for years, and said ‘Bill, I need help,’ ” Mr. Bolling said. “That’s disquieting to get those calls.”

Food banks are trying to adapt to such outside forces.

“We’re trying to navigate what is a time of great change in the work we do, and we’re riding a roller coaster,” said Kate Maehr, director of the Greater Chicago Food Depository, where need increased 33 percent this year from 2007. “We have to figure out a new model and do it under pressure. It’s hard, but what choice do we have?”

December 10, 2008

Press Room