Chicago Tribune, May 20, 2008: Cost of free food gets ever higher for pantries
The sprawling brick warehouse near Midway Airport that stocks Cook County’s food pantries bustled with activity as workers spent a recent day loading 110,000 pounds of meat, vegetables and canned goods onto a fleet of 25 trucks. With demand up 12 percent this year, the Greater Chicago Food Depository has gone into overdrive to ensure enough food is delivered to nearly 600 pantries and other agencies.
The work has become more costly as the price of diesel fuel for the trucks has surged to nearly $4.60 a gallon in Illinoiseven higher than the $4.07 a gallon average for regular in the Chicago area, the highest price of any metro area in the nation, according to a survey released Monday.
And at a time when the non-profit food depository is struggling to make up for a drop in food and cash donations from governments and the public, it has been forced to pay $34,000 more for fuel this year, officials said.
“These trucks have big tanks,” Kate Maehr, the executive director of the agency, said last week as she surveyed the loading. “It’s been a huge financial hit.”
Spiraling gas and fuel prices along with rising food costs are behind the dwindling food donations, which are at a four-year low, officials said. Feeling the impact of these costs, the federal government and food industryretailers, manufacturers and distributorscannot afford to donate as much food to pantries as they once did.
The depository increasingly has been forced to use financial contributions to buy food, shelling out $3 million this year compared with $200,000 in 2002. It anticipates distributing 44 million pounds of food this year, up from 40 million last year.
The food depository serves 600 member pantries, soup kitchens and shelters in Cook County.
“Our retail partners are telling us we’ll continue to support you, but because of this crazy food world, it’s going to have to be more through marketing and volunteer work,” Maehr said.
High gas prices also have strained the largest food pantry in DuPage County as it tries to collect and distribute donations for the hungrymany of whom need more help lately because they’re paying high gas prices themselves.
It’s a ripple effect all along the food chain, said Mary Ellen Durbin, executive director for the Wheaton-based People’s Resource Center who estimates the rising cost of gas for the charity’s two delivery vans has put the organization $1,000 over its transportation budget.
Gas prices also are taking a toll on visitors to the pantry.
“Maybe a year ago, they could get by, and they’d use us five times a year,” Durbin said. “Now they have to use us once a month. They’re filling up that tank of gas.”
So far, the DuPage organization has managed to make up for the higher fuel costs with extra donations from the public. But with no end in sight to rising prices, Durbin said she worries about the future.
At the Aurora Interfaith Food Pantry in Kane County, the number of first-time applicants for aid reached a record high in the last six to eight weeks, rising to 15 to 19 applicants per day from 10 to 12, said Dorothy Schwartz, the executive director.
Pantries were heartened last week when Congress passed a five-year, $307 billion farm bill, which includes more funding for food banks.
The Federal Emergency Food Assistance Program, in which the federal government buys surplus food from farmers and donates it to food pantries, has been a crucial source for the Greater Chicago Food Depository.
But in the last five years, the program’s budget has remained flat, and with food prices skyrocketing, the amount of aid for the depository has dropped from 13 million pounds of food in 2004 to 6 million pounds this year.
President Bush has threatened to veto the farm bill over concerns about farm subsidies, but an override is expected. The measure could mean additional food flowing to area pantries as early as this summer, Maehr said.
The rising demand for free groceries comes at a time when rising costs of gas, food and energy also have caused food-stamp use to skyrocket.
The Chicago area leads the nation in gas prices, according to the Lundberg Survey, a market research company that focuses on the petroleum industry. It surveyed nearly 7,000 gas stations across the country on Friday.
State officials reported last week that a record number of households in Illinois are receiving stamps. Nearly 1.3 million people get daily staples such as bread, eggs and milk through the program.
In Hoffman Estates, visitors to the Willow Creek Food Pantry can take home up to 10 days’ worth of free groceries once a month.
The pantry, which normally serves 1,500 to 1,800 families a month, helped 2,200 in April, a 20-year record.
Rosa Triplett, 49, of Hoffman Estates said her family made sacrifices before turning to the pantry. But they were simply unable to absorb the cost of gas and make their mortgage payments.
“Gas is really killing us,” said Triplett, who works as a crossing guard and lunch supervisor at an elementary school.
She and her husband used to drive with their son and daughter to Chicago three times a week for church. Now they go only on Sunday.
They have stopped taking trips to places such as the Wisconsin Dells. And while Triplett’s husband continues to drive to and from Chicago for his CTA job, Triplett has all but stopped driving.
She had viewed pantries as places for the unemployed or the homeless. But after coming to the Willow Creek pantry three times in the last year, her view has changed.
“Now I know what it means to need,” Triplett said.
So does Maritza Feliciano, 42, an Elgin mother of three.
Since she was laid off from a full-time job at an Elgin casino, Feliciano has been able to find only part-time assembly work at Motorola. Her husband works at a factory full time. But her reduced work schedule, she said, combined with costlier gas and food have made it nearly impossible for them to pay the mortgage and expenses.
“Things have gotten harder all around,” she said, awaiting her turn to select groceries. “This helps a little bit.”
Tribune reporter Vikki Ortiz contributed to this report.