Soaring food prices add urgency to Second Harvest

By Peter Finney Jr.
Clarion Herald

Anyone who has been to the grocery store recently to pick up five or six items and left with an empty wallet or a scorched credit card has experienced the sticker shock: Can strawberries, milk and ground beef really be that expensive?

Natalie Jayroe, president and CEO of Second Harvest Food Bank of Greater New Orleans and Acadiana, has witnessed how soaring food prices have affected every facet of her agency’s humanitarian mission to erase hunger in the 23 civil parishes of south Louisiana.

When food prices are high, more people turn to Second Harvest, an affiliated ministry of the Archdiocese of New Orleans, to make ends meet, even those who have never needed emergency food assistance.

With the U.S. food supply being stretched, retail grocers that in the past donated excess food to Second Harvest are finding it harder to do so.

Cycle of food insecurity

And, with donated food in shorter supply, Second Harvest has to buy more commodities to fill the gap, which puts more pressure on its ability to meet its goals of reducing food insecurity.

“It’s the supply chain and rising costs, and it’s COVID hangover, in a lot of ways,” Jayroe said. “Inflation makes our costs and the costs for the grocery stores go up, as it does for individuals buying food. Grocery stores are buying less from their vendors, which means they have less to donate to us. Normally, we try to buy as little food as possible because we want donated food, which is how we are most efficient. But, we’re buying four times what we were buying prior to the pandemic. We distribute $100 million worth of food a year, and most of that is donated in a good year. So, it takes a lot of money to fill that hole.”

Jayroe said two other things are happening that are placing more families in jeopardy. Federal programs enacted during the pandemic that raised food benefits to seniors from approximately $16 a month to $200 a month ended at the end of March, which have placed older citizens in danger of going hungry, she said. And, recent statistics show that the rate of child hunger has doubled.

“All these programs ended before the economy had rebounded enough for people to go back (to work),” Jayroe said. “That’s part of the message we’re trying to send to Congress because, as everyone knows, Congress is at a total standstill right now. They can’t even get the defense bill through, much less any new legislation. Things are in real turmoil.”

Lobbying Congress

Jayroe traveled to Washington, D.C., in mid-September along with colleagues from Feeding America – the umbrella agency for 200 nonprofit food banks across the country – to lobby Congressional representatives for approval of the Farm Bill, which sets SNAP benefits.

“We understand that no one has an appetite for spending more money, but let’s not cut people off,” she said. “The food banks are not in a position to pick up the slack right now. Our main goal is to protect. This isn’t the time to do cutting at the expense of people at risk for hunger because we don’t have a good safety net.”

Local partners stretched

Second Harvest distributes its food through hundreds of community partners, and, with the food supply tighter than normal, those sites are not getting enough food to meet their demand. In New Orleans, St. Anthony of Padua’s food bank ministry has seen double the number of people coming to it for food, but the supplies are lower.

“That is exactly the challenge,” Jayroe said. “Families are still in need. We have to talk to our partners all the time about why we’re not able to send them enough food.”

The fact that child hunger was greatly reduced during the pandemic because of government programs was the lone “silver lining in the tragedy” for food bank executives.

“It was amazing,” Jayroe said. “Those COVID programs were a wonderful kind of test for how we could address this issue of hunger and showed that these programs were very successful in a number of ways. It gave us a road map for how we can address this in the future.”

Houma expansion

Second Harvest continues to expand. Earlier this month it broke ground on renovation of a 17,500-square-foot warehouse in the Diocese of Houma-Thibodaux that will be completed in early 2024. The operations will benefit from volunteer service from students at Vandebilt Catholic High School in Houma.

“We’ll be able to move food in and out of there, and we’re going to build a kitchen there eventually,” Jayroe said. “I love the new bishop down there (Bishop Mario Dorsonville). He talked about respect for the individual. Rouses was there, and I think they’re going to commit to giving us more food because they are headquartered out of that area. I think they really feel good about our larger presence there. Those grocery stores are all important.”

Second Harvest has purchased a building in Lake Charles and will work in conjunction with city officials. A kitchen facility will be added, with the hot meals utilizing produce of local farmers. An expanded kitchen also is planned for Second Harvest’s Lafayette facility.

“Just with the crises we’ve been facing the past several years, the ability to provide prepared meals for vulnerable populations like seniors and children is even more important,” Jayroe said.

Second Harvest relies on thousands of volunteer hours each year to box commodities and prepared food. Donations of money and food are always welcome. Second Harvest has launched “A Place at the Table Campaign” to provide meals at Thanksgiving. Go to www.no-hunger.org for information on how to volunteer or donate.

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Food For Seniors to launch home delivery

 

It’s a little counter-intuitive, but upon further reflection, it makes sense.

Even though thousands of seniors on fixed incomes needed food during the COVID-19 pandemic, many could not access the food boxes because they could not leave their homes or apartments.

Renée Davenport, director of the Food For Seniors program of Catholic Charities Archdiocese of New Orleans, said the number of its Louisiana clients has risen from a low of 28,000 a month in the midst of the pandemic to nearly 40,000 a month in 2023.

“Back then, that was the whole thing – people were not coming out to get it because they were afraid to come out,” Davenport said. “We have a lot of seniors coming out to get their boxes again. It’s just a matter of them having food versus not having food. Transportation still seems to be an issue with some of our seniors, so we’re trying to start a home-delivery program.”

On occasion, seniors will take a bus to reach a Food For Seniors distribution site, and then a staff member will drive them home.

“That’s just to keep them from having to carry that box, because all of the boxes weigh between 37 and 40 pounds, and that’s a lot for them to carry,” Davenport said. “We do what we have to do to give them as much service as possible. I think the home-delivery program is going to help them even more.”

The monthly boxes usually include staples such as peanut butter, juice, fruit, canned vegetables, milk, hot and cold cereal, pasta, rice and meat and fish products.

Food For Seniors serves those 60 and older who meet income guidelines set by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Persons can sign up in advance by calling toll-free (800) 522-3333 or sign up at one of Food For Seniors’ 14 local sites.