'A worse crisis for us': Prices up, donations down as food banks struggle to feed the needy

The holidays are a time for food and family. But food prices are skyrocketing and food banks in Palm Beach County are navigating that hit amid an overall drop in donations in the wake of the COVID pandemic.

Greg Hazle is the executive director of Boca Helping Hands, a nonprofit that provides food, medical, financial and educational support to families in need. It has seen the demand for its help grow by one-third in recent months.

“The kind of response we saw during COVID was much more dramatic than what we’re seeing now,” Hazle said. “I don’t think people feel the same kind of urgency about inflation as they felt about COVID. I don’t know if people are as aware about how (low-income families) are being affected by food and gas prices going up.”

And while donations have dropped for Boca Helping Hands, the demand for its pantry bags — bags of necessary grocery items for families that qualify for food assistance — has seen a steep jump in the last month.

“At the beginning of this year, we were distributing somewhere around 6,000 to 6,500 bags per month,” Hazle said. “Last month, we distributed 9,000 pantry bags. It’s been a fairly steady increase.

“The problem of affordability that everyone has, particularly in a county like Palm Beach County, has just gotten worse. I would say this is a worse crisis for us, in terms of our feeding programs than we saw at the height of the pandemic.”

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Other food banks like Feeding South Florida, which has a warehousein Boynton Beach, started seeing a decline in donations as early as the middle of last year. Simply put: The limited supply and accessibility of food doesn’t match the rising demand from people in need. And the number of people that need assistance is increasing with growing food insecurity.

“Since about mid-2021, the donations have been decreasing as our food industry sees supply-chain issues,” said Paco Velez, president and CEO of Feeding South Florida. “We’re not seeing as much being left on the shelves, not as much being donated.”

About 1 in 8 Palm Beach County residents cope with food insecurity, or the lack of consistent access to nutritious food, Feeding South Florida estimated early in 2022. That can be because they can't afford to buy it or the place they live isn't close to a supermarket.

The problem is broader than the national supply-chain issues that have hikedprices on canned and boxed foods. Palm Beach County’s farmlands took hits from the two named storms that struck southern Florida this hurricane season, diminishing the fruits and vegetables available to Feeding South Florida and CROS Ministries, a nonprofit with the sole mission of feeding the hungry in Palm Beach County.

Hurricanes Ian and Nicole brought just enough rain to affect CROS's gleaning program, a nationally recognized effort in which volunteers salvage produce from farmlands that would otherwise be thrown out. CROS then makes the fruits and vegetables available to those in need.

“We go out into the field to harvest fresh produce that would otherwise go to waste,” said Ruth Mageria, executive director for CROS. “We normally start gleaning, or recovering, that produce in November. But we were not able to do that this year, because of the hurricanes that came our way.”

CROS intended to begin gleaning in fields near Lake Okeechobee this month, "weather permitting," according to its website.

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All three food banks, which say theywork together instead of competing, haven't taken too much of a hit with their volunteer staffs, which had been an issue in the early days of COVID. They've all seen long-term volunteers stick around to help through the hard times that COVID, and now the post-pandemic economy, have brought.

"The roster of volunteers that we need to perform all of our operations, for the most part, are continuing to show up," Hazle said. "We have periods of the year — vacation times and that type of thing — when it's a little bit more challenging. But on average, we're maintaining the volunteer workforce that we need."

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But that doesn't mean more hands on deck wouldn't be a welcome help to feed the 184,000 people that struggle with food insecurity in Palm Beach County, according to Mageria.

"For all of us who are in the field that we are in, we collaborate and we want to work together," Mageria said. "But also, I want to encourage people — to help them feel that what they're giving is not too little. If each of us give a little, when it's added up, we end up with a lot. If all of us give our time, our food, our resources, whatever it is, we'll make a difference."

Want to help a local food bank?

Boca Helping Hands: (561) 417-0913; www.bocahelpinghands.org/

CROS ministries: (561) 233-9009; www.crosministries.org

Farmworker Coordinating Council: (561) 533-7727; http://www.farmworkercouncil.com

Feeding South Florida: (561) 331-5441; feedingsouthflorida.org

Palm Beach County Food Bank: (561) 670-2518; www.pbcfoodbank.org

The Soup Kitchen: (561) 732-7595; https://thesoupkitchen.org/

Lianna Norman covers northern Palm Beach County for the Palm Beach Post. You can reach her at lnorman@pbpost.com. You can follow her reporting on social media @LiannaNorman on Twitter. Support local journalism: Subscribe today.

This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Food banks cope with high costs, fewer donations as demand for help rises