'Anything helps': Area food shelves work to meet community needs amid shutdown challenges

With Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) food benefits not being issued for November, area food shelves are working to meet increasing community needs.

Patrick Felker, director of food equity and access at Family Pathways, discussed the shutdown's impacts on the nonprofit in an interview on Tuesday.

Family Pathways has food shelves in Pine City, Sandstone, Cambridge, Chisago City, Forest Lake, North Branch, and Onamia, and two Wisconsin locations in Frederic and St. Croix Falls.

The organization also has a mobile food shelf that visits underserved food deserts, a delivery program that gets food to seniors and homebound residents, and the Backpack Program, which partners with local schools to make sure students go home with food for the weekend.

"The big thing that I've been saying to folks who have been asking is that the food shelves are not really designed to replace the SNAP program," Felker said. "They're supposed to work with SNAP programs to make sure people get what they need."

In an email on Monday, Jodi Gerner with the Mora Food Pantry said that for every one person a food shelf can feed, SNAP can feed nine.

"With no SNAP benefits being issued, to think that food shelves can pick up all of this slack is unreasonable," Gerner wrote in an email. "Many food pantries in our area operate in very small spaces, on limited budgets that are funded from private donations and a few grants each year. Most food shelves are staffed by volunteers or have minimal paid staff. We simply don't have the capacity to serve nine times more people than what we are currently serving."

Felker said Family Pathways has seen a significant increase — roughly 15% over the past few months and weeks — in people utilizing the food shelves.

"It's a pretty massive program that we are kind of having to potentially step in and replace here," Felker said.

The organization has also recorded a 133% increase in people using food shelf services for the first time.

"Usually we see about 200 of those a month, and last month we saw 350," Felker said.

Felker said there's also been about a 15% increase in food being distributed to families already being served, and a 5-10% decrease in donations in the past few weeks.

"We do have a budget to purchase food through food bank partnerships, but we do also rely a lot on donations from the community to make things work," he said.

Felker explained that Family Pathways is able to give out $9 worth of food for every $1 donated, through partnerships with Second Harvest and other food banks.

"Food drives are always big for us, whether done with groups or individually, anything helps," Felker said.

Some of the most-needed items at Family Pathways include canned vegetables, beans, and soup; rice, pasta, and cereal; shelf-stable milk and baby formula; peanut butter and canned protein; cooking oil and spices; and personal hygiene and cleaning products.

"Whether it's Family Pathways or your local food shelf, I think that definitely that support is huge right now," Felker said.

Gerner also anticipates "much higher traffic" at the Mora Food Pantry. The pantry hasn't yet changed its operations, but may within the next week.

"We may need to go back to pre-packed boxes to accommodate for the amount of people we are serving," Gerner wrote. "Due to our small space, we can't move a large amount of people through the space in our open time easily without doing pre-packed boxes. This is not our preferred method of distribution though. We prefer that our visitors are able to choose their own foods."

Before the shutdown, the Mora Food Pantry was already facing high food prices; Gerner said the pantry is spending three to four times what's typically spent each month.

The Mora Food Pantry has created an Amazon wishlist of needs, and also accepts monetary donations.

"Our community has always been great with stepping up to help us out when we have a need to ensure that our neighbors are taken care of," Gerner wrote. "We are grateful for all of the support that we receive."

Photo from Family Pathways website