A new federal program is buying more than $1 billion in farm products such as dairy, produce and meat unable to be sold due to the pandemic’s disruptions to the food supply and send “food boxes” to needy families. But some anti-hunger advocates worry that parts of the Ohio Valley may be overlooked in getting this aid.
The Farmers to Families Food Box Program, through the U.S. Department of Agriculture, awarded approximately 200 companies across the country contracts to purchase food and then distribute it to local nonprofits and food pantries. Kentucky and West Virginia were among 12 states where no companies were awarded contracts. Contracts awarded to Ohio companies are located near Cleveland, apart from Appalachia.
“By and large, Kentucky was really left behind. We’re not really going to benefit on the supply side of Kentucky producers being able to provide their products,” said Tamara Sandberg, executive director for Feeding Kentucky, a nonprofit network of food banks in the state. “We’re definitely not going to benefit on the consumer side because we’ve not been named in any of the winning bids.”
Sandberg said she is aware of some organizations in Kentucky receiving food boxes. Dare to Care Food Bank in Louisville is receiving boxes with poultry and dairy products, for example. But she’s still concerned large swaths of the state are being left out of the program.
She also said several Kentucky food banks had reached out to New York-based Tasty Brands, a school food supplier who was awarded several contracts, about receiving food boxes but were told all their food boxes were already being delivered elsewhere. Sandberg said the specter of receiving little of this aid is especially worrisome, given the Ohio Valley has recently ranked among states with the highest rates of food insecurity among some age groups.
“There has been a 40 percent increase in the people served by the food bank network, and a third of those people have never come to a food bank for help before,” Sandberg said. “The need for this food assistance amid this pandemic has increased exponentially.”
Cynthia Kirkhart leads the Facing Hunger Food Bank in Huntington, West Virginia. She said despite several local companies applying for contracts through this program, none of those companies received contracts. Kirkhart said her organization wasn’t sure if they were going to receive aid until an out-of-state company from Pittsburgh that was awarded a contract reached out to her food bank. She said she’s expecting food boxes to be received Thursday.
“We’ll do what we need to, to access these food resources and see what happens,” Kirkhart said. “This had to happen really quick with a certain level of uncertainty, but we’re happy to have the product.”
A spokesperson with the USDA Agricultural Marketing Service said in a statement that because the program is new, some adjustments may be made in coming weeks, and that USDA was working to try to expand the program to underserved regions of the country.
Some Democrats in the U.S. House Agriculture Committee, including Marcia Fudge of Ohio, have also questioned the USDA on the reported lack of experience some contract awardees have in distributing food. Contracts were awarded to major meatpacking companies including Cargill, and an event planning company. The program runs through June 30.
Food banks and pantries across the Ohio Valley are seeing spiked demand as anunprecedented surge of people continue to file for unemployment benefits, with food banks facing weeks long delays to get certain products. Meanwhile, some farmers are facing a financial crisis, sitting on excess food they can’t sell — food that could be directed to food banks and pantries.
On Friday, the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced a $3 billion infusion to try to get surplus food to pantries. Those funds could eventually be put to use at pantries like one in west Kentucky.
Murray-Calloway County Needline Association Executive Director Tonia Casey had already seen demand increase for her food pantry before the coronavirus pandemic, when alocal engine manufacturer began laying off hundreds of employees.
The mandated business closures due to the virus have only accelerated that demand. Her pantry has held drive-thru service to hand out food to the public.
“We ask four questions. One of the questions was ‘How many is in your home, how much do you make, your name and address.’ About 50% of them would cry,” Casey said. “They would be crying, going, ‘I just didn’t know what I was going to do.’ And you put the food in their car, and they’re just like ‘thank you, thank you, you.’ It’s been bittersweet. It breaks my heart that they even have to ask because they’ve lost their job.”
Casey estimates she’s seen about a 30% increase in demand at her pantry, a demand she’s struggling to keep up with as she’s organizing hundreds of food packages to be distributed on a given day.
While she said her pantry’s supply has been replenished with community support and a shipment from the federal government, some food banks in the Ohio Valley are beginning to face delays in getting food amid the high demand.
“Product that I used to be able to order and get within a week or two weeks at max, is now four to six weeks. And then worst case scenario, six to eight weeks,” said Cynthia Kirkhart, Director of the Facing Hunger Food Bank in Huntington, West Virginia. “We have a network across the country of 200 food banks that are competing with everyone else to access especially what we refer to as dry product, the canned goods and shelf stable items.”
Credit Glynis Board / West Virginia Public Broadcasting file photo
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West Virginia Public Broadcasting file photo
Food is ready for loading and distribution the Facing Hunger Food Bank in Huntington, West Virginia.
Kirkhart said as the nationwide competition has increased, the price of goods who food bank purchases has also spiked. For example, she said the price of a dozen eggs have spiked from 65 cents to two dollars.
Yet, while the food pantries she distributes to are facing up to a 50% jump in demand, some Ohio Valley farmers are confronting a different problem: too much food. Market disruptions due to the pandemic are forcing some dairy farmers to dump milk and some livestock growers to consider killing off hogs or chickens because they will not make it to market.
Too Much Supply
Daniel Hayden manages his family farm in Ohio County, Kentucky, where they produce about 1.2 million chickens a year in eight chicken houses, under contract with Perdue Farms. That contract has allowed Hayden to a degree of financial freedom, yet the future stability of that has come into question with the coronavirus.
“Agriculture, it’s like turning a barge … sometimes, it can’t turn in quite the speed and demand that consumer habits change,” Hayden said. “And we try to foresee some of that, but obviously no one could have seen this coming.”
Hayden said major meat producing corporations are facing a “logistical beast” adapting to the change in demand of where food is going — away from closed down restaurants, and instead almost exclusively to grocery stores.
“It’s hard for them to swing it over to another industry because those warehouses that distribute to grocery stores can only handle so much as well,” Hayden said.
On top of that, the virus is increasingly causing meatpacking plant workers to fall sick across the country andin the Ohio Valley, slowing down production and even temporarily shuttering plants.
This potentially leaves poultry, pork, and livestock farmers with more chickens, hogs and cattle on their farms than processing plants and distribution warehouses can handle, creating a supply bottleneck.
Hayden said his farm hasn’t been affected yet, but it could leave some farmers on the brink of financial ruin if processing delays extend for weeks.
“The big concern is that we’re going to have to depopulate those chicken houses that are full to 50%, and that is euthanizing 50% of those chickens because they literally can not be processed. We can’t keep them longer because they continue to grow,” Hayden said. “For a situation that dramatic could have an existential threat towards some farmers that have brand-new farms that depend on that 100 percent processing to make their loan payments.”
Kentucky Pork Producers Executive Director Bonnie Jolly said a record number of hogs are on farms across the country, potentially creating a glut that could put pork producers out of business.
The National Chicken Councilhas asked U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue to distribute billions in dollars of designated relief funding for agriculture to farmers quickly, as the effects of the coronavirus mount. National trade associations for cattle and pork farmers are alsocalling for relief, as the price of hogs and cattle have sunk as much as 50% and 30%, respectively.
Ohio Valley dairy farmers are also facing a bleak financial picture with a similar supply chain crunch.
“We have a local guy … he has three farms. He’s dumping three tankard loads of milk a day from each farm because he was an independent producer,” said Chuck Moellendick, a central Ohio dairy farmer. “A friend of ours went up to him to talk about buying some baby calves from him, and he said he was in tears.”
Credit Nicole Erwin / Ohio Valley ReSource
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Ohio Valley ReSource
Small farms are squeezed by the dairy crisis.
The dairy industrywas in distress even before the pandemic. Moellendick said for dairy farmers who don’t have financial protection through banding together in a cooperative, the effects of the coronavirus supply chain crunch could put even more dairy farmers out of business.
“He can’t even get his cows sold to a packing plant because packing plants are shutting down. The place he was shipping his milk to, they don’t have enough workers to run,” Moellendick said.
Farms To Food Banks
Meanwhile, the federal government and states are trying to find ways to solve two issues at once — give financial relief to farmers, while also providing food banks with the supply to meet a rising demand.
Ohio Gov. Mike Dewine signed an executive order, allowing millions in state emergency funds to be used to buy farm products to be directed toward food banks. The lobbying organization American Farm Bureau and food bank operator Feeding America also sent aletter to Congress, pleading with lawmakers to create a voucher program that would allow farmers with excess product to directly work with food banks in need.
On Friday, the USDA answered: with funding in part coming from the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act, USDA said itplans to purchase $3 billion in dairy, meat, and produce to send to food banks and other charitable organizations. USDA also said it has another $873.3 million available for extra food purchases, if necessary.
“The last thing dairy farmers want to see is milk being put down the drain,” said Greg Gibson, a dairy farm in Bruceton Mills, West Virginia. “If we have to give it away, we would rather give it away then put it down the drain. That’s a last resort.”
Gibson said the cooperative he works with through Dairy Farmers of America – Mideast Area has been fortunate to not have to dump milk, but he’s still selling his milk at a “distressed” price.
“I think the dairy industry is really trying to pull out all the stops they can to get milk processed and in the food banks,” Gibson said. “There’s tremendous need right now.”
For the Southeast Ohio Food Bank, it’s a solution they’re welcoming with open arms.
Foodbank spokesperson Claire Gysegem said their facility has seen a high number of calls from people asking how and where to get food, many who recently filed for unemployment.
“There’s a really strong cultural value here in Appalachia where it makes it very difficult for people to ask for help,” Gysegem said. “So, I know the need is probably five times greater than what we’re seeing.”
She said while her food bank has seen a surge of donations from communities, some of the pantries they serve have had to shut down because of coronavirus impacts. As the Ohio Valley’s economic crisis continues in the months ahead, her food bank may need the help of farmers to keep up with surging demand.
“It’s anxiety I think that we’re all feeling in seeing how far we can stretch things,” Gysegem said. “We want to take whatever is available.”
As restrictions on daily activities tighten and confirmed cases of the novel coronavirus continue to rise, across West Virginia many community-based food pantries report more people are using their services.
While federal food resources are being expanded during the pandemic, some organizations operating on the ground say they are grappling with how COVID-19 is changing day-to-day operations.
The closure of restaurants and the rush to stockpile food has impacted the need across the state. In addition to the higher demand, food banks are also struggling to figure out how to deliver food to the elderly and vulnerable populations with limited staff and volunteers, who are in some cases vulnerable themselves.
According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, on average between 2016 to 2018, 15.7 percent of West Virginians were food insecure, which means, at times, their household struggled to have enough to eat.
The Mountain State experiences a high level of poverty, which creates the conditions for hunger, Lohnes said. An estimated 300,000 West Virginians relied on food pantries each month before the coronavirus pandemic ground the U.S. economy to a halt and put, so far, at least 28,000 West Virginians temporarily out of work.
The state’s 550 food pantries serve a vital role in many communities, but their services and capacity varies widely, according to Lohnes. Especially in the most impoverished counties of West Virginia, food pantries play a vital role.
‘We’re Just Waiting’
At the Five Loaves and Two Fishes Food Bank in McDowell County, supplies are limited, and to ensure safety, the volunteers are asking people to make appointments to pick up food.
Linda McKinney is the co-owner of this food bank, which is entirely volunteer run. In a recent video produced by her son-in-law, J.D. Belcher, she explains the day-to-day challenges the food bank is facing during this time.
Credit Emily Allen / West Virginia Public Broadcasting
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West Virginia Public Broadcasting
Linda McKinney walks around the Five Loaves and Two Fishes Food Bank In Kimball, McDowell County in December.
“People were texting me, they want to know, ‘are you still going to give out food tomorrow?’ I have to wait. I don’t know. We’re just waiting,” she said.
This past weekend, McKinney estimated there were about 80 people on the waiting list.
“But we have to regroup on Monday to see how much food we’ve got, and how much we can stretch it,” she said. “Then if you can go out and shop, like you did this morning, if you’ve got a child and a family, you’re going to get some cereal. We may be able to give them a gallon of milk.”
One item in particularly high demand is baby formula. The food bank has run out of baby formula, McKinney said, and they are having to send away parents and family members in need.
Many of the clients who use the food bank in McDowell County are grandparents raising their infant grandchildren, and they do not therefore have formula to feed these babies.
Overnight Increase
The state’s two largest food banks, which distribute the bulk of federally-purchased food aid, said they too are seeing an increased need.
Chad Morrison with Mountaineer Foodbank in Gassaway, West Virginia said in an email the organization, which provides food to pantries across the state, has seen “almost a 30 percent increase in need almost overnight.”
He said currently the food chain is still available, but the surge “is a massive undertaking for our organization and our network of feeding agencies throughout the state.”
The Facing Hunger Food Bank in Huntington provides food to 220 member pantries throughout West Virginia, in Boone, Cabell, Jackson, Lincoln, Logan, Kanawha, Mason Mingo, McDowell, Putnam, Wayne and Wyoming counties.
Executive Director Cynthia Kirkhart said the food bank has also seen a roughly 30 percent increase in emergency food assistance requests for individuals.
Meanwhile, the organization is seeing a decline in donations from retailers. Due to “panic buying,” many grocers have less items to offer.
There’s also a push to help seniors who especially are homebound at this time due to higher risk. Kirkhart said Facing Hunger is providing hundreds of prepackaged meals to homes throughout Lincoln, Wayne, Cabell and Mingo Counties. Many of these have never before used the food bank.
Facing Hunger is also stepping in to help individuals, as some pantries throughout southern West Virginia are closing. Kirkhart said she has noticed several member pantries shut their doors in the last few weeks.
“The majority of folks who are managing them, running pantries, they meet that vulnerable population description,” Kirkhart said. “So some of them have concerns about the volunteers’ health and well being. Some of the churches have determined from maybe their higher up organizations, that they’re going to close through the end of the month or until Easter. So then if the church is closed, the pantries can’t operate as per their usual.”
In Wheeling, the House of the Carpenter has seen an over 200 percent increase in the amount of people requesting assistance. Executive Director Michael Linger said he expected this uptick in demand when he heard about the first cases of people in the United States to test positive for Covid-19 a few weeks ago.
“We made some large purchases of food late February, early March, in anticipation that this might happen,” he said. “So, we’re actually pretty good on food at the moment.”
Another way Linger’s organization has prepared for the increased demand is by suspending their other services, which includes after school programs and a thrift store. Instead, they plan to focus solely on the food pantry for the time being. The House of the Carpenter is currently operating its food pantry as a curbside pickup operation to keep up with social distancing recommendations.
Many of those stopping at the House of the Carpenter are people who have not used their services in the past.
“[There are] two things that we haven’t seen before. One is a large number of people whose jobs have been put on hold. And so they’re waiting to get any kind of, you know, unemployment benefits or anything that will allow them to shop. The second is people going into the grocery store and finding limited resources,” Linger said.
With panic buying surging across the country, necessities like canned goods and bread can be hard to find at the grocery store.
Linger said his food bank has also seen an increase in the number of children in need of meals, after Ohio County Schools recently suspended their bagged lunch program, where students could pick up food at their bus stops.
“Longterm, based on the number of people we’re seeing, we don’t know how long our supply will last, but we will continue to distribute food for as long as it lasts,” he said.
Credit Emily Allen / West Virginia Public Broadcasting
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West Virginia Public Broadcasting
Craig Hammond shows off Bluefield Union Mission’s food supply in mid-December.
‘Gaps On The Shelves’
Director Craig Hammond at the Bluefield Union Mission said he’s noticed a similar increase, around 35 to 40 percent, in food and hygiene item requests.
“As we look at our food pantry shelves, we’re starting to see gaps on the shelves,” Hammond said. “We had a full pantry starting off in March. We bought canned fruit and other shelf stable food items. I think we’ll be running a little low by the end of the month, and now we could sure use some of those items.”
Union Mission serves food, shelter and clothing needs to people in a five-county area, including McDowell, Mercer, Monroe and Summers counties in West Virginia, and Tazewell County in Virginia. Hammond said he doesn’t expect to turn anyone away at this time, but staff and volunteers have made some changes to limit potential disease spread at the mission.
“We have, because of the crisis, tried to reduce the density of people in one place,” he said. “When you serve a lot of people, it’s not that easy, but we’ve been actually getting pretty good at it.”
Making Adjustments
Credit Glynis Board / West Virginia Public Broadcasting file photo
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West Virginia Public Broadcasting file photo
Food pantries and soup kitchens are also adjusting how they provide their services to the people who use them. Many have moved to curb-side pickup, or appointment-only services.
At the Salvation Army of Monongalia and Marion counties, location in downtown Morgantown, Sheldon Greenland said the organization has seen an uptick in need for all its services, including emergency food bags, help with utility bills and hot meals.
The organization serves a hot meal daily from 4 p.m. to 5:15 p.m. Since the pandemic began, Greenland said more individuals are taking advantage. On an average day, the Morgantown location serves between 100-120 people, he said. Lately, it’s been between 125-140.
The soup kitchen has also had to make adjustments in how it serves patrons to stay in line with state and federal guidelines related to the coronavirus.
Usually they invite people inside to sit and eat in their cafeteria, but now they are providing the meal as takeout.
“It kind of breaks our heart because we built a really good culture in our cafeteria, but we have to maintain the distance,” Greenland said. He said they will soon be adding hand washing stations outside the building for those experiencing homelessness.
Like other food pantries, they are also recalibrating where they source their food.
“A lot of our food was donated from some of our local restaurants, and most of them are closing,” Greenland said.
They have increased their orders from the USDA. However, many other pantries are doing the same.
“It is really a conundrum that we’re all facing right now,” he said. “But we want to be able to stay open so that we can continue to serve our communities.”
‘A Day To Day Situation’
Union Mission’s food pantry in Charleston recently began an “elder care initiative” to deliver food to seniors in the program’s network.
After purchasing $20,000 of food for roughly 70 seniors, Union Mission CEO Jason Quintrell said Tuesday evening the effort was already running dangerously low on funds.
On Tuesday, Quintrell said the program was unable to accept new seniors at this time.
“If I open this up to the public, and I [can’t] produce food, that really worries me,” he said. “I’m going to do the best I can with the people that we contact and set up appointments, but right now it’s like a day to day situation.”
Eastern Panhandle Response
Not all food pantries are reporting challenges, however. Some food pantries in the Eastern Panhandle region of West Virginia are preparing for a possible storm, but they’ve not seen a drastic increase in clientele yet.
Berkeley County’s largest food pantry, Loaves and Fishes Food Pantry, located in Martinsburg, is open Monday through Friday. Beverly Van Metre, president of the Berkeley County CCAP Loaves and Fishes Food Pantry, said they’ve been busy, but they also haven’t seen as many people as they’d expected.
Credit Mountaineer Food Bank
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In Grant County, Vice chairman of the Petersburg Interface Pantry Melissa Collens said they’ve seen a minor increase in the number of families who have called for food, but it’s not clear whether it has to do with the coronavirus.
“We are doing okay … [and] we’ve taken some measures to be more efficient,” Collens said.
In Mineral County, Faith in Action Food Pantry has closed “for the foreseeable future,” according to the pantry’s phone voice machine, due to the “safety of our staff and our clients.”
Government Response
During Gov. Jim Justice’s daily press conference on Tuesday, March 24, West Virginia National Guard Major General James Hoyer said the Guard is aware that some food pantries are struggling. He said the Guard, through West Virginia Voluntary Organizations Active in Disaster, or VOAD, is working to provide help. Hoyer said Justice has instructed the Guard to prioritize supporting the state’s vulnerable populations, including children and the elderly.
“We will continue to build out a plan to sustain support for our vulnerable population,” Hoyer said. He said they plan to work with retailers to ensure that food stays on the shelves in grocery stores, to help reduce some of the high demand for donated food at food pantries.
On Wednesday, March 25, Hoyer said more than 600 “food packs” were assembled. Packs contain multiple days of food and will be distributed to both seniors and families with children, he said.
Last week, Congress passed the Families First Coronavirus Response, which allocated an additional $400 million for The Emergency Food Assistance Program, the federal program that provides food for distribution to food insecure households through food pantries and soup kitchens.
According to Lohnes at WVU, West Virginia’s share of this money, based on a formula, is about 0.62 percent, or about $1.9 million in emergency food dollars. The state is also slated to receive around $620,000 in administrative dollars to help food banks distribute the additional supplies.
He said that while that is positive, food banks across West Virginia are already struggling to move food because of a lack of administrative resources, including funding to pay staff, for fuel and for cold storage.
“With the increased demand food banks will now likely need even more,” he said.
With the increase in federal assistance, and quick response of school districts and food pantries to serve people during this fast-moving crisis, Lohnes said hopes those lessons can be applied once the pandemic has subsided.
“It is amazing what’s been done in a week,” he said. “I think we need to be attentive to the policy shifts and learn from them so that we can ensure the right to adequate nutritious food for all, even once this crisis is beyond us.”
Communities in Southern West Virginia worked to feed kids Monday, the first day schools were closed in an effort to slow the potential spread of the coronavirus.
About 178,000 students in the state rely on free or reduced price meals, with many concentrated in the southern region of the state. According to the West Virginia Department of Education Office of Nutrition, free meals are being offered at more than 500 sites throughout the state during temporary school closures, with some meals being deliverd directly through regular bus routes.
A variety of local businesses, including stores owned by Little General, have said they are offering food throughout the week. For example, in Boone County the local Taco Bell and V-mart provided kids with free lunch.
The Five Loaves and Two Fishes Food Bank in McDowell County saw 30 food requests within one hour, requesting snacks for kids, said Linda McKinney who runs the organization.
“I go through this caller ID [and] it’s people that want snacks,”she said. “This one lady I’m looking at right now she has nine people in her home.”
Five Loaves and Two Fishes food pantry will be serving food by appointment only to minimize group gatherings.
The Facing Hunger Foodbank based in Huntington has a backpack program that serves students food in 12 southern West Virginia counties. Executive Director Cynthia Kirkhart said they are still delivering to schools, but are prepared to deliver directly to students in the coming days.
This story is part of West Virginia Public Broadcasting’s Southern Coalfields Reporting Project which is supported by a grant from the National Coal Heritage Area Authority.
Marshall University ceramics students have raised $17,000 for a food pantry.
The university says the 2016 Empty Bowls event raised enough money to allow the Facing Hunger Foodbank to provide 127,500 meals.
A check presentation was held Thursday at the university in Huntington.
Through the work of Marshall ceramics students and local potters, more than 1,000 bowls were sold April 15. For a $15 donation, patrons received a handcrafted ceramic bowl and a modest lunch meant to emulate a soup kitchen meal.
The Facing Hunger Foodbank serves more than 115,000 people in 17 counties in West Virginia, eastern Kentucky and southern Ohio.
Marshall University ceramics students have raised nearly $18,000 for a food pantry.
The university says the 2015 Empty Bowls event raised enough money to allow the Facing Hunger Foodbank to provide more than 106,000 meals.
Students created about 1,200 ceramic bowls, and an additional 300 were donated by local potters and others. For a $15 donation, patrons received a handcrafted ceramic bowl and a modest lunch meant to emulate a soup kitchen meal. More than 100 students and community volunteers ran the event.
The Facing Hunger Foodbank serves more than 113,000 people in 17 counties in West Virginia, Kentucky and Ohio.
