On this West Virginia Morning, both of West Virginia’s major food banks purchase fresh produce from West Virginia farmers. But a farmer-food bank flap had some social media pages heated up – and demonstrated the value of a written contract. Randy Yohe has the story.
On this West Virginia Morning, both of West Virginia’s major food banks purchase fresh produce from West Virginia farmers. But a farmer-food bank flap had some social media pages heated up – and demonstrated the value of a written contract. Randy Yohe has the story.
Also, in this show, friendships that endure between people with very different values and beliefs can be a remarkable gift. In the next episode of Us & Them, host Trey Kay remembers his dear, albeit unlikely, friend Alice Moore who recently passed away. Kay talks about how their friendship taught him about relationships, politics and people.
West Virginia Morning is a production of West Virginia Public Broadcasting which is solely responsible for its content.
Support for our news bureaus comes from Shepherd University.
Caroline MacGregor is our assistant news director and produced this episode.
Listen to West Virginia Morning weekdays at 7:43 a.m. on WVPB Radio or subscribe to the podcast and never miss an episode. #WVMorning
The Posey Perry Emergency Food Fund is named for Gov. Jim Justice’s uncle, who volunteered to help feed the hungry for much of his life.
The Posey Perry Emergency Food Fund is named for Gov. Jim Justice’s uncle, who volunteered to help feed the hungry for much of his life.
In his Thursday media briefing, Justice announced that the reserved $10 million, allocated from the current state budget, was now heading to the Mountaineer and Facing Hunger food banks.
“The food pantries will coordinate with the food banks, and we’ll get this money to them and hopefully be able to help a lot of folks,” Justice said.
Both food bank directors say this funding release will offer community partners needed resources to purchase food during a critical time of the year.
“The commitment to fighting hunger in West Virginia exhibited by the governor’s office is truly commendable,” Chad Morrison, CEO of Mountaineer Food Bank, said. “We eagerly anticipate the positive impact the Posey Perry Emergency Food Fund will have on those struggling with hunger in our state.”
Cyndi Kirkhart, executive director of Facing Hunger Foodbank, echoed the appreciation and the need.
“We understand that the work will continue and that we will always support the governor’s wishes for us to move toward living outside of poverty and diminished resources by pursuing food access infrastructure resources for ourselves, our community partners and our neighbors who live across our service areas, but remain at the center of our work,” Kirkhart said.
A new state fund will help feed West Virginians in times of great need, and the Homeowners Assistance Program is still offering aid.
A new state fund will help feed West Virginians in times of great need, and the Homeowners Assistance Program is still offering aid.
During his press briefing Wednesday morning, Gov. Jim Justice highlighted the Posey Perry Fund, an emergency food bank fund created in the 2024 state budget.
The governor declared that “nobody in West Virginia needs to be going hungry.”
“What it is, is $10 million of emergency assistance if something breaks through and we need an emergency level of assistance and for lots and lots and lots of our pantries and food banks,” Justice said. “Literally, we don’t need people going hungry in West Virginia.
He said the fund is named after his uncle, who worked at his local food pantry after his retirement from mining.
“He was the last survivor of my mom’s brothers and sisters,” Justice said. “Yet after he retired from the coal mines, Posie Perry made trip after trip almost on a daily basis to the food bank in Huff Creek. He worked it night and day.”
Justice also declared this April Housing Stabilization Awareness Month with the signing of a proclamation Wednesday. The recognition was a way to highlight the achievements of the West Virginia Homeowners Rescue Program over the past year.
The program is funded by the U.S. Department of the Treasury to assist West Virginia homeowners facing a financial hardship due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Justice was joined by Erica Boggess, the executive director of the state’s Housing Development fund.
She said that despite the more than 4,200 West Virginia families helped in the past year, there are more people in need of assistance.
“We really want to encourage people to apply for this assistance,” Boggess said. “It’s important to apply sooner rather than later. You don’t want to wait till the day your utilities are going to be cut off to seek help – act now.”
Boggess said homeowners can get help paying for their mortgage, as well as real estate tax and insurance.
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.”
