RICHMOND, Va. — Hunger starts in many ways for the clients of the Lamb's Basket food pantry.
Deborah Williams, 47, a home health care aide, runs out of her government food stamps in two weeks.
William Hines, 40, arrives on a bicycle with a duffle bag for food on his back. A landscaper, he said, "I get jobs here and there, but my luck hasn't been that good."
Jennifer Spurgeon, 30, has two sons, ages 11 and 12. A year ago, Spurgeon's husband left the family. She collects $45 a month in food stamps, $500 a month in child support and had been clearing $800 a month working in the kitchen of a Friendly's restaurant until her hours were cut to 12 a week from 30.
Food pantries, soup kitchens and shelters have rarely seen such demand.
"I am not aware of any food bank in the country that's saying they are seeing fewer people," said Douglas O'Brien, vice president for public policy and research at America's Second Harvest in Chicago, which coordinates food distribution to 212 food bank warehouses where 80 percent of the nation's pantries pick up most of their food. Second Harvest said it is seeing three times more clients than it saw in the days before Sept. 11, 2001, when the surge began.
In the face of the demand, some pantries are rationing food by putting less in the bags they distribute, asking clients to wait longer for bags or setting limits on the number of clients they serve.
"The food is going out faster than it's coming in," said Rachel Bristol, executive director of the Oregon Food Bank, which distributes food to agencies, mostly pantries, throughout the state. "Some of our agencies have cut back from serving families six times a year to two." The 75-church Urban Ministries pantry of Raleigh, N.C., serves an average of 30 families a day. But 30 more a day need food, said David Reese, the agency's resource director. "We turn folks away every day," Reese said.
Needs rise, giving drops
Meals served by the Salvation Army climbed from 51 million three years ago to 57 million in 2001 to 61 million last year, "and my sense is the need is still increasing," said Tom Jones, a spokesman. While demand varies from city to city, the U.S. Conference of Mayors reported in December that in a survey of 25 cities, the number of requests for free food last year exceeded the 2001 average by 19 percent.
To help meet the demand through a program that provides about 25 percent of the food that Second Harvest manages, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said it spent $380 million in the 2002 fiscal year, about $200 million more than in the 2000 fiscal year. But the other sources of food are not keeping pace with the demand.
One reason is the slow economy. Donations to pantries of private money from foundations, businesses and individuals have stalled. "People still give to us," Virginia White, president of the Kansas Foodbank Warehouse in Wichita, said. "People who used to give $100 are giving $10, $20."
But there are other reasons beyond shifts in the economy. The 1996 overhaul of the welfare system and the law's tighter eligibility standards for food stamps are one. In moving more than half of the 12 million recipients off the rolls and into jobs, advocates of the poor say many former recipients still fail to earn enough to cover basic needs.
Stores providing less
Another is changes in the food industry. Supermarkets and food processing companies are using technology to control their inventories better. Many are also using better handling technology to cut down on the dented cans and scratched cartons that they give pantries. More stores and companies also sell excess and damaged supplies to a growing secondary market of discount stores rather than give them away.
The Central Virginia Foodbank in Richmond, a Second Harvest affiliate, supplies Lamb's Basket and 594 other pantries, shelters and soup kitchens in 31 Virginia counties from a 60,000-square-foot former tobacco warehouse.
"We have never had more need for food," Fay Lohr, the executive director, said.
This year, Lohr said, 14 foundations have committed to a total of $48,000 in contributions to the food bank. Last year, 33 foundations gave $138,000. Two years ago, the food bank distributed 7.1 million pounds of food. With intense, door-to-door food drives to meet the rising demand, it distributed 11.4 million pounds last year.
"We're getting more USDA product than we've ever gotten," she said. And yet, she said, "for the first time, we're having to ration food from the USDA."
Churches heavily involved
A growing industry of scavengers and volunteers feeds the supply line. Churches, which sponsor 70 percent of the Richmond food bank's pantries, ask parishioners to bring food to Sunday services. On some weeks, the Boy Scouts, the letter carriers' union or a bank organizes a food drive.
Pantry staffs are almost entirely volunteers, mostly retirees. About 100 volunteers take turns at Lamb's Basket ferrying in food from stores and the food bank, interviewing clients and packing bags and boxes. The pantries are cheerful, trusting, fast-moving places with little of the delay and paper-shuffling scrutiny of the welfare office.
Recently, two women lingered on concrete steps outside the Ephesus Seventh-Day Adventist Church on Richmond's South Side, waiting for the pantry in the cellar to open. They come once a month, they said.
"I come because I'm disabled," Phyllis Williams, 51, said. "My husband, he's disabled. He had a heart attack in January." The Williamses have two daughters and two grandchildren at home. Williams said their income was about $1,100 a month, mostly from food stamps and disability checks.
Sheila Russell, 46, a disabled and divorced mother of a 15-year-old boy, said: "It's better than Social Services because they don't degrade you. They don't make you feel like they're giving you something of theirs."
Both have worked, they said, but major companies in Richmond have been contracting and consolidating. "Let's be real," Russell said. "Look at all the money to fight that war. That's money that could have gone in people's kitchens."
Pantries can't serve all
Norma Foster, a volunteer, has managed the Ephesus pantry for five years. "When I started we were seeing 25 or 30 households a month," Foster said. "Now we're seeing 100 households with 200, 250 people a month. We can't take everybody."
To receive food supplied by the Agriculture Department, a single person's income may not exceed $1,108 a month, a two-person family's, $1,493, a three-person family's, $1,878. People already eligible for disability payments, food stamps or Medicaid because of low incomes automatically qualify.
Food from the Agriculture Department, provided free to the pantry, is stored in one room. A year ago its shelves were full. Now, they are one-third full, with cans of beans and pears, boxes of powdered milk, and bags of shelled walnuts and trail mix.
"Spaghetti, juices, prunes, plums, mashed potatoes, noodles, they just don't have it now," Foster said.
At Lamb's Basket, bigger and better stocked, a can of black olives and a jar of clam juice linger on a shelf. But outdated Mother's Day cakes are moving fast. So are pasta, tuna, frozen chicken, Thomas' bagels and English muffins, and canned meals like ravioli in tomato sauce and franks and beans that a child home from school can open and heat.
"A family of five gets about five bags a month," said Betty Shumaker, the manager. In March, the last month for which she has compiled figures, the pantry served 330 households, including 447 children. In February, 229 households were served, and last June, 150.
"Jesus said, 'Feed my sheep,"' Shumaker said. "That's why we're Lamb's Basket. We'll give it out until it's gone."