Novato resident Sharon Murphy said she didn’t always need food assistance, but after years of medical complications and spiking food prices, she turned to her local pantry for help.
“The food bank has just been great, and the people there and what they do is phenomenal,” the 78-year-old said of the weekly pantry at North Marin Community Services. “It’s out of sight how high food prices have been going up. I didn’t know what to do.”
With food prices surging, many Americans have found their household budgets upended, forcing difficult choices at the supermarket and putting new demands on programs intended to help. Across the nation, food banks and pantries also are struggling with the increase in costs, substituting or pulling the most expensive products, such as beef, from offerings.
At the San Francisco-Marin Food Bank, which stocks pantry shelves in Marin, purchasing proteins has been challenging, said Barbara Abbot, a vice president.
For example, the price of whole chickens the food bank has purchased for holiday distribution has spiked 80%, from 65 cents a pound to $1.17 a pound. It cost $115,000 more than what was budgeted for 50,000 whole chickens, Abbot said.
Thanks to donations, the nonprofit has enough inventory to provide Thanksgiving and Christmas meals to families in need, she said.
The food bank just received a donation of 500 turkeys from Foster Farms and is set up to distribute 1,600 throughout its service area.
“The holiday distribution is going to be wonderful,” Abbot said.
In other areas, costs have increased, too, she said.
Approximately 60% of the food the nonprofit distributes is fresh fruits and vegetables. For the first quarter this year, the food bank is 16% over budget on produce, or about $400,000, and 65% on eggs, or about $75,000.
Overall, prices for U.S. consumers jumped 6.2% in October compared with a year earlier, the Labor Department said Wednesday. Prices for meat, poultry, fish and eggs in U.S. cities are up 15% since the start of 2020, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The run-up in costs at the supermarket comes even as gasoline prices have risen and natural gas and heating oil prices are predicted to be higher this winter, putting further pressure on those with low incomes.
Christine Paquette, executive director of St. Vincent de Paul Society in San Rafael, said despite cost increases, it is still able to feed everyone who comes through the door.
The expense for proteins have gone up 15%, she said, putting the overall food budget over $250,000.
Since the onset of the pandemic, demand on the San Geronimo Valley Community Center pantry using food bank provisions has doubled and even tripled some weeks, said Dave Cort, director of the center. The pantry used to serve about 100 people and now averages about 200, distributing about 8,000 pounds of food a week, he said.
Nicole Ramirez, who runs the community center’s pantry, said there’s been an influx of need.
“It’s running across the board of the socioeconomic classes,” she said. “There are people all over Marin seeking our services.”
Cheryl Paddack, chief executive officer of North Marin Community Services, said its pantry stocked by the food bank has distributed 605,000 pounds of food valued at $986,000 from July 1, 2020, through June 30, 2021, a 106% increase over the prior year. Today, it is serving approximately 260 people a week, up from 125 people before the pandemic.
“What we’re seeing is a growing number of families with disposable income and low-income families need access to food,” she said.
CalFresh, the largest food program in California, is also growing in popularity, Paddack said.
Since the pandemic started in March 2020, there has been a 26.5% increase in CalFresh participants in Marin, rising from 10,193 to 12,898 in October 2021, said Jesse Paran, social services director for the Marin County Department of Health and Human Services.
“This number hasn’t counted the applications that would have come in that we’re still processing,” Paran said. “This is the picture we’re seeing.”
There is an incentive program that offers shoppers at Agricultural Institute of Marin farmers markets a one-for-one match up to $15, doubling the value of the EBT card or food stamps.
From January to October, institute distributed $688,359 in market match benefits, a 74% increase over the $395,327 in benefits distributed in the same time period in the year prior, said Andy Naja-Riese, chief executive of the organization.
The supply chain problems and food price surges are affecting the 380 participating local farmers and producers, too, he added. A recent survey of 109 respondents found that 30% planned to increase prices for their food. About 40% planned to leave prices unchanged, while another 30% were unsure.
“In general, the cost of doing business continues to increase across the board,” Naja-Riese said.
Stefan Parnay, the county’s agricultural commissioner, said local farmers have the drought to worry about on top of supply chain holdups.
“Those rains we got have been tremendous, but for many, the damage was already done in a sense,” he said. “Some folks didn’t have water, so crops died, or they didn’t plant what they normally would. We’ve definitely lost a production of crops.”
While food continues to be shipped in from other areas, Parnay said, “buying locally is really critical for our agricultural industry.”
IJ wire services contributed to this report.
