Second Harvest has had no choice but to buy food to bridge the gap, and has had to pay the inflated prices like everyone else. Second Harvest fills about 13,000 requests for food each week. Donations from retailers and manufacturers are also down 27 percent this year, Iberis said, and since January there has been a 30 percent increase in the number of requests for food. While the undersupply in USDA food is Second Harvest’s largest problem, it is far from the only factor in play. Usually, the food bank that distributes to 172 partner pantries in Trumbull, Mahoning and Columbiana counties would have some 1.3 million pounds of food on hand at any given time, Iberis said.
“We have about 10 days worth of food - that is, if they take garbanzo beans,” Iberis joked. A few dozen pallets offer a paltry selection: raisins, hazelnuts, peanut butter, lentils, grapefruit juice, dates, pistachios, and an abundance of one item - garbanzo beans. The shelves that usually hold USDA food at Second Harvest’s Salt Springs Road warehouse are sparse, to say the least. Seventeen loads of USDA food have been canceled or delayed this calendar year, Iberis said. Department of Agriculture, Iberis said, but this year USDA commodities are down 59 percent. Second Harvest’s biggest supplier of food is the U.S.
With prices climbing, there was talk of cutting back to half a dozen eggs, but Wolf said the pantry has been fortunate to get enough monetary donations to continue giving the full dozen. Immaculate Heart of Mary also distributes a half-gallon of milk and a dozen eggs to every family, which the pantry purchases at an Aldi supermarket. “If Second Harvest doesn’t have it, we don’t have it,” Wolf said. In addition to fresh produce and meat, each family gets a box of dry goods, which is usually overflowing, but recently has been on the lighter side. Friday, that was around 12:30 p.m., and some cars had already been waiting for two hours, Wolf said. Immaculate Heart of Mary’s distribution is scheduled from 2 to 5 p.m., but gets started as soon as the volunteers are ready. Senior citizens on fixed incomes are regulars, but Wolf said younger families with children also are making more frequent appearances. The pantry’s total registry includes more than 500 families, but not everyone comes every week, Wolf explained. With need on the rise, the church fed closer to 250 families in June and on Friday prepared enough for 270 families. Three months ago, Immaculate Heart of Mary in Austintown was feeding about 180 families made up of some 500 individuals, he said. That is roughly the same number of new families that have been registering for Immaculate Heart of Mary Church’s food distribution on the fourth Friday of the month, according to church pantry coordinator Pat Wolf. He said there’s been a recent “spike” in people who are coming to the food distributions for the first time - each Friday about 30 people who have never visited the food pantry before join the line of cars that wraps around the block and backs up on West Market Street in front of the mission’s pantry. “We get a food list every week, and we’re able to go on that food list and shop, and that food list is barer and barer and there’s less to choose from,” Mariarri said. The Warren Family Mission gets a large number of small private and business monetary donations, but the bulk of its food comes from Second Harvest. “Whether it was from the pandemic or inflated gas prices, I feel we’ve truly seen people line up hours before food giveaways, which shows the urgency of going to get food and putting it on the table,” Mararri said.
Dominic Mararri, public relations director for the Warren Family Mission, which provides about 100,000 hot meals a year and also distributes food weekly, said the mission has seen a steady increase in need over the past few years.