Scorching drought and rising demand across the globe have pushed the price of U.S. food exports to record highs this year.
That is good news for American farmers. But it’s bad news for the hungry, especially on the eve of the holiday season.
The booming market means that the federal government does not need to buy as many excess crops from farmers, resulting in a precipitous drop in government donations to food banks.
The effects can be seen even in the Washington area, home to seven of the most affluent counties in the country.
The Capital Area Food Bank, the central supplier of food for more than 700 pantries and nonprofit groups that help the region’s needy, has seen government food donations plummet 38 percent this year — about 1.5 million pounds of food.
“Food banks are really being hit,” said Lynn Brantley, the agency’s outgoing president. “With the drop in commodities, the higher cost of food and the higher cost of gasoline, we have to be ever-
creative at working at ways to fulfill a tremendous gap.”
The losses have had a ripple effect on Thanksgiving bounty this year: Some of the region’s smaller nonprofit groups have had to cut back, dig into their pockets or substitute cheaper foods to make up the shortfall.
Anne White, the volunteer outreach coordinator for Gethsemane United Methodist Church in Capitol Heights, said she has had to scramble for donations from friends and other local agencies that are already hard-pressed. Then, when White opened up the holiday bags for seniors she got last week from the food bank, she was surprised to see a bag of chicken parts instead of a plump turkey.
“They would normally get a nice turkey breast,” White said. “I attribute it to the economic crisis — everybody has had to cut back. But they are still going to get a nice, nutritious meal.”
She ended up supplementing the chicken with Cornish hens from private donors.
Turkeys are out altogether at the Blue Ridge Area Food Bank, which serves Loudoun County and central Virginia. It ran the budget numbers in the spring and decided it could not buy turkeys this year because of a 43 percent drop in U.S. Agriculture Department food and other donations.
In Loudoun — the country’s most affluent county — the pantry has compensated for the shortage with outside donations and will hand out Thanksgiving bags to 2,000 people. But the pantry is short about 200 grocery gift cards for turkeys.
The poverty rates rose last year in the Washington suburbs, according to census data, so even amid the growing wealth in this area, more and more people are seeking help.
Anti-hunger advocates such as Brantley say they are continuing to see more formerly middle-class families asking for food because they have lost jobs or hours and the working poor, who cannot make ends meet because of the area’s high cost of living.
The Capital Area Food Bank, which opened a facility in Northeast Washington this year in response to the growing hunger crisis, is set to give out a record 33 million pounds of food this year, up from 23 million at the beginning of the recession. Calls to its emergency hunger hotline are up 22 percent this year over last, officials said.
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