On a regular basis, the Tacoma Weekly checks in with food banks around town to see how things are going and if they need anything that we could help share with the broader community. During an in-person visit last week to the Tacoma Adventist Community Services food bank on Portland Avenue, volunteer coordinator Lori Caley-Thorne talked about a disconcerting situation in that the food bank’s walk-in cooler is practically bare. Opening the cooler door, all that was there were a couple of barely half-full boxes in one corner and a small box of cauliflower in the other.
“This is the first time in 30 years that I have an empty refrigerator,” Caley-Thorne said. “I’ve never seen it like this. I got a pallet of bananas on Wednesday, but I only have that day and the next to get rid of them because they don’t hold up long. That was the only fresh produce we got. No salad, no vegetables, no onions, no carrots.”
To help get at least some fresh produce for their clients, the food bank has been buying $1,000 worth every week on top of what has been given by their food providers, which Caley-Thorne said lately has dwindled down to record low amounts. Items must be purchased to add to what is being delivered by food providers like Emergency Food Network (EFN) so that the bags of food Adventist volunteers put together for clients contain some semblance of variety.
“We’ve been buying things like zucchini, carrots, celery, apples, oranges – whatever they have on special. From EFN, we usually get a full pallet of one product, so we buy all the other vegetables to round out the bags,” as Caley-Thorne explained.
The Tacoma Adventist Community Services food bank is in a uniquely difficult position in that it is a special-dietary needs food bank for clients with health conditions like heart disease, cancer or diabetes. Being on a restricted diet means that these clients can’t go to just any food bank. For Adventist clients, produce is the most important item, and this means that a lot of money must be spent for what is not donated. Healthful foods are more expensive in general, and this can be seen in any grocery store where the “health food” aisles are stocked with products that are much more costly. To eat well, you need the money to do it, and this is true for individual consumers and food banks alike.
“We try to stay away from carbs, and we don’t pack anything that has more than 13 grams of sugar so that eliminates a lot of products. I can’t give my people cookies, a ton of bread and other filler things because their blood sugar would go through the roof,” Caley-Thorne said. “Ours has to be a nutritional diet and that’s hard to come by if these places aren’t putting out anything. We have people whose health is really precarious. They need nutritional food to eat.” Other food products are not coming in as well. Caley-Thorne said yogurt and cottage cheese used to be consistent every week from Fred Meyer. “It’s not coming anymore either. We used to get boxes of variety items like soup and canned stuff and now we get variety maybe once every couple of months. It’s just not there.”
IT’S COMPLICATED
Why there is such a current food shortage is a multi-layered predicament. One reason is due to this time of year. Freshly grown produce is harder to come by in the winter months because local outdoor farms simply cannot grow it right now. This is something that Eloise’s Cooking Pot founder and Executive Director Ahndrea Blue is keenly aware of such that she is working toward building an indoor BIPOC Farmers Hub near Eloise’s Cooking Pot on McKinley Avenue where growers can bring produce year-round despite the seasons.
“The BIPOC Farmers Hub is something we’re trying to do to create an inner-city farming area,” Blue said. “It’s a huge issue, especially that most farmers put their beds to sleep around November.”
Blue works with 37 farmers to grow for Eloise’s Cooking Pot and its satellite food sites, paying above wholesale for food to create a win-win situation for the farmers and her food programs. As founder and CEO of the Making a Difference Foundation, Blue is also aware that Eloise’s has a sturdier foundation of support than other food banks in town like Adventist Community Services.
“As a bigger food bank, it is my job to take less so that any other smaller food bank can come up, and I’m okay with that. They don’t have the same resources. Eloise’s is owned by the Making a Difference Foundation so it’s a different situation,” Blue said.
Emergency Food Network has its own growing operation as well at Mother Earth Farm in the Puyallup Valley. An 8-acre organic farm, Mother Earth provides more than 120,000 pounds of fresh fruit, vegetables, and herbs annually to 75 pantries, meal sites and shelters that EFN partners with in Pierce County.
Speaking with EFN Director of Programs Sam Cook revealed another contributor to the food shortage, what she called “a staggering increase” in visits to food banks. Data from EFN’s 75 partners shows that there were 2 million visits to these food pantries in 2022 and 2.6 million visits in 2023, a 30 percent increase.
“EFN distributed more food last year than in past years. We had 14 million pounds of food go out in Pierce County; however, food donations have been down across the board,” Cook said. “It’s something we’re seeing with food in general, less food donations coming in from distributors, from grocery stores… It’s really a problem for all food pantries in the state of Washington.”
Mark Coleman, Senior Media and Marketing Officer for Food Lifeline, echoed Cook’s assessment. “The shortage is in food donations across the board. Our demand has grown so dramatically this year that we are struggling to fill the gap. Last year we served just under a million guests – while this year that number has climbed to 1.6 million. This is where the problem truly lies, at least for us,” Coleman wrote in an email.
Harvest Pierce County has numerous programs to get fruits and vegetables to food banks including supporting more than 90 community gardens with many of these keeping beds dedicated to growing for food banks. The non-profit’s main food source is through gleaning whereby Harvest Pierce County volunteers go out to local farms to load up surplus produce after the farmers have harvested what they need.
“We offer a portion to the volunteers for donating their labor to come out and help us harvest and the majority of what we pick goes to local food banks,” said Gleaning Program Manager Devon Kerr. “Every year is a different amount of poundage. We work with some farmers who, out of the goodness of their heart, will plant a little extra for us to come and glean to take to food banks.”
Another issue concerns the number of free food sites popping up in Tacoma and Pierce County. Among the larger, long established food banks are more churches, schools and other caring folks that offer free food, and these have risen in number ever since the pandemic. This means food donations are spread out across more numerous selections of places and a fair number are in BIPOC communities. Blue says this is helpful in putting more people in the fight against hunger.
“They’re providing a need that the food banks were not meeting and that’s the reality of it. I believe that there is room at the table for everyone,” she said. “We are stronger together.”
Blue asserts that food banks need to work together now more than ever. For example, she is reaching out to Adventist Community Services to offer her assistance in helping them fill their cooler just as Caley-Thorne and Adventist Executive Director Leslie Bagdley have been staunch supporters of Blue’s efforts.
“They have been an amazing support system for us – amazing,” Blue said. “We wouldn’t be here if Leslie had not gone to battle for me and been so generous. East Tacoma is her territory, and she has been here forever, and she has done nothing but say how can I help you.”
For Kerr, her insider’s view of the food insecurity epidemic is a hard reality to fathom.
“Once you’re in this work, you can see how abundant the land can be in producing what we need but there is so much greed, income inequality and wealth inequality that it’s quite heartbreaking,” she said. “Every day that I do this job I feel simultaneously inspired and hopeful but also completely gutted. The whole model and system are really broken.”
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