Stocked shelves do not always indicate a well-stocked pantry. The combination of reduced funding and support, housing shortages, inflation, decreased SNAP benefits, and higher demand since the end of pandemic-era assistance programs has made the situation more complex than ever for local food pantries and banks.
In an article published in April, The Chronicle reported on the potential challenges that local food pantries and banks may encounter due to budget cuts at both the federal and state levels.
Since then, a great deal has changed.
Mike Fleck, executive director of Community Sharing in Cottage Grove, gave insight into some of the changes that his local pantry is experiencing.
“In that original article, it talked about how we weren’t yet experiencing (the effects of budget cuts),” Fleck said. He explained how pauses on contracts at the federal level have resulted in an estimated 18% drop in the amount of food coming through the USDA system.
“Since that article, we switched from once a week to twice a month for food boxes. Now we’re limiting and we’ve reduced the number of shelves that we have open,” said Fleck.
“We have definitely curtailed, and we’re holding our own at the moment, but I’ll be honest, I’m waiting to see what this latest budget reconciliation is going to do,” he said.
The recent budget reconciliation bill includes significant cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). The reduction in federal funding is expected to lead to an increase in food insecurity rates.
“It’s really counterintuitive that we’re cutting the money and then expecting not to see the impact down the road,” Fleck said.
A negative plus a negative doesn’t make a positive. A decrease in food supply and funding for Community Sharing, combined with an increase in food insecurity due to reduced SNAP benefits, presents the pantry with a difficult dilemma.
“Food insecurity is just absolutely on the rise, and we’re seeing more and more folks all the time signing up for food boxes,” he said.
In the previous article, Fleck said, “We’ll manage. We might have to tighten the belt, but I’m sure we’ll manage.”
However, recently, things have become more challenging as finances continue to tighten.
“We’re pretty frugal and we’re pretty lean and mean, but we’ve gone now to where we’re actually cutting into our overhead. We’re having to go into reserves to cover these shortfalls,” he said.
“I budget about $6,000 for our holiday food bucks. Normally, I used to be able to bill that to our county funds, but now we’re taking that out of our food restricted dollars (reserve),” said Fleck. “We’re working diligently to try to make up for those shortfalls. It’s a tough time to be working for a nonprofit. The reality is that our funding is definitely low. We will burn through our reserves in a few years at this rate.”
More people visiting pantries
Fleck mentioned additional factors that might affect food scarcity, such as rent increases and other federal budget cuts.
“With the cuts to Medicaid, the problem is it’s going to further impact people. If they now don’t have health insurance, that’s going to further impact them if they do have a medical event or something else,” he said.
“At the local level, everybody screams about the number of unhoused people we have. Well, this is just going to drive that number higher.”
Carolyn Stein, executive director of Food for Lane County, also noted an increase in demand for food assistance. Despite efforts to grow partnerships with local grocers, which have been successful, the demand for food is expected to exceed supply, especially with anticipated changes to SNAP set to take effect early next year.
Stein explained that the Commodity Credit Corporation (CCC), a USDA program that purchases food from farmers and distributes it to food banks, had initial cuts earlier this year that took away about a fifth of FFLC’s food supply. “Nothing has changed there,” Stein said. “That was roughly 20% of our food that we no longer have. We have less food supply because of the cuts to that program.
“However, just across our communities, we are identifying and understanding that there are more people visiting pantries more frequently. Our data suggests that people are needing food more often, and that could be a reflection of what’s going on economically,” said Stein. She said the price of food remains high, and goods and services are a large factor in monthly expenses, causing people to need to access pantries.
“We’re well aware of the reduction in the food supply that we have and anticipate that we’re going to have less food to offer over the course of the next couple of years, just based on our own budgets,” she said.
“We will continue to distribute as much food as we have to the organizations, and it’s done based on the population numbers that a specific pantry will serve. That formula in which we distribute will continue. It will just mean less all across the community.”
With SNAP being the largest anti-hunger program in the nation, Stein said the effects of its cuts will be unavoidable. She said changes to SNAP programs aren’t expected to take place until later in 2026.
“When those changes kick in, we’ll see more need, and food pantries and food banks absolutely will not be able to keep up with that need once those changes happen,” she said. “The truth is, food banks and food pantries will not be able to meet the need, and that’s just the truth.”
Stein said her organization is working diligently to identify inefficiencies and grow partnerships, while also raising awareness about the situation.
“We’ve reached out to local and state officials, as well as our representatives in Congress, to let them know what our concerns are,” she said. “They are aware and they understand that residents in Lane County rely on food assistance programs. We feel heard and we feel like they’re going to do what they can to respond.”
Different story in Creswell
In Creswell, things look a little bit different than what Cottage Grove’s Community Sharing is experiencing.
“I would say that our customer numbers and our food supply remain stable. Tariffs have now been started, which will impact the cost of food, clothes, and household supplies,” Susan Blachnik, Creswell Food Pantry’s longtime manager, said.
During an interview in mid-July, Blachnik said nothing has really changed yet. She expects the pantry to start feeling the effects of budget cuts in 2027.
“We always try to keep (the pantry) stocked,” she said. “We’ve got a lot more storage than a lot of the food for Lane County food pantries, so the idea is always to be ready.”
She mentioned that the earlier USDA budget cuts, which were focused on farmers, had a slight impact on the animal products that the pantry was able to receive.
“In the spring, we didn’t get eggs, meat, cheese, and milk. The truckloads that were supposed to go to the food banks all over the state from the USDA. They canceled those, and we didn’t get that stuff,” Blachnik said. “We’d normally just get it for a short time, and then it’s gone. We’re used to not normally having it all the time, so you know, we’re okay,” she said.
“We’ve been keeping a good supply of the frozen and the dry fruits, so that we’re ready because things happen besides these kinds of cuts,” said Blachnik. She discussed how natural disasters have affected the number of people the food pantry serves.
“There was an ice storm, there was flooding a few years back, with the mobile home park in Cottage Grove, there’s been fires,” she said. “The idea is just to always be ready. Right now, our food supply is just fine. It’s normal in the summer for the shelves to be a little lighter. Ours are fine, and I’m not sure why they’re fine, but they are usually in the summer.”
Blachnik explained that over the last six weeks, the pantry has seen a decrease in the number of people coming for food.
“During COVID, we averaged 125 families each Thursday for a long time,” she said. “Then it slowly, after a couple of years, kind of staggered down and down…We stayed at 90 (families) for over a year, but in these last six weeks, which is a short term in the big picture, it’s running more like 70 (families), which is really strange, but I can’t explain it. And all the other food pantries are not going through the same thing.”
She contributed regular peaks during the summer to when students were out of school and the Fourth of July holiday.
“We haven’t been in this position before,” said Blachnik. “Essentially, we’re in a good place. We’re stable. Our food supply is stable. Customer numbers are pretty stable, and nothing has really changed yet. That’s where we’re at, we’re stable, strangely, with the slight drop.”
Blachnik’s concern is whether there were too many customers and the pantry couldn’t provide them with enough food, but that isn’t the case.
She is concerned that people will “stop coming because they don’t want to take food away from other people,” she said. “People think they don’t need it as badly as other people, so they won’t take it, especially elderly people. There’s a lot of food still.”
