Wichita food pantries serving hundreds more with no end in sight, official says

In Wichita and across the state, food assistance programs have reported noticeable upticks in their services, according to the Kansas Food Bank.

Hundreds of more families are being served in the Wichita area each month at a time when donations are down, according to president and CEO Brian Walker.

The Kansas Food Bank sent out a survey last week to 164 of its partner agencies across 85 counties. By Tuesday, 104 responded with about 56% saying they have had an increase. That pans out to an average of a roughly 30% increase in need as a result of novel coronavirus pandemic.

“It would take a hell of a lot of money to sustain (the increases) long term,” Walker said, adding he expects this will be a long-term problem. “We don’t want people to think because the economy has opened back up and you can go to a restaurant that, you know, everybody is going back to work and people aren’t going to need assistance. That’s just not the case.”

In March, Catholic Charities Our Daily Bread Food Pantry reported a 36% increase to 1,500 households compared with the 1,100 monthly average in 2019, according to Kansas Food Bank Community Relations Manager Debi Kreutzman. United Methodist Open Door went from serving an average of 1,900 families a month in 2019 to 2,265 in March.

At the same time demand is up, donations are down.

The truckloads of items that would normally come from grocers have slowed since they are needing it themselves to meet the demand in the stores.

Kreutzman said the Kansas Food Bank used to get 19,000 to to 20,000 pounds of produce donated a week. The total food donations were down by half in March and April.

“We are not picking up the same amounts but that product is starting to come back,” Walker said.

Many families have started to turn to food services for the first time, Kreutzman said..

More than 16,400 Kansans filed for unemployment last week, up 700% from the first week in May the prior year, according to the Kansas Department of Labor.

With 31,686 recipients, Sedgwick County had more than the next Top 3 counties receiving unemployment last week, the KDOL figures show.

Expansion of federal and state food programs have helped cushion the demand on food pantries but the demand will continue to increase, Walker said.

Walker said it would take longer for rural areas to feel the effects.

A lot of people will use their savings to pay the mortgage and car payments. Slowly their pantries will start to diminish and they will need to turn to food programs, he said.

“We think we will see numbers continually creep up as we go until this thing plays its way out and folks do get back to work,” Walker said, adding if he knew when the numbers would decrease he would also know what the stock market is going to do.

Food insecurity, defined as lacking consistent access to enough food, started to climb after the 2008 recession before peaking at 14.9% of U.S. households in 2011, according to the U.S Department of Agriculture. It took until 2018 - a decade after the stock market collapsed - for the food insecurity rate to reach pre-recession levels of around 11%.

Walker said the monetary donations allow the Kansas Food Bank to fill in the gap of missing items. Donations can be sent to the Kansas Food Bank, 1919 E. Douglas, Wichita, 67211. A list of available food resources can be found under the “Need Food” tab on kansasfoodbank.org.

This story was originally published May 7, 2020 at 9:22 AM.