Mike Wolanin | The Republic Food is stacked on shelves and pallets at the Love Chapel food pantry in Columbus, Ind., Monday, Nov. 20, 2023.
A local food pantry said it is still seeing near record demand for help with groceries this year after reporting a surge in need over the past years as inflation squeezed budgets while wages failed to keep pace and pandemic aid expired.
Love Chapel, 292 Center St., reported that 1,448 households turned its pantry for help with food last month, according to figures provided by executive director Kelly Daugherty.
By comparison, Love Chapel served an average of 1,442 households per month last year and around 750 families two years earlier, Daugherty said.
So far this year, demand has been consistently hovering around the record highs that the food pantry reported last year, with an average of 5,600 people served per month, compared to an average of 5,400 people per month last year.
“We’re still running the record highs that we ran last year,” Daugherty said. “We haven’t seen an increase, so that’s a positive. We’ve got seven months of data, and it’s pretty much consistent with what we ended up with for last year. So, that two-year increase seems liked it has leveled out now, (but demand) hasn’t dropped.”
The update from local food pantries comes as the number of Bartholomew County residents experiencing food insecurity rose in 2022 to its highest total in at least 13 years, according to the most recent data from Feeding America, the nation’s largest anti-hunger organization.
The rise in local food insecurity in 2022 coincides with Indiana’s decision to end pandemic-related enhanced food stamp benefits, as well as inflation that started spiking in 2021 and peaked at 9.1% in June 2022.
Food insecurity is described as a lack of access to enough food for an active, healthy life, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Data from Feeding America shows that an additional 2,800 Bartholomew County residents experienced food insecurity in 2022 compared to the year before. Overall, 11,320 local residents were food insecure in 2022 — the highest total on record in data going back to 2009.
A total of 13.7% of local residents — nearly 1 in 7 people — experienced food insecurity in 2022, up from 10.4% in 2021 and the highest percentage since 2009, when 14.1% of local residents were food insecure, when the country was reeling from the Great Recession.
“I think that’s verification of what we have been seeing,” Daugherty said previously, referring to the data. “It was 2022 when (demand for food) really took off.”
A nationally representative survey released last month by the Urban Institute found that food hardship continued to rise across the country in 2023. Last year, 27% of U.S. adults reported experiencing food insecurity, up from 24.9% in 2022 and 22.5% in 2019, according to the survey.
“The decline in food insecurity between 2019 and 2021 in the wake of the robust government and private response to the COVID-19 pandemic was followed by a sharp increase in food insecurity between 2021 and 2022, coinciding with expiring aid and rising inflation,” the Urban Institute said last month.
Locally, officials said they would like to see less food insecurity in the community but said it was a good news that demand has not surged yet again this year.
“I’d like to see (demand) go down, but it hasn’t done that,” Daugherty said. “The other side of it is that it hasn’t gone up, so that’s good.”
