A14 EZ RE THE WASHINGTON POST.SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 22 , 2020
handouts. An estimated 8 million
Americans had slipped below the
poverty line since May, and more
than 50 million Americans — or 1
in 6 people — were expected to
experience food insecurity by the
year’s end.
And that tide of need is likely
to surge again soon. Without
intervention from the federal
government, the clock will run
out on federal unemployment
insurance and a nationwide evic-
tion moratorium, leaving 12 mil-
lion without benefits and 40 mil-
lion renters at risk of eviction —
all of which will affect food ac-
cess, particularly in rural areas
where food pantries are scare.
“We are expecting the need to
rise significantly,” said Michael
McKee, chief executive of the
Blue Ridge Area Food Bank, a
distributor that partners with
more than 200 pantries across
rural Virginia. “Our concern, be-
yond the sheer numbers, will be
the ability of our partner agencies
to handle that surge.”
Ames had spent nearly a dec-
ade at the food bank, bending her
seemingly endless energy and
cheer into feeding Fauquier
County’s hungry. The past year
had meant new faces there at
noon for the food bank’s daily
distribution, new names and
backstories for Ames to remem-
ber, new requests for donations
and help she never had to make
before. Ames believed those 600
turkeys weren’t just another meal
but a sign of stability for families
that had little of it in the past
eight months.
“I made a promise,” Ames
would later explain.
So after learning about her
predicament, Ames stepped out-
side toward a whiteboard near
her loading dock.
At the top, Ames had an em-
ployee write, “Turkey Donation
Goal: 600.”
Beneath it, she wrote the date
— Nov. 11 — and the number of
TURKEYS FROM A
Rural food
banks fight
to provide
in winter
distributes food to 21 counties in
Virginia. “Some of this is donor
fatigue, that’s my guess. A lot of
households that were struggling,
then a lot of the jobs that were
furloughed have become perma-
nent layoffs. As we look at these
coming months, we have a food
budget for all of the fiscal year,
but we are almost out of it
already.”Overcoming ‘country pride’
Shaffer’s food pantry in Page
County, Va. — where state records
show 19.6 percent of the popula-
tion is food insecure — has kept
the shelves stocked, thanks to
state and local grants as well as
money from the Cares Act. Other
SEE TURKEYS ON Ahunger: Seasonal work ends, and
colder temperatures drive up
utility costs. This winter, howev-
er, arrives as a deadlocked Con-
gress fails to offer a new relief
fund and as rising coronavirus
cases threaten new shutdown
measures.
Another issue facing all food
providers involves securing
meals. Both urban and rural food
networks have seen donations
drop, forcing food banks to dip
into their own budgets to pur-
chase food that usually would be
freely given.
“We are down 63 percent in
donations,” said Catherine Has-
singer, the director of community
services for the Catholic Charities
of the Diocese of Arlington, whichother cities your pantry closure
rates were at 30 or 40 percent,” he
said.
“We are a microcosm of what is
happening everywhere else in the
world,” said Mimi Forbes, the
manager of the Rappahannock
Pantry in Sperryville, Va. “We
have about 7,000 people in the
county, but we serve 10 percent of
the county. We’re the little pantry
that could.”
The coming months, however,
present new problems. “The de-
mand is really increasing,” ex-
plained Lois Shaffer, the director
of operations at Page One food
pantry in Page County, Va. “We’re
preparing for a rough winter.”
Experts say the winter months
typically push more people intoabout the ability of our partner
agencies to stay open,” he said. “A
lot of these areas, they are 40
minutes or more away from the
nearest towns. Therefore, for the
people in these communities,
there are no other pantries near-
by. They may have nothing else.”
Blue Ridge’s distribution
jumped from 106,000 individuals
in February to 141,000 in May,
McKee said. But despite the de-
mand, coupled with the pandem-
ic, few of Blue Ridge’s partner
agencies closed down during the
virus’s first wave, mainly because
the volunteers recognized they
were all that was standing be-
tween their clients and hunger.
“We had no more than 7 percent
of our network closed, whereas inturkeys the food bank had now:
25.
They had 10 days to get 575
more.‘We’re preparing
f or a rough winter’
Like similar organizations an-
chored in cities and suburbs, food
banks in rural areas have seen a
spike in demand since the pan-
demic hit in March. But rural
pantries run into their own
unique challenges, according to
Blue Ridge’s McKee.
“The pantries we are working
with are in rural areas, so they’re
smaller and they rely entirely on
volunteers mostly in their 60s
and 70s, so when the pandemic
hit, we were quite concernedJAHI CHIKWENDIU/THE WASHINGTON POST
Volunteer Tom Baccei shows frozen turkey donations Tuesday at the Fauquier Community Food Bank in Warrenton, Va. Ahead of Thanksgiving, 600 families signed up for
free meals, but the food bank struggled to se cure turkeys from suppliers due to a small shortage. Instead, it turned to social media a nd local groups for donations.AfterBefore*Off er expires 12/31/20, call for more details. Min. purchase is required. Off er applies to Gutter Helmet gutter protection installations only and
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