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HUNGER HERE

Nearly 12 percent of Floridians don’t have enough nutritious food to eat. Agencies and nonprofits are finding some new ways to help.



food “Everybody is hungry at some point. But food insecurity is the inability to have enough on a consistent basis.” — Tom Felke, associate professor and chair of the Department of Social Work at FGCU

food “Everybody is hungry at some point. But food insecurity is the inability to have enough on a consistent basis.” — Tom Felke, associate professor and chair of the Department of Social Work at FGCU

AS RUTH MAGERIA STOOD AT THE counter paying her utility bill, the woman who accepted her money started to cry. She’d spotted Ms. Mageria’s CROS staff polo shirt, which identified her as an employee of the Palm Beach organization that works to alleviate hunger.

“She told me that she’d been out of work the previous year and the help we gave her helped her make it through, that she wouldn’t have made it otherwise,” she said. It wasn’t the first time CROS Ministries’ executive director had heard that story. That message is part of what’s kept her on the job for 17 years.

“If not for the grace of God, I may be the one on the other side of the desk,” she said. “I remind myself — and all of us — when I think of those who are hungry and homeless, they are our neighbors, our brothers and sisters. It is all of us.”

It is an insidious problem that afflicts far more Floridians than just those who are homeless or the poorest of the poor.

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, 11.9 percent of Floridians were food insecure in 2015-17, the latest figures available. That translates into 8.37 million people who didn’t always have enough nutritious food to eat.

Let’s first define what the terms mean.

“People generally don’t understand what it means to be food insecure and what it means to be hungry,” says Tom Felke, associate professor and chair of the Department of Social Work at Florida Gulf Coast University. “Everybody is hungry at some point. But food insecurity is the inability to have enough food on a consistent basis.”

Richard LeBer helps carry food for clients at an emergency mobile pantry in the wake of Hurricane Irma. HARRY CHAPIN / COURTESY PHOTO

Richard LeBer helps carry food for clients at an emergency mobile pantry in the wake of Hurricane Irma. HARRY CHAPIN / COURTESY PHOTO

It’s a widespread problem in a state known for tourism and luxury.

“This is one of the wealthiest parts of the country,” said Richard LeBer, president and CEO of Harry Chapin Food Bank, which is based in Fort Myers and serves Lee, Collier, Charlotte, Hendry and Glades counties.

“Many don’t understand what causes people to be hungry. People get into a cycle of hunger that usually starts with some kind of budget crisis. You’re a senior on blood pressure meds and they tripled in cost or you have a health crisis. You used to be employed and for a period of time you can’t get work and the family now has one income instead of two.”

During the federal shutdown last winter, government workers, including TSA workers at the airport, needed food assistance.

Walkers start their trek at the 2019 WINK Feeds Families Hunger Walk to benefit the Harry Chapin Food Bank. HARRY CHAPIN / COURTESY PHOTO

Walkers start their trek at the 2019 WINK Feeds Families Hunger Walk to benefit the Harry Chapin Food Bank. HARRY CHAPIN / COURTESY PHOTO

“I don’t know too many people who can go a whole month without a paycheck,” Mr. LeBer said.

Last summer’s double whammy — simultaneous infestations of red tide and blue-green algae in Southwest Florida waters — caused tourism to drop dramatically, hitting hospitality workers hard.

“Housekeepers came to our mobile pantry because they hadn’t been called in to work for three weeks,” he said. “What people don’t necessarily understand is it’s those kind of working family stories that are the norm. That’s the vast majority. Secondarily, seniors with fixed incomes and a health care crisis are second biggest.

“You’re not necessarily going to look around and see them. They are working or they are at home or they aren’t going to tell you because that’s pretty darned embarrassing. This tends to fly under the radar,” Mr. LeBer said.

When you have a budgetary crisis, he said, “Food is one of the simpler ways to economize, one of the fast ways.”

LEBER

LEBER

It is easier than moving out of your apartment. But it also causes other problems, such as getting sick, losing energy and an inability to focus.

“In children, it affects their ability to pay attention and learn,” he said. “It makes everything else you are dealing with worse. That’s really the core of why it’s important to feed people.”

For some, it’s transportation that’s a primary obstacle. Most pantries have set daytime hours on specific days.

In Port Charlotte, members of Wintergarden Presbyterian Church and Ebenezer Pentecostal have created the Ebenezer Food Pantry that runs 24 hours a day. It began at Wintergarden but recently moved to its own building at 1057 Collingswood Road. Volunteers staff it around the clock so people can show up whenever they have transportation and aren’t working.

“People assumed at first it would be the homeless who would come at night,” said Pastor Devon Andrews, “but we only get about 10 homeless a month. Mostly it’s older people who are hungry, and the younger ones. Some work late or can’t get a ride until later in the evening.”

Volunteers pack groceries in the food pantry at CROS Ministries in Lake Worth. COURTESY PHOTO

Volunteers pack groceries in the food pantry at CROS Ministries in Lake Worth. COURTESY PHOTO

The church also has established a community garden. For a suggested donation of $25, people can plant there. There’s also a garden area for homeless people who wish to grow their own food, although none have yet done so.

“Our mission is to feed people physically, mentally, spiritually and emotionally,” she said.

In Pine Manor in south Fort Myers, the neighborhood has a thriving community garden where residents of the low-income community can grow their own food. They also sell it at the Saturday farmers market at the Alliance for the Arts.

Arlo Simonds, who heads up the project, says it has really changed one woman’s life. She grows collard greens and chaya, a spinach-like plant, sells it at the market and eats it herself. She’s lost weight, and her diabetes and overall health have improved as a result.

Harold Balink, chef/owner of the Fort Myers farm-to-table restaurant Harold’s. VANDY MAJOR / FLORIDA WEEKLY

Harold Balink, chef/owner of the Fort Myers farm-to-table restaurant Harold’s. VANDY MAJOR / FLORIDA WEEKLY

Recently, a group of local Rotary Clubs gave the group a $23,000 grant to purchase more land, clear it and establish additional acreage for gardens.

Mr. Simonds said they have also planted fruit trees and are raising pigeon peas that are available to anyone who wants them, although, he added, “we try to encourage people to participate rather than take handouts.”

The booth at the Alliance serves to do more than generate money, he said. “It also creates a more positive image for Pine Manor” and supplies produce for the culinary training program run by the community center, which helps residents train for restaurant jobs to help them break the cycle of poverty.

Meanwhile, organizations like Harry Chapin Food Bank, CROS Ministries and Sarasota’s All Faiths Food Bank stand on the front lines with their multifaceted programs aimed at stamping out hunger.

Harry Chapin works with more than 150 partner agencies to distribute food throughout Southwest Florida through fixed-site food pantries as well as mobile ones that head into remote sites like Moore Haven where transportation is scant and need is great.

Gregory Gourdet, a chef from Portland, Ore., and a national James Beard Foundation chef who is leading a sustainability movement in Portland. He appeared at a discussion at the Naples Next Ideas Festival in March. COURTESY PHOTO

Gregory Gourdet, a chef from Portland, Ore., and a national James Beard Foundation chef who is leading a sustainability movement in Portland. He appeared at a discussion at the Naples Next Ideas Festival in March. COURTESY PHOTO

The organization distributed 24.1 million pounds of food last year. That’s about 600 full tractor-trailer loads or 20 million meals, serving 28,000 individuals a week.

CROS Ministries operates eight food pantries serving 71,000 individuals, Ms. Mageria says, and served 41,645 meals in its Caring Kitchens.

All Faiths, serving Sarasota and DeSoto counties, distributed 10.2 million pounds of food to 66,000 people in 2017, the latest figures available.

Working on waste

It isn’t just that so many people are living so close to the precipice, it’s that so much of what’s grown and manufactured goes to waste.

At the Naples NEXT Ideas Festival, held last month, one topic covered was “Improving Food Sustainability.” It featured James Beard Foundation Chief Operating Officer Kris Moon and Portland, Ore., Chef Gregory Gourdet, who led a discussion that began with these two astonishing facts: 40 percent of the food produced in the United States goes to waste, yet 1 in 8 Americans don’t know where their next meal is coming from.

CROS Ministries works with farmers in the Palm Beach area by sending 4,500 volunteers into their fields from November through July to harvest what the famers can’t sell. It all goes to the food banks and the 100 agencies they supply. COURTESY PHOTO

CROS Ministries works with farmers in the Palm Beach area by sending 4,500 volunteers into their fields from November through July to harvest what the farmers can’t sell. It all goes to the food banks and the 100 agencies they supply. COURTESY PHOTO

Mr. Gourdet discussed his efforts to help educate other chefs on how to advocate for governmental policy change, while Moon talked about the foundation’s commitment to “working toward more delicious plates one plate at a time and trying to make it equitable and accessible for everyone.”

These are both initiatives in which the Beard Foundation is involved, said Katherine Miller, the foundation’s vice president of impact.

There’s “table-based advocacy” that involves chefs using all parts of the food so nothing is wasted. And then there are broader efforts.

“Increasingly, we see chefs working directly with community-based organizations either with donations or donating food from catering events, special events or through the restaurant, through Feeding America,” Ms. Miller said.

Community Cooperative allows for self-determination with a market concept where people can shop in the food pantry and select what they want. COMMUNITY COOPERATIVE COURTESY PHOTO

Community Cooperative allows for self-determination with a market concept where people can shop in the food pantry and select what they want. COMMUNITY COOPERATIVE COURTESY PHOTO

“Chefs are also using their voices on a policy level, protecting SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) and school lunches, making sure more kids have access to school lunches and breakfasts and more funding,” she said.

Last fall, the foundation held an advocacy training event on Captiva in conjunction with the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, inviting area chefs as well as Dr. Felke and representatives from the Coalition of Immokalee Workers for two days of briefings and brainstorming. The idea, said Ms. Miller, was for it to be “a conversation starter.”

Harold Balink, chef/owner of the Fort Myers farm-to-table restaurant Harold’s, attended.

“It was incredibly informative,” he said. “My thoughts were that I could be involved in the periphery with getting something built like a community center around Immokalee, staffed by some of the workers with food supplied by the fields in which they work. It might be food that’s not pretty enough to be sold in the markets. They could go there for grains and breads and vegetables. It’s just a matter of figuring how to make it work. Their diets and health are horrific. For the workers there, it’s a food desert.”

The Campaign Against Summer Hunger Kick off “Walk to End Summer Hunger” by All Faiths Food Bank in Sarasota and DeSoto counties. DEX HONEA / COURTESY PHOTO

The Campaign Against Summer Hunger Kick off “Walk to End Summer Hunger” by All Faiths Food Bank in Sarasota and DeSoto counties. DEX HONEA / COURTESY PHOTO

So far, ideas like this are in the talking stages but members of the group hope to continue the conversation.

Meanwhile, people like Mr. LeBer of Harry Chapin focus on what’s happening on the supply side.

“Forty percent of what we grow in America never feeds anybody because of the enormous amount of waste and overproduction in the agriculture system,” he said. “We’re very fortunate in America to be so blessed with so much food. Farms grow more than we need. Wholesalers and manufacturers produce more than we need. Restaurants and grocery stores have more than we need. Restaurants serve you more than you need. It happens at all levels of the chain. Surely we can fix that. The challenge is that it is really a more difficult problem than people recognize.

 

 

“If you are hungry in Cape Coral today it doesn’t do you any good if I tell you I can feed you Sunday in Lehigh. People need food now and need food in usable form. What a senior can handle in a kitchenette is different from what a working family can use in a home kitchen or what a homeless person can use without cooking facilities.

“There are logistics involved. How do I make food available to people in a convenient form at a convenient time and make sure they are able to make use of it? It seems like it should be simple but it isn’t. A lot of people with very different situations, transportation challenges — one vehicle, the kids are in school and there’s a job to hold down.

“Or maybe the person isn’t ambulatory or there isn’t any public transportation and the food is far away.

“There’s no shortage of food in America. There’s a shortage of affordable food in the right place at the right time.”

Dr. Felke said that food delivery has improved in recent years. “The days of ‘here’s a box of whatever is donated’ has transformed,” he said.

“Community Cooperative (in Fort Myers) is a great example from a social work perspective, that allows for self-determination with a market concept where people can shop in the food pantry and select what they want. That becomes important.”

Allowing people to choose for themselves what they want to eat means they are more likely to consume what they get, which was one reason there was so much opposition to the recent proposal in the federal farm bill that would have altered the SNAP by mailing a box of food to each household.

“It undermined self-determination,” he said. “The potential for waste, for people having food they are never going to eat, was great.”

One way some groups are combating the waste is by gleaning.

Mr. Gourdet works in Portland with Urban Gleaners to collect surplus food for distribution to schools and other locations. The organization works with restaurants, stores and other groups to use unused produce, unserved leftovers and food that has passed its “best by” date.

While that sort of program hasn’t blossomed in Southwest Florida yet, CROS Ministries works with farmers in the Palm Beach area by sending 4,500 volunteers into their fields from November through July to harvest what the farmers can’t sell.

“In 2017-18 we were able to glean 527,356 pounds of fresh produce,” Ms. Mageria said. “It all goes to the food banks and the 100 agencies they supply.”

Summer suffering

While families grapple with hunger all year, it’s particularly acute during the summer.

The first problem is that school is out and, with 70 percent of children in Lee and Collier county public schools and 50 percent in Sarasota County schools receiving free or subsidized lunches, that’s a lot of kids who no longer have a regular source of meals.

In addition, food pantries aren’t getting the same volume of donations because winter residents have departed, farmers aren’t growing crops so produce must be trucked in from farther away and supermarkets like Publix, which also donates food, reduces its inventory during the summer when it has fewer customers.

“All of that happens on the supply side while demand goes up,” Mr. LeBer said. “Families connected with hospitality and tourism, that’s when their hours and pay are cut back. Kids are home and not being fed at school and paychecks are smaller.”

Mr. LeBer asks winter residents to send any unused food to the food bank before they head out of town.

CROS Ministries runs a summer camp for children in kindergarten through eighth grade with a high school leadership program as well. In addition to offering the kids activities, they get camp lunches and snacks, plus they receive food for the family for the weekends.

All Faiths Food Bank in Sarasota and DeSoto counties offers a summer program that includes backpacks for kids that are distributed at libraries, summer camps and early child learning centers; mobile pantries; school pantries; and partnerships with summer schools and other community sites where children attend programs.

Harry Chapin runs mobile pantries throughout the region during the summer in an effort to reach families who may not be able to get to fixed distribution sites.

Nonetheless, despite all of the food being given out, the problem persists.

Dr. Felke also sees another persistent problem: apathy.

“When I talk and cite statistics, people will say ‘Well, it’s not as bad as Chicago or New York or Philadelphia.’ I get it, but when is it too many? I think one is too many.

“I believe that unless we have radical change in this country, we won’t eradicate it completely. Look at SNAP usage. A lot of people using SNAP are working households, so if people working are having trouble with food, what hope is there for people not working and having trouble finding employment?

“At one event I was at, a guy said we have to write bigger checks. I appreciate that. The agencies out there need your support but I know who you are, who you play golf with and what I’d like to see you do is start influencing. We don’t do enough advocacy. It isn’t as simple a thing as writing checks and donating the stuff in my pantry that I don’t like.

“It’s an extraordinarily difficult problem that is going to take looking at affordable housing, how much we pay people, transportation. What does it take to live? I get it. It’s hard. But I can’t accept hard as a reason to not do that right thing.” ¦

USDA’s Household Food Security in the United States

In 2017, 11.8 percent of American households were food insecure at least part of the year. That’s 40 million people, down from 14.9 percent in 2011, but above pre-recession numbers in 2007 of 11.1 percent.

Rates of food insecurity were higher than the national average for households with incomes near or below the federal poverty line, those with children and those headed by single parents, women and men living alone, African-American and Hispanic-headed households and those in principal cities and nonmetropolitan areas.

The rate ranged from 7.4 percent in Hawaii to 17.9 percent in New Mexico.

In Florida, 11.9 percent of the population — 8.37 million people — was food insecure in 2015-17. That’s less than 2012-14, when it was 13.8 percent, but higher than 2005-07, when it was 9 percent.

According to Feeding Florida, the food bank network:

40 percent of the food produced in the United States goes to waste.

1 in 8 people do not know where their next meal is coming from.

73 percent of food-bank-assisted households had to choose between food and utilities.

69 percent of food-bank-assisted households had to choose between food and transportation.

EVENTS

>> Palm Beach:

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 24, 6 P.M.: Raise Your Glass to End Hunger. Sample beer and wine as well as signature dishes from a variety of restaurants at this event, which benefits CROS Ministries. Old School Square Fieldhouse, 51 W. Swinton Ave., Delray Beach. $40 in advance, $50 at the door. Tickets: give.crosministries.org or contact Gibbie Nauman at gnaumann@crosministries.org or 561-233-9009.

>> Everywhere:

SATURDAY, MAY 11, ALL DAY: National Letter Carriers Stamp Out Hunger Food Drive. Postal carriers will leave plastic bags at residences. Residents are asked to fill them with canned and other nonperishables for pickup on Saturday, May 11. Postal carriers will collect donations and deliver them to area food banks, all of which will need volunteers to help unload and sort them. Contact your local food bank to volunteer.

DONATE

Winter residents leaving for the summer are reminded to clean out their pantries and drop off all items they no longer need. All the food banks can use these as summer donations dwindle.

>> Palm Beach County

PALM BEACH COUNTY FOOD BANK. Drop off small loads weekdays 9 a.m.-noon or 1-3:30 p.m. at 525 Gator Drive, Lantana. Items needed are on the food bank site. Industry donors can arrange a pickup. Contact Janice Cardenas, food resource coordinator, 561-701-0934, or janice@pbcfoodbank.org. Monetary donations may also be made online or find out how to host a food drive. CROS Ministries accepts donations online at giving.crosministries.org, or send checks to 3677 23rd Ave. S., Lake Worth, FL 33461.

>> Sarasota County

ALL FAITH FOOD BANK: The Campaign Against Summer Hunger offers a dollar-for-dollar match for all contributions through May 15. Donate online at allfaithsfoodbank.org or organize a food drive (instructions online). The food bank is at 8171 Blaikie Court, Sarasota, 941-379-6333.

>> Southwest Florida

HARRY CHAPIN FOOD BANK, make monetary donations online at harrychapinfoodbank.org. Food donations may be made 8 a.m.-4:30 p.m. weekdays at 3760 Fowler St., Fort Myers, or 8 a.m.-3:30 p.m. at 3940 Prospect Ave., Naples. Instructions on how to hold a food drive are on the website. For details, contact Meg Madzar, 239-334- 7007, ext. 120, or mmadzar@harrychapinfoodbank.org.

LEE COUNTY SOLID WASTE’S SECOND ANNUAL “DONATED NOT WASTED” food rescue campaign encourages seasonal residents and visitors to donate unopened pantry items before returning north. Unopened canned or dry goods can be dropped off until April 22 at any Lee County Library System location or Lee County Recreation Center. Additional collection containers are located at the Six Mile Cypress Slough and the Topaz Court Household Chemical Waste Facility. For more information, visit www.leegov.com/solidwaste or call 239-533- 8000.

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