With the severe shortages that are coming, I wonder how long the food banks and government commodities are going to last? It seems shortages would eventually show up there, too. My mom gets 3 large boxes of food from government commodities every month. She depends on them to make her SS last all month.
As i have been utilizing the local mobile food pantries this last year myself, I have been intensely watching the system for some time, with this in mind.
They had my primary mobile pantry just this morning. This is my primary because I have found over time that they seem to give each family more - with more variety and sometimes greater quality - than other mobile pantries in this area give. I always get out very early, to make sure they don’t run out of anything before they service my car.
What I can tell you is that - until today - this site has always managed to give out two - or many times three - different types of meat to each family.
For example, last month, they gave each family 16 boneless, sliced, vacuum packed pork chops. Plus 2 packages (1 pound per package) of ground turkey. Plus one (5 pound) bag of frozen chicken leg quarters. They gave us fresh salad makings last month, too, plus breakfast cereal, and bakery desserts that were a few days past their “sell by” date, but still good to eat.
But this month was different. The only meat we got was two (5 pound) frozen chicken leg quarters.
We got a gallon of fresh milk. They always give us a gallon of fresh milk. Today was no exception.
There was no fresh greens, though. No salad makings. No canned goods.
No breakfast cereal. (We have a Kellogg’s plant in this town, and they are generous donors of cereal to the local food bank. With Kellogg’s workers on strike, I was not surprised when we were given no cereal this month.)
We did get bags of dried split peas - two 2 pound bags. The food bank has been giving out bags of dried split peas for months on end - I think they own the monopoly on those things. We usually get anywhere from 3 to 5 bags of those 2 pound bags at just about every mobile pantry event. But today, we only got two of those 2 pound bags.
One new item they have never given us before was raisins. We were given 5 packages that had 6 individual sized boxes of raisins in them. We usually get some kind of past due date bakery goodie (like a pie or a coffee cake or some deli cookies) but not today. They gave us a cheap loaf of that “certified” white bread instead.
The overall volume of food we got was lighter, compared to what we have gotten in previous months. And there wasn’t much variety there, like there has been in past months.
If you know what you are looking for, you can see that they are beginning to cut back. This is the first time I have seen noticible cutbacks this year.
But the cut backs are not deep this month, IMHO. I came away with enough food to justify the four hours I burn to get food from this pantry. And I am grateful for what I was given.
They only have this mobile pantry event once a month, so it will be interesting to see what they are able to offer us next month.