Frantic Food Banks Use Driverless Cars and Jobless Workers to Survive
Demand surges as virus tosses 36 million Americans out of work
A volunteer moves a pallet jack after hauling completed Family Food Boxes at a Midwest Food Bank distribution warehouse in Normal, Illinois.
Photographer: Daniel Acker/Bloomberg
With U.S. meatpacking plants shut down by the coronavirus, one food bank desperate for donations is mending the broken supply chain itself.
Midwest Food Bank, a nonprofit in Normal, Illinois, is raising money to pay area processors to cut and package pork from hog farmers with no buyers.
“We’ve had to go above and beyond to find sources of food,” said Tara Ingham, the executive director. “Everybody’s chipping in, between the donor, the hog donor, the hog processor, just to get this meat to good use so that people who are hungry have something to eat.”
The coronavirus pandemic is forcing food banks across the country to find new ways to feed people — from slaughtering animals to enlisting car dealerships and unemployed restaurant workers to serve homebound clients. With more than 36 million Americans thrown out of work since mid-March, agencies are experiencing a surge in demand not seen since the financial crisis more than a decade ago. In some ways, the pandemic is even more cruel, depriving them of legions of volunteers, and closing the restaurants they rely on for donations.
It took nearly 10 years for America to recover from the food-security hole it fell into during the Great Recession. In 2018, 11.1% of U.S. households, or 14.3 million, had trouble accessing food at some point, a figure that has declined steadily since 2012, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. While there’s no such data available for 2020, a survey of food banks across the country suggests those numbers are soaring at a staggering pace.
The Feeding America network, which encompasses 200 banks, distributed an average of 112 million meals a week from April 6 to May 3, a 32% increase from the year-ago period, according to a survey of members. The number of people showing up for free food surged an average of 59%, and among all food seekers, 38% had never used the system before.
All of this is happening as the virus has scared off a significant chunk of volunteers, many of whom are elderly and especially vulnerable to Covid-19. That has meant food banks have to improvise not just how to acquire food, but how they repackage and distribute it.