With Federal Cuts, Food Pantries Brace For ‘Tsunami’ Of Need

Rising demand at Cape Cod’s food pantries isn’t news; it’s been the case for a number of years. But those who fight hunger on Cape Cod say that federal economic policies and cuts to key federal departments have set the stage for a crisis.

 Last month, the Greater Boston Food Bank (GBFB) alerted its supporters about cuts to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s funding for local food purchasing and its emergency food assistance program.

 “With these cuts, GBFB is losing nearly $2.3 million in emergency food resources — including chicken, eggs, fruits and vegetables — and our state lost $12 million to buy local products,” GBFB President and CEO Catherine D’Amato wrote. Her organization provides truckloads of food to the Family Pantry of Cape Cod in Harwich as well as to Lower Cape Outreach, which operates its network of nine smaller pantries on the Lower Cape. The cutbacks haven’t hit local pantries yet, but the impact is coming.

 Meeting the need means that the pantries that depend on GBFB will likely need to turn to food wholesalers and other suppliers to keep their shelves stocked, at significantly greater expense. At the same time, other federal cuts are likely to increase the number of people seeking help with food as inflation and tariffs drive up prices.

 “It’s a triple-whammy. It’s a no-win situation,” Family Pantry Executive Director Christine Menard said. “And this is not a short-term problem. This is going to be a two, three, four-year issue.”

 “The tsunami is coming,” said Peter Hughes, who runs the Chatham Food Pantry with his wife, Linda. And like a tidal wave, there will be both an initial disruption and a long aftermath, he said. “We’ll have to seek help” from the community, Hughes said.

 The Family Pantry, the largest food pantry on Cape Cod, serves about 13,000 people – or about half of the people identified as “food insecure” in Barnstable County. About 90 percent of the Family Pantry’s food is purchased from GBFB. Lower Cape Outreach, which supplies pantries in Brewster, Harwich, Chatham, Orleans, Eastham, Wellfleet, Truro and Provincetown, receives more than 50,000 pounds of food from GBFB each month. Most of their pantries rely on GBFB for about 80 percent of the food they provide, though Chatham relies on them for about 60 percent of their food, CEO Kate Wibby said. There are some predictions that the number of people seeking help from food pantries could climb by 70 percent or more. 

 “I don’t think that’s going to be happening tomorrow,” Wibby said. But if it does, it could stretch food pantries to their limits.

 Menard said the food the Family Pantry receives from the USDA would cost upwards of $800,000 annually. 

 “That, we would have to find. That’s just for the USDA portion of it,” she said. “That’s assuming that [the Massachusetts Emergency Food Assistance Program, or] MEFAP stays intact and does not get decreased,” she said. Any cuts to school lunch programs, senior meals programs or SNAP — formerly known as food stamps — would only increase demand on food pantries, Menard noted.

 “And those are the people that are bare-bones hungry,” she said.

 The Family Pantry, at least, has the benefit of a large warehouse where some supplies can be stored in bulk; smaller pantries lack this kind of space.

 “What comes into our pantries on a weekly basis is gone by the end of the week,” Wibby said. 

 If the worst-case scenario unfolds, both Lower Cape Outreach and the Family Pantry have limited options.

 “Our plan right now is to rely on our local partners,” Wibby said. That means seeking in-kind donations of food, produce grown in local gardens, or financial gifts. “We can stretch the dollar further” than consumers who shop retail can, she noted.

 “It’s going to come down to money. If we lost significant pieces of our funding, the only place we can go to is the community,” Menard said. “Or we’ve got to cut back on the food that we give to people, and we’re certainly not extravagant in what we’re giving them,” she said. Family Pantry clients can visit every 10 days and receive one bag of groceries for each household member, up to four, with three additional bags of produce, frozen goods, dairy and bakery items.

 If Washington’s financial and trade policies trigger a recession, Menard said some of the volunteers who currently run the Family Pantry might find themselves in need of help, particularly “if all of a sudden prices go up like they’re anticipating,” she said. “A lot of my folks are on fixed incomes.”

 What’s clear, she said, is that the community is unsure what the future holds when it comes to hungry people on Cape Cod. The cure for that anxiety is to lend a hand to local pantries.

 “If you’re feeling bad about this and want to do something good, cut us a check,” she said. “That’s going to feed your neighbors.”