Marion Institute says SouthCoast food insecurity is rising. Here's what they're doing.

NEW BEDFORD — Over the course of the pandemic in 2020 and 2021, there seemed to be no shortage of headlines about food insecurity and the efforts being made to address it. Now, the Marion Institute's Southcoast Food Policy Council is ringing the alarm to raise awareness that, despite things being relatively back to normal, food insecurity in the region never went anywhere.

In fact, it appears to be getting worse.

"Prior to the pandemic, we had serious food issues, worse than we'd seen in many years. Then the pandemic came and that actually jettisoned a lot of help," said Wendy Garf-Lipp, executive director for United Neighbors of Fall River, a member organization of the Southcoast Food Policy Council.

"But now there's this new wave of folks coming in and it's very troubling because these are people who've never needed assistance with anything before; who, prior to the pandemic, could provide for themselves and their households.

"Now, they're having to choose between paying bills or buying food."

"At our Fall River WIC office, our caseload hit 3,969," said Catarina Faioes, WIC community coordinator at Health First Family Care Center, Inc., another Food Policy Council partner. Faioes said this new peak in clients — all pregnant, postpartum or under the age of five — was reached just this fall. "That's an all-time high."

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"We're working to make people aware that, hey, the issues we're seeing with food insecurity are at the same level or worse than at the height of the pandemic," said Marion Institute Executive Director Liz Wiley, "and yet it seems there's less awareness of what's happening."

A quiet crisis

When the Southcoast Food Policy Council began in 2020, the idea was to make it so assistance agencies in area communities — including New Bedford, Fall River, Dartmouth and others stretching as far as Plymouth — could start pooling resources to optimize efficiency. It's an approach that's especially needed now, Faioes, Garf-Lipp and Wiley say, at a time when food available to pantries is increasingly scarce.

"What we've seen over the summer is a huge increase in inflation for food costs, we're seeing numbers of clients that are exceeding what we had at the height of the pandemic, and we're hearing from our pantry partners that they're struggling to get food from the Greater Boston Food Bank," Wiley said, also counting lingering supply chain and labor issues among obstacles. "We've started hosting Friday meetings to talk about the emergency food situation."

What is food insecurity?

The Southcoast Food Policy Council members say perhaps public unawareness on food insecurity comes from a false perception of what food insecurity actually is and what the signs are.

"One in three residents is food insecure, meaning they don't always know where their next meal is coming from," Wiley said. "People hear that and say, well I don't know anybody going through that, but the reality is, it doesn't look like what we're taught it looks like.

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"It's not extended bellies like you see on TV — it's parents skipping meals, children waiting for school so they can eat; it's obesity and Type 2 diabetes from people having to eat processed food that's not nutritious because it's cheaper."

"We had a family here the other day and we asked the kids what they had for breakfast, lunch and dinner, and the answer was 'chicken and rice soup, chicken and rice soup, and chicken and rice soup,'" said Faioes. "Probably from a food pantry."

Common misconceptions

According to Garf-Lipp, another common misconception about food insecurity is who tends to be food insecure.

"It's sort of a community thought that if people are coming to a food pantry, they must've done something wrong to be in that situation, but that's so far from the truth," Garf-Lipp said, noting many clients are part of households where up to four jobs are being held by two parents.

"One time at the food pantry a father pulled me aside and said listen, I don't want you to think we're taking advantage.... I don't eat dinner on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, and my wife doesn't eat on Tuesdays and Thursdays."

Faioes said Health First, Inc. is starting an on-site food cupboard for both clients and those who work at the office.

Aside from stereotypes of food pantry clients, Garf-Lipp said another false narrative she'd like to dispel is that migrant families who've recently been sheltered in hotels/motels are draining the region's food pantry system.

"We've heard this rhetoric that these families are taxing the food system but I want to make it clear: those families are receiving food from the motels they're staying at, through restaurants that are contracted," she said. "This is a problem that existed prior to these families coming."

What's being done?

Aside from their day-to-day work of helping to ensure agencies have what's needed to fulfill clients' needs, the three Food Policy Council members say the group spends any time left over focusing on more overarching ideas that will lead to long-term improvements. Often times, this means addressing aspects of food insecurity not often spoken of.

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"What a lot of people don't realize is, you can give people all ... this food, but if you don't have a working stove or oven, or a can opener, what can you do with it?," Garf-Lipp said. "So one thing we've done was a 'Cooking with Crock Pots' class, using what people get from the food pantries.

"With that slight bit of education we were able to enable these families to make much more nutritious food."

Aside from learning some new culinary tricks, Garf-Lipp said attendees of the August program, held at Keith Middle School in New Bedford, also got to keep the Crock Pots, which were donated from the community. Those invited were families from the Greater New Bedford and Fall River areas with no permanent housing, and thus more likely to lack access to a full working kitchen, Garf-Lipp said.

Another example of the council's collaborative approach being beneficial, Garf-Lipp said, has been clients receiving kitchen supplies needed to cook the food found in pantries.

"They've been able to, through WIC, get knives, measuring cups, cutting boards...," Garf-Lipp said.

Coming soon

One larger-scale idea that's come out of the council arose from a realization that a lot of local farm crops are often wasted.

"In Southeastern Massachusetts we have over 1,500 small farms but we have no greening program. That means if farmers have a crop they're not going to harvest because they don't have the labor, or they don't have a market to sell it to, it goes to waste in the field," Wiley said. "So we're starting a regional greening program that will train volunteers to be certified greeners who can harvest those crops."

Wiley said organizers expect the greening program, as well as another new initiative, Frogfoot Farms Neighbors Helping Neighbors, to start sometime in "early 2024."

"We found a six-acre parcel of previously unfarmed land near the Wareham-Plymouth line that we're turning into a farm to help supply our food relief programming," Wiley said. "So with these two things, the impact should be massive."

How can you help?

For those who want to help, the three council member say there's no shortage of volunteer opportunities, and the need for donations is as high as ever.

For those who want to donate, Garf-Lipp says monetary and gift card donations are the most useful to food pantries because it allows organizations to make purchases that will be most beneficial.

When it comes to donations of food, she advises mindfulness.

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"A lot of times it's the result of people cleaning out their cabinets and giving away the things that are out of date, or something like cocktail olives that they never used," she said. "When I go shopping, the last item on my list is something useful to the pantry — a bag of rice, peanut butter...."

Aside from these ways, helping the cause could be as simple as starting a dinner time conversation, Garf-Lipp said.

"When you're at your Thanksgiving feast, talk about these things. That goes a long way."

To learn more about volunteer opportunities or to make a donation toward the Marion Institute Southcoast Food Policy Council's efforts, visit marioninstitute.org/programs/sfpc.