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Officials at the Mid-Ohio Food Bank placed an online
order with the U.S. Department of Agriculture commodities
program late last month for almost $400,000.
The next day, officials were told they owed an extra $36,000
because of a sudden price increase as the order was being
filled. Contributing to the sharp rise was the cost of a
truckload of peanut butter, a popular item that jumped $6,000 in
just minutes.
The Columbus-based organization, which supplies food to more
than 500 pantries, soup kitchens and other charities in 20
central and eastern counties, had to return a tractor-trailer
load of spaghetti and another load of spaghetti sauce to make
ends meet.
In the last year, the price of spaghetti has jumped 98 percent,
applesauce 48 percent and whole-kernel corn 33 percent, Mid-Ohio
officials said. Even though the organization buys food in bulk
to save money, it stopped purchasing rice because the price has
gone up 118 percent since 2007.
``We are going to have to work even harder to find more food
from all of our sources—the food industry, farmers, the state of
Ohio—and increase bulk purchases with donated funds,'' said
executive director Matt Habash.
Competition for the organization's supplies among food pantries
is intense. For example, Mid-Ohio had 2,000 cases of canned
chicken available through its online ordering system one recent
morning.
The system opens at about 7:30 a.m. By 8 a.m., all 2,000 cases
were claimed.
Because of the rising costs, food banks across Ohio must fill a
gap of 26 million pounds of food in order to continue feeding
the poor and working poor, according to an analysis by the
Ohio Association of Second Harvest Foodbanks.
Food inflation is at a 17-year high, and that's affecting
families as well as food banks, said Lisa Hamler-Fugitt, the
association's executive director.
``People's incomes have not matched rising costs,'' she said.
``For our families, there's no place left to cut. They've
already cut.''
Demand for food from Mid-Ohio is up 14 percent from a year ago,
and the organization now hands out an average of 11.3 pounds of
food per request, down from 13.6 pounds to individuals and
families three years ago.
Soaring fuel prices are also squeezing Mid-Ohio's budget. The
organization runs a fleet of trucks, which picks up surplus food
and then delivers it to pantries and soup kitchens.
The extra $200,000 budgeted for expected fuel price increases
probably won't be enough, Habash said.
On the Net: Mid-Ohio Food Bank,
http://www.midohiofoodbank.org/
Ohio Association of Second Harvest Foodbanks,
http://www.oashf.org/
Information from: The Columbus Dispatch,
http://www.dispatch.com
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