Tons of fresh chicken, available or free to feed hundreds of needy American families, could wind up in the garbage, thanks to the escalating cost of gasoline.
America’s Second Harvest, the largest food bank supplier in the U.S., is being squeezed by the escalating costs of bringing donated food to distribution centers. Driven largely by gas prices, rising costs are cutting into the organization’s ability to feed the hungry said spokesperson Ross Fraser.
The numbers are significant.
“Our full budget for FY ’06 for transportation and processing is $8,075,000. We are on target to spend $8,480,000. This means we are $400,000 over budget for FY ’06,” Fraser told The Examiner.
The organization knew costs would be higher and has been steadily allocating more to cover the expense. Second Harvest’s fiscal 2003 budget for transportation and processing was $7,129,246 — meaning the cost for transportation has increased by nearly $1 million in three years. The $400,000 in unexpected costs is nearly half again as much.
So far, the fuel budget shortfall has been absorbed by diverting funds from other budget areas — but it leaves the organization stretched for cash. Fraser said that transporting donations that require freezing or refrigeration is especially costly. Fraser said his group was hoping to obtain money to transport the poultry while the donation is still fresh.
Some member food banks have been forced to decline other food donations, Fraser said, mostly those that require traveling long distances to pick up food from remote donors. Despite the shortage in gas money, Second Harvest said food donations for fiscal 2006 are at an all-time high, and should surpass the 2 billion pound total reached last year.
This national problem has a local face.
The D.C. area’s largest food bank is absorbing fuel costs by trimming other parts of its budget. “We have been meeting the challenge of increased fuel costs by cutting costs in other areas,” said Kasandra Gunter Robinson, director of Marketing/PR for the Capital Area Food Bank. “We have managed to continue our operations as planned by making concessions in other non-food-related areas.”
“The rise in gas prices has impacted us, but not in such a way that has caused us to change our work,” said George Jones of D.C.’s Bread for the City. “We are absorbing the cost.”
Bread for the City is a distribution operation that gets the food from the food banks to some 10,000 children and adults each month. It uses a single truck to stock both of its food pantries.
“While gas prices have increased dramatically, they still remain a fraction of the price we pay to successfully operate our food pantries,” Jones said.
Have information about area nonprofits? Contact Frank Sietzen at [email protected].
