RECENT FUNDING CUTS BRING CHALLENGES FOR THE COMMUNITY FOOD PANTRY OF SPRING GREEN

People who need help feeding themselves and their families can get good food from the Community Food Pantry of Spring Green on the third Monday of every month. Everyone wants there to be plenty of good, healthy food available for the long line of cars, but recent funding cuts have made that more challenging.

In March, the USDA terminated the Wisconsin Local Food Purchase Assistance Program. Getting fresh produce from food pantries is now harder (and farmers have lost income as well). This eliminates a source of fresh produce that has been serving 120-180 families in the River Valley area.

Heather Chastain, pantry manager, says this has also affected Second Harvest’s fresh produce options, citing a “very limited” range of lettuce, potatoes, carrots, and onions.

Second Harvest serves 16 counties in Wisconsin. They offer food at a substantial discount (because they can order in bulk).

The limited vegetable selection is only one of the problems facing Second Harvest right now.  In the past, Heather has been able to order most of what the Community Food Pantry of Spring Green needs from Second Harvest, but overall, their prices are up and their supplies are down.  According to Heather, Second Harvest used to have grants for eggs and milk, but now she has to pay out of Spring Green’s local funds, and sometimes eggs and milk aren’t even available.

Tariffs are in the news, and they also affect food pantries. An article on the Second Harvest website explains that tariffs on canned goods affect people experiencing food insecurity because, for example, things like canned tuna are highly valued staples. Because Second Harvest has less food available, Heather ends up buying from discount stores in Dodgeville, Baraboo, and Richland Center to try to get the best value (those prices are higher than Second Harvest’s, however, and food prices are going up in general).

Heather often transports the food herself, sometimes making multiple trips because her car isn’t big enough to bring everything to Spring Green in one trip. She then delivers the food to four storage locations in Spring Green (provided by local businesses, because the food pantry itself has severely insufficient storage space). Asked if she ever gets a day off, she said no, “not usually.”

Upcoming cuts to Medicaid and SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) will mean people’s budgets are stretched even more, so the number of people in the River Valley experiencing food insecurity is likely to go up.  Numbers are already high, having increased during the height of COVID and then not diminishing afterwards. Heather says she is seeing an average of 5-10 new families each week.  June numbers are usually lower because of summer funding for children, but she did not see a drop this year.

In an effort to educate and get more people involved, a small group of writers will be publishing articles on the pantry’s website (created by yet another volunteer) and in local newspapers periodically. We are hopeful that many will read these articles, share what they learn, and assist in keeping this resource going for years to come by volunteering, spreading the word, making donations, organizing fundraisers, and getting involved in helping to “caring for your neighbors”. Information is available at https://www.communityfoodpantryofspringgreen.org