Food banks always see an increase in the number of people who need help at the beginning of summer, as school vacations begin and kids no longer have easy access to the meals at school. But even with that expected increase, the surge the Des Moines Area Religious Council (DMARC) Food Pantry Network experienced this week was unprecedented. Literally.
On Tuesday, the food pantries “assisted 2,080 unique individuals… setting a single-day record of people assisted,” DMARC said in a news release.
“This marks the first time in the nearly 50-year history of the DMARC Food Pantry Network that the number of unique individuals assisted in one day ever exceeded 2,000,” the nonprofit said.
Part of that spike was due to “an increase in the number of minors being assisted,” DMARC noted.
The record-breaking Tuesday followed an exceptionally busy Monday, which turned out to be the third-busiest day in DMARC Food Pantry Network history.
“The summer has always put additional burdens on families struggling with food insecurity, but this year will almost inevitably push households that are already struggling to their limits,” said DMARC CEO Matt Unger said in the news release. “People are certainly being left behind when we are seeing this happen in June.”
The records set on the first two days of June the pantries were open followed a May that was the second-busiest in DMARC’s half-century of serving the needs of food insecure people in the Des Moines area.
According to DMARC, the spike it has seen as June begins is in part the result of the number of minors its food pantries are assisting. On Monday and Tuesday, those under 18 made up “36.7 percent of everyone receiving food assistance.” The number of kids needing help this year is particularly notable, because Iowa is one of 14 Republican-led states that rejected a Biden administration program that provides an extra $40 per child in benefits each month for three months to help cover the increased costs of feeding children who won’t be eating school lunches or breakfasts over the summer break.
Iowa would have received approximately $29 million for families directly through the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Summer Electronic Benefits Transfer for Children program. The extra amount would have been loaded directly onto a family’s EBT card. All the state had to contribute to the program was half the cost of administering the temporary benefit increase. Just before Christmas last year, Gov. Reynolds announced Iowa was rejecting the aid for kids over the summer break.
“Imagine what an extra $40 a month for food could mean for your family?” Unger said. “For those that are most in need right now this new program … would have been a lifeline.”
When Reynolds announced on Dec. 22 that she was rejecting state participation in Summer EBT for Children, she said, “Federal COVID-era cash benefit programs are not sustainable and don’t provide long-term solutions for the issues impacting children and families. An EBT card does nothing to promote nutrition at a time when childhood obesity has become an epidemic.”
That final reason was somewhat surprising, given that Reynolds routinely said, “I trust Iowans,” when she cut public health measures during the height of the COVID pandemic. The governor’s statement also ignored the fact EBT helps recipients better afford fresh, nutritious food (and avoid malnutrition, which may or may not correlate with obesity).
Reynolds made her December announcement about rejecting the increased federal food assistance just two weeks after the Food Bank of Iowa said it and its partners in 55 counties had seen record demands for their services over the previous 19 months.
In April, the governor announced her own program to provide food assistance to kids in need over the summer break. Even though Reynolds criticized federal programs as being unsustainable and short-term, the governor is using money the state received as part of the Biden administration’s American Rescue Plan Act to pay for her program.
Instead of providing help directly to families, the governor’s program set up a system in which schools and other institutions apply for grants to create summer meal programs. The grants are awarded on a competitive basis. Reynolds appropriated $900,000 for her program. That amount is 3.1 percent of what would have been directly provided to Iowa families under the Biden administration’s program. It’s estimated that approximately 240,000 children in Iowa would have been assisted by the federal program.
Last week, the Gazette reported that 38 applicants had been awarded grants by the governor’s program. Thirty-six of the successful applicants were school districts, both public and private, and the other two were the Northeast Iowa Food Bank in Waterloo and Story Medical Center in Nevada, Iowa.
“The average grant was $23,684, and 24 of the 38 grants awarded were for $16,639,” according to the Gazette. “Most grant recipients will use the funding to operate between one and three summer meal sites.”
Those grants will add a total 61 new meals sites, that will add to capacity of the 500 free summer meal sites for kids that existed in the state last year. According to the nonprofit Iowa Hunger Coalition, an average number of children who attended one of those 500 meal sites last year was 21,337. The federal program Reynolds rejected would have provided benefits to approximately 240,000 children in the state.
Even with the money provided through the governor’s program, “it’s anticipated there will be a net loss of open congregate meal sites this summer compared to last year,” DMARC said in its news release.
“Addressing the record levels of food insecurity we are seeing will take a concerted effort across religious communities, the business, government, and nonprofit sector,” DMARC’s Matt Unger said. “The nonprofit sector and community organizations aren’t capable or designed to do it alone. We are just one piece of the puzzle.”