Long Island food banks face more demand, potentially fewer shipments

On a busy Tuesday morning reserved for military veterans, several men, at least one accompanied by his wife, took turns filing down the aisle at Long Island Cares' Nassau Center for Collaborative Assistance in Freeport. They were grocery shopping at the center's food pantry.

They perused a freezer filled with frozen meats — Italian sausage, fish, pork chops and ham steaks. They paused before shelves filled with oranges and tomatoes, canned vegetables and canned fish, such as salmon, and more. Some made a beeline toward the shelves catering to the nutritional needs of their house pets.

It was, several said, a weekly shopping trip they try not to miss.

"I have a good experience every time I come," said Cyrus Council, 65, an Army vet from Freeport. "I have a lot of bills. I stretch my dollar" by coming to the pantry.

Increased community need

The weekly stop for groceries by Council and the other vets comes as officials with Long Island Cares – The Harry Chapin Regional Food Bank face increasing community need for emergency assistance amid concerns over lingering pandemic-related supply shortages, rising food insecurity and pending federal legislation.

"The long-term impacts of COVID, the inflation that's associated with it, supply chain disruptions" are all cause for concern, Michael Haynes, Long Island Cares' vice president for government relations, advocacy and social policy, told Newsday.

"As much as we want to be past COVID," Haynes said, "we're not fully past it."

He pointed to the most recent Feeding America "Map the Meal Gap" study, which "showed that food insecurity increased from 2021 to 2024 by 58%. So we're still in it."

On Wednesday, Haynes joined others with Long Island Cares for a news conference at its Hauppauge office to note its increase in "food commodities" from the U.S. Department of Agriculture's emergency food assistance program, known by its acronym, TEFAP, in response to rising need, and to speak out against a bill proposed in Congress they said could delay future food shipments.

The food bank operates its own pantries — currently five, with a sixth scheduled to open later this year — as well as supplying 335 food pantries, soup kitchens, shelters and more.

Through June of this year, officials with Long Island Cares said, the organization has distributed 2,373,317 pounds of federal food commodities, a 29% spike over the first half of 2023. For all of 2024, Long Island Cares projects it will receive 5,221,297 pounds of federal food commodities that include ground beef, chicken, salmon, catfish, milk, eggs, rice, apples, peaches, grapes and potatoes.

Moreover, Long Island Cares receives food from multiple sources, among them supermarket chains, corporations and food drives by community groups.

Support in lean times

"In 2022 we distributed 11,418,000 pounds of food," Peter Crescenti, Long Island Cares' spokesperson, said in an email. "That number jumped way up to 14,527,000 last year."

From January to July of 2023, according to Crescenti, the food bank distributed 7,757,250 pounds. During the same period this year, he said, the food bank distributed 9,095,211 pounds.

Count Navy veteran Kenneth Wolfe, 75, of Bellmore, among those who have looked to the food bank as a place to find support in lean times.

"This dramatically helps us. It gives me quality food and [being] with people who can help you," Wolfe said Tuesday on his grocery trip to the Freeport pantry. "They are very generous, very giving. It saves an ample amount of money."

John Gerbasio, 81, of Freeport, who was with his wife, Christina, at the pantry, said they have a modest and pragmatic approach when it comes to picking food items.

"We only take what we need," Gerbasio said. "It helps our finances."

Household budgets stretched to the limit are a factor that has spurred more Long islanders to seek help, according to Randi Shubin Dresner, the president and chief executive of Melville-based Island Harvest, the region's other food bank.

"What we hear from families that we are supporting is that the price of all their expenses — whether it be the supermarket, gas tank — their income hasn't changed, so there's not as much to cover their food budget," Dresner said. "What we know from history is people tend to give up meals before they give up paying rent, gassing their car for work or paying insurance. Then they turn to the food bank or other community-based organizations."

Record food distribution

Before the pandemic, in 2019, Island Harvest distributed 9.7 million pounds of food to its network of 300 community-based nonprofit organizations, said Greg May, the nonprofit's director of government and community relations.

From July 1, 2023, to this past June 30, May said, Island Harvest "distributed a record amount of food — 18.7 million pounds."

At Mercy Soup Kitchen of Wyandanch Inc., they also have noticed the rising demand, said Vito Colletti, the nonprofit's president.

"We're definitely seeing an increase in people coming," Colletti said.

The soup kitchen, which rents space at Trinity Lutheran Church in Wyandanch, is open Monday through Friday. It offers the option of eating on the premises or taking meals to go. But they've cut back slightly on how many to-go meals they allow, from four to three.

"This is because of the influx of people," Colletti said.

Colletti provided a chart showing that 27,721 people were served by the kitchen in 2023, compared with 23,734 people in 2022, an increase of nearly 17%. The number of people served in 2023 also was higher than the total in 2019 — 23,879. During the pandemic in 2020, which prompted a nationwide shutdown of business, the soup kitchen closed for three months.

In Riverhead, the number of households being served "on a busy day" at Open Arms Care Center Emergency Food Pantry has gone from about 15 in April 2020 to roughly 200-plus this past April, executive director Zona Stroy said.The pantry operates two days a week out of First Baptist Church on Northville Turnpike. Since the start of the pandemic, Stroy said, the pantry has switched from having people come inside to drive-up food distribution.

"We don't have 200 cars drive through," Stroy said. "We probably have 100 or so because people have gotten used to coming with their neighbor so they get through the line faster."

Still, she said, the line of cars "goes down Northville Turnpike."

Farm bill opposition

At the Wednesday news conference, Long Island Cares officials, joined by community-based nonprofit leader Cathy Demeroto, executive director of CAST in Southold; Ryan Healy, advocacy manager of Feeding New York State, which supports the 10 regional food banks across the state; and Rep. Tom Suozzi (D-Glen Cove), pressed ahead against a proposed farm bill being debated in Congress they said could jeopardize the ability of the USDA to swiftly send food to communities like Long Island.

The proposal under consideration, Haynes told Newsday, "restricts [the] USDA's ability to make these purchases on its own. It's proposed that they would have to get congressional approval. We don't support that provision. The program is working . . . We want Congress to let [the] USDA do their job with the money they entrust to them."

Without the USDA's funding "we will not keep pace" with the increased need, he added. "There will be more hungry Long Islanders." 

In an open letter dated May 10, Rep. Glenn Thompson (R-Pa.), chair of the House Agriculture Committee, said of the proposed legislation in part: "The 2024 Farm Bill was written for these precarious times and is reflective of the diverse constituency and narrow margins of the 118th Congress. Each title takes into consideration the varying opinions of all who produce as much as those who consume. It is not one-sided, it does not favor a fringe agenda, and it certainly does no harm to the programs and policies that feed, fuel, and clothe our nation.

"There exists a few, loud armchair critics that want to divide the Committee and break the process. A farm bill has long been an example of consensus, where both sides must take a step off the soapbox and have tough conversations."

Suggested solution

Long Island Cares' president and chief executive, Paule Pachter, told Newsday that "Congress doesn't understand, in my opinion, where the food is going and who the food is feeding. And to put restrictions on the farm bill that would have them do fiscal oversight of the USDA budget in this area, it just doesn't make sense. It's going to slow things up. We're going to wind up with more gridlock in supply chains."

One answer to lessening the need for emergency food, Pachter said, would be for Congress to "regionalize the federal poverty level."

Currently, the official federal poverty level for a family of four is $31,200 for anywhere across the 48 contiguous states. In a high-cost area like Long Island, some people earning much higher wages still struggle. 

A 2022 report by the Suffolk County Legislature’s Welfare to Work Commission determined that the true definition of poverty on Long Island, based on the cost of housing, food, transportation and basic necessities, should be $55,000 for a family of four. The official federal poverty level determines who is eligible for government benefits.

Long Island Cares officials said they invited other members of Long Island's congressional delegation to the news conference. Rep. Andrew Garbarino (R-Bayport) didn't attend but sent a member of his staff. Pachter said food bank officials had met and shared their concerns with other members of Long Island's congressional delegation in Washington, D.C. 

"The idea of having an additional layer of congressional approval on top of the farm bill itself doesn't make any sense. It just delays the process," Suozzi told Newsday. " ... If it ain't broke, don't fix it."

As to the status of the farm bill, Suozzi said: "Everything's behind because people aren't working together. … What people are hoping for when people go back [to Congress] in September is we can get an extension of the existing, the old farm bill for a few months or a year even, so we can work out some of the controversies we're having."

By Olivia Winslow

olivia.winslow@newsday.com@newsollie