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As economy slides, demands on local food pantries rise

By Susan Campriello

CATSKILL — Volunteers with the Catskill Ecumenical Council stood and sat at the ready Tuesday morning, waiting for Catskill residents to come out of the cold rain and into the First Baptist Church to pick up free Thanksgiving meals.

The packages of turkeys, cranberry sauce and sweet potatoes and other vegetables were collected by the Ecumenical Council’s member churches and by God’s Storehouse. Students at Catskill High School made bread for the packages. In all, the council had gathered enough food for 192 families, although already over 50 packages had been given out before the event.

Last year, the council prepared enough food for only 115 families, but, Rev. Joyce Wilkerson, pastor of United Methodist Church and council president, said that requests for food have increased significantly this year.

Other area pantries have seen a similar rise in first-time requests for assistance, and although local scout troops, school classes and town and federal employees have held food drives, pantries’ staff have had to supplement the donations with larger and more frequent orders from the Regional Food Bank of Northeast New York than they have in the past.

“People say, ‘I’ve never had to ask for help before, but I have to get help from somewhere,’” said Joyce Notarnicola, of Resurrection Lutheran Church, repeating what she has heard from those who sign up for the service for the first time.

The pantry’s Thanksgiving giveaway, held Nov. 22, provided food to 170 families — 30 more families than last last year, she said.

Charlotte Carter, with the First Reformed Church’s emergency pantry, said that 50 more families have come to take food than required the service last year.

“I know we are spending twice as much than we were last year,” she said, estimating that the pantry spends $2,000 per month at the regional bank.

Mark Quandt, regional bank’s executive director, confirmed what anecdotal evidence has shown. The demands on Greene County pantries have significantly increased over the last year. Orders, he said, have increased 19 percent.

Between January and September 2008, 179,202 lbs. of food had been distributed to pantries across Greene County, he said. During the same time period last year, local pantries received 150,000 lbs. of food from the regional bank.

Quandt said that pantry orders across the region, which stretches from Rockland and Putnam counties all the way up to the Canadian boarder, have increased by 20 percent in the last year.

“Demand is so great that whatever we get in flies right out,” he said.

Staple items, such as rice, bread and peanut butter, are the hardest to keep in stock, and local pantries sometime need to find those items elsewhere, Charlotte Carter said.

Carter said the church’s pantry has almost used all the funds provided by state and federal grants. Then next wave of grant money will not come to the pantry until July 2009, she said.

The Greenville Area Food Pantry is facing a similar economic challenge. Phyllis Beechert, the pantry’s treasurer, said that pantry also receives grant money in July, but has already used up almost the entire $4,000 budgeted for its yearly expenses.

Area pantry staffs have not disclosed monetary contribution totals, but say that the numbers are similar to last year’s figures.

Mary Irvis, of God’s Storehouse and Food Pantry in Catskill, along with other pantry representatives across the county, thanked everybody who has donated time or resources this fall.

“People are being generous and it’s a good thing they are, because we get more people every day,” she said.

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