By Seth Nelson of the Wisconsin State Journal
For most of the 22 years Ellen Carlson has worked at WayForward Resources, formerly Middleton Outreach Ministry, the food pantry has operated on a “take what you need” system — families could take as much food as they needed to feed themselves for the week.
But in recent months, as the pantry’s shelves have emptied faster and two-hour lines of waiting people have become increasingly common, WayForward’s staff have begun restricting the amount of food families can take for fear of running out before the week is done, said Carlson, WayForward’s executive director.
“To go to the community and say ‘We’re not sure that we have enough food,’” she said, “that’s really difficult to do.”
WayForward is hardly alone. Since the end of the COVID-19 pandemic, and with it the end of federally supported programs aimed at alleviating hunger, Madison-area pantries have seen a surge in demand, administrators and officials say.
In interviews with nearly a dozen food pantry administrators from the Madison area, as well as public health officials and representatives of statewide organizations, all say the same thing: Long lines, empty shelves and a diminishing food supply are becoming the norm, locally and across the county.
The six largest food pantries in Dane County announced in February that they were seeing record-high numbers of families coming to their doors. On average, the number of family visits increased 112% between 2021 and 2023.
That number has only grown in 2024. Administrators at the River Food Pantry said they have seen a 24% increase in demand just since February, and are on track to see twice the number of families by 2025.
At the Neighborhood House food pantry on the Near West Side, demand has doubled since 2021, and Bayview Community Center’s food pantry has seen similar growth just since January.
At Extended Hands Food Pantry on the West Side, demand has grown even higher. In the past four years, Director of Operations Jenny Czerkas said, the pantry has seen a 414% increase; over 100% of that has been since 2023.
“We don’t want to continue to operate in a crisis model,” WayForward Strategic Engagement Director Leslie Huber said. “So is it a crisis? I mean, yeah, it is.”
As unemployment soared and schools closed during the COVID-19 pandemic, poverty-alleviation programs were given a major infusion of federal aid to increase struggling families’ access to food.
But by the end of 2023, federal support for those programs had all but evaporated. Additional benefits through Wisconsin’s FoodShare program were mostly cut in February of that year, and Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program recipients’ average benefits decreased by $90 a month in March.
The end of that support brought with it an increase in demand for food, said Nick Heckman, Dane County’s Public Health planner for food security.
Ellen Carlson, executive director of WayForward Resources, said visits to the food pantry have doubled as demand rises in the Madison area.
“The first inclination that things were changing came a couple years later when a lot of those programs and benefits started to wind down and the funds ran out,” he said. “So all of these things kind of came to a head and created the first real press for food.”
In 2021 nearly one-third of households in the county struggled to access basic necessities, including food, according to data provided by the United Way.
But years-old statistics probably underrepresent the current situation, Heckman said.
“What is occurring are forces at the national and maybe even global economic scale,” he said. “There is a real increase in demand. I mean, I think that’s undeniable.
“Right now, pantries are managing. But there’s an upper threshold of how much they can manage,” Heckman said. “The question is: Can they do this sustainably forever? And I think the answer is definitely no.”
In the popular imagination, the pandemic is remembered as the era of long food lines and starving families, said Michelle Orge, CEO of Second Harvest Foodbank of Southern Wisconsin, which supplies food to area pantries. But that reality is just as real now as it was then. Since 2023 southwest Wisconsin has seen a 47% increase in families reporting that they struggle to obtain enough food, according to Second Harvest’s data.
“During the pandemic, it was very clear to folks that folks were struggling, because there was all this drone footage of people lined up at pantries,” she said. “We think of the pandemic as this ‘big spike.’ But now that we don’t see the miles and miles of cars lined up, we don’t think about it as much anymore.”
Many pantries, like WayForward, have begun tightening their supply of food to avoid running out before they’re restocked. That has left many families wanting more but taking less.
“I always say it’s magic how food pantries work now,” said Tess Stroh, the director of the Bayview pantry. “We’re just in such a scarcity mindset.”
Second Harvest is by far the largest provider of food to pantries in southern Wisconsin, sending out millions of pounds of food a year. But even as Second Harvest and other food banks pump more and more food to pantries, demand continues to dwarf the supply.
“I know our partners depend on us, but when they can’t — when they have to say no to people — well, that’s not what we aim for,” she said. “(Pantries) would order more from us if we had it, but we are never quite able to give them the amount they need.”
In recent years pantry administrators say they have even found themselves competing against one another to get the food they need.
When Second Harvest’s ordering portal opens, it’s a mad dash to get essential food items before other pantries scoop them up, said Taylor Drogemuller, director of the Neighborhood House’s pantry.
“There’s not quite as much selection as there used to be available, as far as the variety and regularity of food,” she said. “And if I can’t get it from Second Harvest, then I just don’t get it at all.”
Wisconsin, like all states, gets millions of pounds of food a year from the federal government as part of The Emergency Food Assistance Program, a U.S. Department of Agriculture initiative that distributes free food to pantries across the country. But even that has seen dwindling amounts sent to Wisconsin, said Jennifer Putzer, the state’s Food Security Unit supervisor.
“Food sources ebb and flow all the time,” she said, but acknowledged there is less food available across all sources than there was during the pandemic as federal assistance has increasingly fallen away. “It’s putting a strain on the food system.”
The problem with getting enough food, Orge said, isn’t just the amount available — it’s the cost of the food that’s already there.
Rising costs from post-pandemic inflation mean that many food items are now unattainable for pantries with smaller budgets, Orge said.
“Ultimately, it’s always been, ‘Do we have enough food?'” she said. “And a lot of that right now comes down to, ‘Do we have enough money to get that food?'”
Smaller pantries like Bayview and Neighborhood House, but even large pantries like The River, say they have consistently spent more as demand has only risen.
For its part, WayForward has spent 240% more in 2024 so far than it did two years ago.
Heckman called inflation in food prices “the silent killer” of food pantries nationwide.
“The real changes to food prices, even if it’s only reflected in $1 or so per product, can be substantial to the volume of products that these pantries and food banks are going through,” he said. “It can really add up to significant amounts, and ultimately these are entities that are operating on donated funds and small budgets.”
As food prices climb and supply drops, Heckman said, hunger in the Madison area will only spread, putting even more of a burden on pantries.
That isn’t just unsustainable; it’s also dangerous, he said. Unless the strain on pantries is alleviated, families will increasingly cut back on the number or size of meals they eat, or “parents will go without food to ensure enough for their children,” he said.
“It’s a situation that is unfolding, it has been unfolding and it will continue to unfold,” he said. “This is kind of our canary in the coal mine.”
