Health & Science

Food banks helping more with less

By McGlauthon Fleming

Amid federal funding cuts to food banks, Xavier Mission in Manhattan has asked its neighbors for support while East Flatbush Village in Brooklyn has been getting less and less food from umbrella organizations like City Harvest that serve food banks throughout the region.

“In particular, we get food supplied by [Campaign Against Hunger] and a few other entities … ” said Eric Waterman, East Flatbush’s executive director. “[Cuts have] impacted some of the agencies that supply us with food. So, it has reduced, unfortunately, the amount of food that we probably receive.”

“Over the last six months, our food grants that we generally get through the city, the state and the federal governments have been cut significantly,” said Cassandra Agredo, Xavier Mission’s executive director. “And we expect more of those cuts to come.”

In 2010, 14.5% of U.S. households were food insecure, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The rate was 12.7% in 2015, 10.5% in 2020 and 13.5% in 2023, the most recent year the data are available.

Since November 2023, the number of families getting food monthly from Xavier Mission has more than tripled, going from 160 to 400. “It’s been very intense growth in a very short period of time.”

“But, then, in the last, I would say, eight months to a year, [demand for food] really started to pick up again,” Agredo said. “And the last few months have been particularly busy. So, we’re definitely seeing more people coming.”

Though it conducts food drives every two weeks in Brooklyn, East Flatbush Village still struggles as it relays food to the community from the donations of other food banks and Driscoll Foods, a fresh food supplier. 

“It runs through grants that we receive that we applied for through United Way and a few other agencies, and they provide us with the grants that go directly to us for purchasing the food from Driscoll, who provides a lot of food to a lot of the local vendors around here, but also directly to us,” Waterman said.

The two organizations have both been looking for funding where they can find it. They pursue grants and work with private partners.

However, even after getting grants, rising food prices and rising demand are forcing Xavier Mission, for one, to turn to its surrounding community for help. “We are very fortunate that we have an extremely responsive community in terms of our funders and our donors,” Agredo said. 

“ … If you went into an emergency room with a gash on your leg, and they put a bandaid on, you would walk out and bleed out,” Agredo said. “That’s what [is happening with] soup kitchens and food pantries. The gash on your leg is getting bigger and bigger and the bandaid is getting smaller and smaller.”