Published on August 5, 2022 at 6:08 PM MDT
Colorful food cans and boxes lined the shelves of the Arlee Community Development Corporation food pantry on a recent summer morning. Pantry staff, including program manager Donna Mollica, had stocked up the day before in preparation for another week of distribution.
Although the shelves were full that morning, Mollica doesn’t stay that long these days. Arlee’s pantry usually has enough food for 30 families a week. But demand doubled in April.
“So we were caught by surprise and ran out of food,” says Mollica.
According to Mollica, the pantry caught the tide unexpectedly.
“It was really clear that this was a reaction to inflation. We had people coming in who had never used food pantries before.
Many Jocko Valley families commute to work, Mollica said, and gas prices in Montana have fallen more slowly than other states. Add to that rising rent and food prices, and Arlee’s pantry found itself in the middle of a perfect storm.
The pantry is not alone in seeing increased demand for food assistance. The Missoula Food Bank told MTPR that the first few months of 2022 were its busiest on record. The Flathead Food Bank’s client base increased by a third this spring, with first-time pantry users accounting for much of the increase.
Gayle Carlson is the CEO of the Montana Food Bank Network.
“What we’re hearing from our agencies in the last few months is a pretty dramatic increase,” he says.
As pandemic-era emergency funding and donations dwindle and food and gas prices rise, food pantry workers say they are dealing with unique challenges.
Carlson has led a national network of food banks for nine years, and says rural areas and communities that depend on retail trade, the service sector and seasonal workers are especially struggling to afford food these days because wages haven’t kept up with costs.
Despite the challenges, Carlson says he’s not too worried about the future of Montana’s food banks.
“I think if there’s ever a group of organizations that are resilient, it’s pantries because they’ve figured out how to make the best of what little they have,” Carlson says.
Montana pantries are looking for solutions to keep up with growing demand.
The Montana Food Bank Network says it is developing a proposal for one-of-a-kind state legislation to support pantries and local farmers.
The Livingston Food Resource Center works with Bozeman-based nonprofit Hopa Mountain and other organizations to develop “food hubs” — networks of pantries across the state that share access to locally grown foods, programs and other resources.
Michael McCormick recently stepped down after 12 years running the Livingston Food Resource Center and says pantries should address what he called the root cause of food insecurity: poverty.
“There’s a real opportunity for food pantries to not be that invisible help to people who need it — everyone has an opportunity to succeed in their community and really make a difference in their community,” says McCormick.
And back in Arlee, Donna Mollica and former Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribal Chief Shelly Fyant are working on the Pantry’s Food Sovereignty Initiative — teaching Jocko Valley residents how to grow and cook using local foods and indigenous techniques. Fyant said he first heard of the term while serving on the CSKT council at a conference.
“And one of the things I heard at that gathering was, ‘A nation that cannot feed itself is not truly sovereign,'” says Fyant. “And so, coming from a sovereign country, I thought long and hard about it.”
Arlee’s pantry also plans to use a new dehydrator to start serving easy-to-prepare meals to local families, and Fyant is developing programming to teach Jocko Valley youth entrepreneurship skills. Mollica and Fyant say they have secured enough grants and donations to see them through 2023, but further increases in demand or prices could derail those plans.
Mollica says that despite the headaches, she’s not losing sleep over the pantry’s future.
“If we put our minds and hearts together and keep doing the good work we’re doing, the money we need will come.”
