Montana Food Bank Network

Missoulian, November 19, 2007
By CHARLES S. JOHNSON of the Missoulian State Bureau
HELENA - Annita Wolf Black, a working and divorced mother in Billings with three children at home, depends on the food stamp assistance she receives to help feed her family.

In Missoula, Jillian Buchanan also counts on her monthly food stamp allowance. She'll also use the Food Bank when necessary to help feed her two young children and husband, who can't work because of an on-the-job accident framing houses.

While many Montanans will sit down to a turkey dinner with all the trimmings on Thanksgiving Day and can always depend on regular meals throughout the year, people like these struggle to feed their families at times throughout the year.

Hunger continues to be a major problem in Montana, despite the availability of food stamps, emergency provisions from food pantries and other programs.

That's a main conclusion of a recently released survey by the Food Security Council of the Montana Food Bank Network, conducted by Kate Bradford and Minkie Medora. It was based on interviews last year of 301 adults, representing nearly 1,000 family members, who sought emergency food assistance in Billings, Great Falls, Havre, Dillon, Glendive and Troy.

During the summer, Wolf Black fights wildfires. The rest of the year, she works three or four days a week as a day laborer or cleaning up after hotel catering jobs. She's applied to be a part-time receptionist.

Wolf Black said she doesn't receive child-support payments from her ex-husband and counts on her $400 monthly food stamp debit card. She wishes it were more.

"I think it's wrong they have this poverty level so low," she said.

Wolf Black learned how to stretch leftovers into additional meals from an Extension Service course and does just that as the month draws to a close. Her goal is to serve at least 21 meals with meat each month.

She pores over the grocery ads each Wednesday to find meat on sale. Wolf Black said she might serve chicken thighs for one meal and then take the leftover meat and add some vegetables and noodles to make soup the next day.

"That's how I try and make my meals last longer,"she said. "We might have meatless spaghetti a night or two a month. If I don't have enough meat, I'll say we're going to eat breakfast for dinner and cook some pancakes and eggs two nights a month."

On weekends, Wolf Black sometimes fixes a big pot of beans, seasoned with onions and spices, and tells her teenaged children to microwave a bowl for their lunch and dinner.

Wolf Black said she struggles, but doesn't use the food bank in Billings because a family can get a basket of food only once every three months.

In Missoula, Buchanan said she goes to the Food Bank occasionally to help feed her family of four. She gets rice, beans, cereal, canned fruits and vegetables and, if the pantry has it, fresh vegetables, bread and meat. She wishes she could get milk, but it's rarely available.

"If we are struggling, we go," she said.

Buchanan previously worked as a cashier at a gas station and has sold her blood plasma at times to help make ends meet. Her family faces big medical bills. Her husband, unable to work, draws a workers' compensation check for his injury.

The Food Bank helps them, she said.

"Sometimes, we'd probably have to go without," Buchanan said. "Thank God for that. We always seem to make it. We never go without."

Hunters sometimes give them extra meat, she said, and their church helps them out occasionally.

The Wolf Black and Buchanan families are not alone, according to the study. Here are some of the report's conclusions:

The number of Montanans seeking emergency food from the Montana Food Bank Network's 189 agencies has nearly doubled, jumping from 363,537 in 1999 to 708,073 in 2006.

Sixty-five percent of clients interviewed fell below federal poverty limits, particularly among those on reservations, but also in other rural areas. Many clients face the difficult choices of whether to buy food or pay other critical bills like utilities and rent.

Increasing numbers of Montanans of all ages live on the edge of poverty. A sudden change in a family's situation - a lost job, a serious illness, reduced hours at work or other factors - can throw people into the ranks of the poor and the hungry. Last year, 46 percent of food bank clients and 16 percent of families with children skipped some meals.

Hunger is tied to income. Montana has the anomaly of a very low unemployment rate of about 3 percent, but ranks 49th nationally in work force wages. People can't defer paying for such essential needs as rent, fuel, child care, heating and medical bills, which leaves many families with little money left for food.

The survey found 53 percent of food bank clients used food stamps or commodities, two federal programs. Income levels show these people were "the poorest of the poor."

Although food pantry clients said they had a good understanding of healthy eating, they sometimes had to take steps compromising healthy nutrition to stretch food dollars.

Challenges faced by hungry people are multiple and complex. Some faced severe challenges throughout the year, while others saw greater challenges in winter, summer vacation from school and at the end of the month when food stamp dollars run out.

"The economics of food stamp dollars are changing," said Peggy Grimes, executive director of the Montana Food Bank Network. "They used to last three or three and a half weeks. Now they last two to two and one-half weeks, and people go to the pantry to make up the difference."

Anti-hunger groups nationally have been urging Congress to increase the level of food stamp payments, which vary by income, in the farm bill.

While food banks do an outstanding job of providing food to a growing number of Montanans, some people erroneously see these efforts as a solution to hunger. In fact, these emergency food sites have only enough food to last for three to seven days at the most, and depend on the quality of food donated.

To achieve food security, which is dependable and consistent, the first and more preferable solution is to improve family income to well above the poverty levels.The study concluded that poverty thresholds, set by the federal government, do not represent the severe income shortage that poor families live with.

Until we can find ways to increase access to healthy and affordable food for all people in the state, hunger will continue to be a barrier in the lives of many Montanans,the study concluded. This is not a debatable issue, and it is inconceivable that so many have to live with this problem.