Photo: DMARC
(Des Moines, IA) -- Des Moines Area Religious Council food pantries are seeing record numbers. Spokesman Luke Elzinga says there was record demand in August.
Pantries 20,203 people in August 2022, a record for the month, and an 86% increase over August 2021. He says nearly 2,000 people used a DMARC food pantry for the first time ever in August.
“There is an incredible amount of need in our community right now,” said DMARC CEO Matt Unger. “People are struggling to meet the new costs for food, housing, child care, health care, and transportation. Wages aren’t keeping up. It’s a balancing act – and families, many for the first time ever, are increasingly turning to food pantries to put food on the table.”
In June, the Food Bank of Iowa served a record-setting 135,000 individuals, and one in eight of those people were assisted through the DMARC Food Pantry Network. The increased level of need for food pantries is likely being influenced by rising costs for consumers, but more than anything else, DMARC believes the higher traffic at food pantries can be attributed to a decrease in benefits provided by the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) that occurred earlier this year. The pandemic-related benefits expired, when the pandemic public health emergency expired.
“Emergency Allotments for SNAP ended in Iowa in April and the average monthly SNAP benefit for households dropped by more than $200,” said Unger. “We have seen dramatic increases in food pantry use since April, and are now back to breaking monthly records, just like we were prior to the pandemic.”
He says in addition to the DMARC Food Pantry Network setting an all-time record of individuals assisted in the month of August, four DMARC partner food pantries assisted more people in August 2022 than any other month on record: Bidwell Riverside Center, Caring Hands Eastview Food Pantry, Johnston Partnership Place, and Urbandale Food Pantry.