Food Bank For The Heartland Officials Meet With Staff, Volunteers at Storehouse Food Pantry

Representatives of the Food Bank For The Heartland paid a visit to the Mills County Storehouse last Tuesday as part of their “Whistle Stop Tour” through southwest Iowa to get a better understanding of the needs of local food pantries and to share insight into their own operation.

The Omaha-based Food Bank For The Heartland is one of six food banks partnering with local food pantries across the state of Iowa to address food insecurity needs. Food Bank For The Heartland works with dozens of food pantries in eastern Nebraska and western Iowa, including four pantries in Mills County.

Brian Barks, Food Bank For The Heartland President and CEO, said food banks and pantries across the country have experienced an increase in demand as a result of the 43-day government shutdown that ended last week, but the need was already growing before the shutdown.

“Unfortunately, ahead of that, we received a record number of people. Then, you add the government shutdown and the impact of that,” he said. “For the first three months of our fiscal year  - July,  August and September – we’re seeing about a 7% increase in the number of people seeking help from the previous year and the number of available resources was down 11%. So, we have more people showing up for help with less food available.”

Food pantries, like the Mills County Storehouse, purchase food at a reduced rate from the Food Bank For The Heartland, but Barks said the cost has increased because “less food is available.”  Banks said the Food Bank is receiving less food and assistance from the USDA and fewer donations from the private sector and large protein-producing companies.

“Our current budget this year is to spend roughly $4.3 million on food,” Barks said. “We cannot sustain that level of spending. Let’s take that $4.3 million we’re spending on food and go back two or three years, we’re going to get more from that $4.3 million than we can now. We just cannot get the bang for the buck that we used to.

“You add that all together. The first three months of the fiscal year, the number of people seeking assistance is up 7% and the amount of resources that are available to us is down 11%. The vast majority of that is due to the lack of food we’re receiving from the USDA.”

During the stop in Glenwood, Barks and other staff members received input from Kori Kenkel, chair of the Mills County Storehouse Board Of Directors, and Jeff Mitts, Mills County Storehouse Food Pantry manager and liaison to the board. Both Kenkel and Mitts felt the face-to-face meeting was beneficial.

“It was good to get information on how everything (at the food bank) works,” Mitts said. “Finding out why some items are not available.”

Barks said he was impressed with the Mills County Storehouse Food Pantry and its volunteers.

“It has more variety on the shelves than most and the walk-in (cooler/freezer) isn’t something we see at most pantries,” he said.

While in Glenwood, Barks provided an update on the new Food Bank For The Heartland facility under construction near the intersection of 84th and “L” Street in Omaha. He said the new building will be about 105,000 square feet, considerably larger the existing 75,000 square-foot building. It will be more efficient and be able to handle up to eight semi-trailer trucks at once at the dock, compared to only one truck at the current building. It will also have almost three times the space to store both dry goods and frozen and refrigerated products.

“That new facility is not just for today, it’s for 10-15 years down the road,” Barks said. “That new facility is designed for us to continue growing the amount of donated food that we have – specifically, bulk protein items.

“Right now, our room to process the big frozen bin of frozen chicken, hamburger patties, meatloaf, whatever, is about 700 square feet. We have no room to do that work, no room in the freezer. We have trailers sitting out on our parking lot holding frozen food. There’s just a massive bottleneck. We’re growing that 700 square-foot room by thousands of square feet and our freezer – cooler is almost being tripled in size.”

The location of the new building, on property that once housed a major car dealership, will also provide the Food Bank For The Heartland with a more visible presence, Banks noted.