Food distributions still a necessity in San Joaquín Valley

The COVID-19 pandemic has hit Central Valley families hard, especially in rural communities where the need for food distribution continues in order to mitigate food insecurity in the area.

“Rural communities are usually the ones that are hit the worst,” said Gabby Romero, community services program manager for Fresno Economic Opportunities Commission.

“We try to come out to each community once a month,” Romero said.

Fresno EOC provides food to families residing in rural communities and inner-city areas impacted by weather issues and economic downturn including in the aftermath of a worldwide pandemic.

The Emergency Food Assistance Program Food Distributions are a collaboration between Fresno EOC and Central California Food Bank.

Central California Food Bank provides services in five counties in Central California – Fresno, Madera, Kings, Tulare and Kern counties – where they have what is called a partner distribution organization that does all the direct service in their county and the food bank just support them.

“We have close to 200 member partners but over 300 food distributions, food pantry distributions every single month,” said Natalie Caples, co-CEO, Central California Food Bank across those counties. “So that’s a combination of the work that we do with those close to 200 member partners like The Fresno Center, like faith-based organizations or community centers.”

“But it’s also the result of what we call direct distributions, where there is a limited access or infrastructure specifically in our rural areas, and there isn’t a member partner operating there,” Caples said, adding that in those situations CCFB goes out to those area and recruit a volunteer group or entity that is not a member partner, and the food bank provides the food.

“We show up and we do what’s called a ‘just in time distribution,’ right? So, the volunteers show up, we bring the food, the community shows up and it is distributed all that day,” Caples said.

In communities such as Orange Cove, Romero said Fresno EOC tend to see between 150 and 200 families, especially during the winter months when seasonal work for farmworkers families is slower.

Families do not need to show any documentation to receive food at any of Fresno EOC’s distribution locations. But some questions are asked to receive food, including first and last name, birth date, the number of people living in the home, as well as how many under the age of 18 and how many 5 years of age or younger.

Besides Orange Cove, the Fresno EOC distributes food in rural areas includes Mendota, Parlier, Sanger, as well as Cantua Creek and Three Rocks neighborhood market.

Currently food distribution by Fresno EOC is conducted at each community once a month except for Parlier, which has twice-monthly distribution.

“In the communities of Fresno and Parlier we are currently doing walk-up and Mendota, Orange Cove, Sanger, and Cantua Creek continue to be drive-thru,” Romero said.

In Orange Cove, Romero said they tend to get a lot of older adults too since many of them cannot work in the fields anymore.

Olivia Carmona, a 71-year-old Orange Cove resident, left her house early on Jan. 18 to walk a few blocks to the food distribution at the community center.

Carmona said It takes her about 10 minutes to get to the community center while pulling a folding shopping cart where she would take back home the food items.

Carmona was one of the few people who walked to the site with their shopping carts to get food from Fresno EOC. The rest of the families were in vehicles lined up inside the community center’s parking lot.

Food items distributed at the sites can vary from month to month and are first come, first served until food runs out.

“We have a good variety of food today for them. We have a lot of vegetables. We also have some canned goods. We have some meat over, we have butter, we have cheese,” Romero said of the items families would be receiving that day.

The need still there

As the pandemic continues, the need for food distribution events has not decreased to pre-pandemic times across the Valley.

Before February 2020, Caples said Central California Food Bank on average was serving about 280,000 individuals (about half the population of Wyoming) every single month.

“In the height of the pandemic, we jumped up to 350,000 individuals (about half the population of Vermont) every single month.,” Caples said. “And a lot of those individuals were first-time users, right? Somebody that was furloughed or somebody that didn’t have enough collateral or savings to be able to ride out a termination or a loss of their job.”

“We were seeing a lot of first-time users and a lot of families with children because they didn’t have access to free and reduced meals that they would normally get at school,” Caples said.

Prior to the pandemic, Romero said Fresno EOC served 13,507 families in a span of 91 food distributions in 2019.

In 2020, Fresno EOC served a total of 21,021 families in 77 food distributions.

“But if you separate from when the pandemic actually hit, and the ones that we were doing monthly, you notice that actually in 55 food distributions during the pandemic there was a total of 17,353 families served,” Romero said. “So that’s a huge spike in our numbers and it was a lot less distributions, and with a lot more families served.”

“We were averaging about 148 families for distribution in 2019,” Romero said. “During the pandemic we were doing about 315. So, a little more than double of families was being served during pandemic months,” Romero said.

In 2021, Fresno EOC saw a total of 14,294 families served in a span of 83 distributions, which averaged about 172 families per distribution.

“It was still more than before pandemic in 2019,” Romero said, adding that some people were able to go back to work in 2021. “So, our numbers did come down some.”

“It’s just been like a roller coaster of communities and families served in the distributions of the last two years,” Romero said of adding additional distributions at the start of pandemic to returning to distributions to the original volunteers once things started to slow down or looked a little more normal.

“During those times when the pandemic first hit, it easily can actually run out of food in an hour and a half or two,” Romero said. “it was unbelievable.”

Romero said they are still serving an average of between 30 to 50 more families per distribution compared to pre-pandemic numbers.

“With new variants surfacing I am afraid things will not be slowing down anytime soon,” Romero said.

In Kings County, when shelter in place hit in March 2020, Kings Community Action Organization went from doing one food distribution a month to three distributions in each of the communities they served – Hanford, Kettleman City, Corcoran, Lemoore, Stratford, and Avenal.

“We did scale it down (in 2021) to two distributions and the only reason we scaled it down is because we didn’t have enough volunteers to keep going. And we currently are still doing two distributions in all the areas,” said Juan Martínez, KCAO’s nutrition education and hunger prevention director.

Martínez said the numbers of families served in Kings County continues to be the same for most of the time.

Towards November-December 2021, the numbers were a little lower, but not by much, Martínez said. “But we kind of did notice there was a small number that it just went down a bit.”

Martínez said there could be a variety of factors in that resulted in the decline of numbers of families being served during those months including that the Central Valley area there are a lot of families that do traveled to México.

“We do see that there is still a need in the community,” he said.

Caples said things have stabilized a little bit, but numbers have not gone back to pre-pandemic times.

“We’re probably seeing closer to about 323,000 and 330,000 neighbors every single month,” Caples said. “So, we’re not at that height that we were seeing during the pandemic, but we’re nowhere near pre-pandemic levels.”

Caples said her staff is constantly working to find the gaps in the existing services.

“Right now, when we look at the amount of food that we’re distributing and we look at the need in our five-county service area, we’re nowhere close to meeting what we call the ‘meal gap’,” Caples said, adding that they are around 60 or 70%.

“So, there’s still a significant amount of work to do to close that gap of food that’s needed in our community, based on the number of food insecure individuals that we have,” Caples said.

Volunteers help make food distribution happen

But something crucial for food distributions to happen and to serve those families in need are the volunteers at each location.

Caples said that at the beginning of the pandemic they did see a small dip in volunteers.

“Just because I think people didn’t know what to expect,” Caples said, adding that during 2020 and early into 2021 they had an outpouring of support.

“It was vital for us to have volunteers,” Romero said, adding that when the pandemic hit, it was Fresno EOC workers who stepped up as volunteers to assist in distributing the food instead of having the community involve preventing the risk of getting people sick with COVID.

“We had people from the same agency come out and assist us in and distributing the food and put it in families’ cars, because it was all drive-through,” Romeros said, adding that the Food Bank was able to send them everything pre-bagged. “So, all we had to do is set up the pallets of food, set up volunteers at the stations and just put the stuff in people’s cars.”

Romero said volunteers at the sites continue to take the same precautions as wearing their mask to make sure they are well protected as well as they could be.

As someone who has been conducting food distributions for 13 years now, Romero said having volunteers is absolute.

“There’s no doing it without them. You definitely need the community involvement, you need, in this case we had the agency involvement, but you need that collaboration, that partnership in order for this to successfully carry out,” Romero said.

Phillip Chávez Cisneros is one of those volunteers that help Romero at the distribution sites in Orange Cove and Parlier.

The 73-year-old Orange Cove resident helps direct vehicles to form a line to pick up food.

“I like helping people,” Chávez Cisneros said in Spanish about volunteering.

Another Orange Cove resident, Silvia Murillo, has volunteered to help bag food items at the food distribution site for about a year.

Murillo, 47, also helps spread the word of the food distributions dates, times, and locations taking place in the community either on social media or at some churches too.

“There is a lot of need,” Murillo said.

Even though KCAO has its own food bank staff, which coordinates everything with the distribution sites, Martínez said those sites rely on volunteers to put the food bags or food boxers together.

“We deliver the food, and our staff stays to do the food distribution, but with the number of staff that we have on board, we would not be able to do it ourselves because it requires a lot of volunteers,” Martínez said.

He said depending on the site, volunteers are either people from the church, or other organizations including local law enforcement or even some companies’ employees.

“We do not have the personnel to do all these (distributions), and without the volunteers we couldn’t do it,” Martínez said.

Caples said they are seeing a little dip of volunteers right now compared to the same time last year in 2021.

“Part of that could be, you know, we’re seeing surging cases and people want to stay safe. Part of it could be people going back to work, they’re working full time, and so volunteering isn’t something that is feasible for them right now,” Caples said.

“But Central California Food Bank would not be able to do the work that we do without the help of volunteers,” Caples said. “Even our Member Partner network are primarily volunteers, and so we need that support. We need that Community support to continue to pack boxes and bags for food distributions, for families that are in need.”

For volunteer opportunities people can go to https://ccfoodbank.org/get-involved/volunteer/ and sign up online for a slot and select an event.

For people who are food insecure visit: www.ccfoodbank.org to find a distribution center near in your own counties.

Esta historia fue publicada originalmente el 31 de enero de 2022, 3:03 p. m. with the headline "Food distributions still a necessity in San Joaquín Valley."

María G. Ortiz-Briones

The Fresno Bee

559-441-6782

María G. Ortiz-Briones is a reporter and photographer for McClatchy’s Vida en el Valle publication and the Fresno Bee. She covers issues that impact the Latino community in the Central Valley. She is a regular contributor to La Abeja, The Bee’s free weekly newsletter on Latino issues. | María G. Ortiz-Briones es reportera y fotógrafa de la publicación Vida en el Valle de McClatchy y el Fresno Bee. Ella cubre temas que impactan a la comunidad latina en el Valle Central. Es colaboradora habitual de La Abeja, el boletín semanal gratuito de The Bee sobre temas latinos. Apoye mi trabajo con una subscripción digital