The past year has demonstrated how important food assistance is during a time of crisis. It has also tested the strength and resilience of our local food assistance network.
One of the economic impacts of COVID-19 has been a significant increase in food insecurity in Lane County. Simply put, more people than ever are having trouble paying for all their living expenses and feeding their families, too.
A volunteer organizes food at the Cottage Grove Mobile Pantry in April 2020.
At FOOD for Lane County, COVID-19’s first impact was on our food supply. We had to temporarily suspend food donations from local grocery stores last spring. By summer, we and the stores had figured out a safe way to resume picking up their food donations. However, they had fewer usable food items to donate because of the impact of COVID-19 on their businesses, and our grocery store collections last year were only 60% of pre-pandemic levels.
Local food drives, where community members donate cans and boxes of food, were down even more last year at less than 25% of pre-COVID-19 levels. Organizations and groups are once again starting to conduct COVID-19-safe food drives, but we don’t yet have the large community events that generate a lot of these donations.
Register-Guard Guest View, by Tom Mulhern (FFLC Executive Director)