Judy Mattson was late because of peanut butter.
In her defense, it was on sale at Fred Meyer and she was able to layer her senior discount on top of the sale price. Then there was cereal on a top shelf in the clearance aisle that she had to grab.
“Everything I want is either on the top shelf or the bottom shelf so I’m either stretching or crawling,” Mattson said.
Mattson is a powerhouse food donor to the Clatsop Emergency Food Bank based out of the basement of the First Presbyterian Church in Astoria. On Tuesday, food bank volunteers were celebrating 50 years of serving the community. So it was only fitting that Mattson was late to the event in pursuit of a highly desired and often hard to come by commodity on food bank shelves.
“We can never get enough peanut butter,” said Dustin Martin, the chief operating officer for the Clatsop Regional Food Bank in Warrenton. “Really if somebody pulled up with a trunk full of peanut butter, you’d probably see food bank people doing back flips.”
Mattson’s donations and the Astoria food bank’s 50-year celebration come at a time when many local food banks have seen an increase in demand as the immediate future of federal food stamp benefits remains in limbo.
The Trump administration has refused to fund the Supplemental Food Assistance Program during the ongoing government shutdown. SNAP was set to be suspended beginning Nov. 1. More than 42 million Americans rely on the program, including thousands on Oregon’s North Coast.
States, religious organizations and others sued the Trump administration over the issue. Last week, a federal judge ordered the administration to continue paying for SNAP. The Trump administration announced it would release enough money to cover only a portion of the program in November.
On Thursday, a judge ordered the Trump administration to fully fund SNAP.
But whatever ends up coming to SNAP recipients could still be weeks away. Meanwhile, October’s benefits have run out.
Martin recently ran the numbers for all the Clatsop County food banks — from a pantry in Knappa at one end to another in Cannon Beach at the other. All have seen some degree of uptick in demand in October, most of it coming in the last few days of the month.
At a recent distribution at the larger Warrenton food bank where Martin works, they saw a definite increase: people who either had never gone to the food bank before or who were coming back after a long time away because of the loss of SNAP benefits.
North Coast businesses and organizations have rallied to collect food and money donations for local food banks this week. But food banks say they will not be able to fill the gap for long. If the shutdown continues and SNAP funding remains in limbo, Martin worries they could all be right back in the same emergency again in several weeks.
The regional food bank supplies thousands of pounds of food to the Clatsop Emergency Food Bank and to other food banks and pantries across the county. Around 80% of this food comes from outside the area.
“We do have some concern about the food supply and that depends on how prolonged this event is,” Martin said. “If we’re looking at a couple days, a couple weeks, we’re going to be OK.”
“But,” he added, “if we’re looking at weeks upon weeks upon weeks of no SNAP benefits or reduced…food banks were never designed to be a substitute for SNAP. We were designed to be a supplement to SNAP and SNAP was designed to be a supplement to people’s income.”
At a recent distribution, the Clatsop Emergency Food Bank saw around the same number of people they usually serve. Bill Landwehr, president and treasurer for the food bank’s board, said they have yet to see a major spike in demand. But they are ready and, he noted, they’ve weathered emergency situations before, most recently the COVID-19 pandemic.
He and others at the anniversary celebration pointed to the longevity and endurance of the resource as a positive thing.
Arreta Christie agreed, but with a caveat.
Her mother Peg created the food bank 50 years ago and Christie thinks she would be disappointed that food insecurity still exists in Astoria, that there is still a need for a community food bank.
Still, Christie clarified, her mother was a realist. She understood hunger was a chronic problem.
At the anniversary celebration, Christie read from a remembrance written by her niece, Ruth Christie, who often accompanied Peg Christie as she collected food from area grocery stores and worked to organize and distribute that food out of the church basement.
Ruth Christie described the cozy interior of the food bank: the neatly lined shelves and bins, volunteers sitting at a long table organizing and portioning out donations.
“In a world that could be uncertain and scary,” Ruth Christie wrote, “the food bank was a place that was safe and welcoming — a place where people could count on ingredients for their next meal, a place where volunteers who shared values could come together and feel grateful to connect with one another, a place where a child could see what it looked like when a community really cared about the well-being of others.”