Shared Harvest dealing with delays in food deliveries, spends $130K to fill gap

Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine authorized $7 million in financial support to be given to eight food banks, with Shared Harvest receiving $1.43 million (although around 80% of the funds are to be allocated to 26 other food banks due to the federal emergency food assistance program contract).

Butler County Commissioners gave $125,000 to Shared Harvest since the shutdown hampered social services like Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, benefits.

In addition to donations, the third annual Hamil-Turkey event is happening at a much-needed time, said Perdue. This event, which is funded through private donations, provides thousands of Thanksgiving meals to those in need and partners with Shared Harvest. More than 30 volunteers spent a few hours on Friday packing boxes that will be distributed next week at five Hamilton locations.

Credit: Michael D. Pitman

Credit: Michael D. Pitman

Though food and financial donations are up, so are the number of people seeking food support, Perdue said. He’ll know in a couple of weeks how many people have been helped during the shutdown.

While the influx of generosity is appreciated and needed, there are logistics hurdles Shared Harvest must clear, and that takes time. They had to bring on several temporary personnel and seek more volunteers.

“In the past couple of weeks, we’ve been building our logistics to manage this crisis. It just doesn’t happen quickly,” he said.

Though the lion’s share of the Shared Harvest service area is Butler County, with 40 partner agencies, it has four additional counties to support. The food bank has 22 partner agencies in Warren County, 14 in Miami, nine in Darke and six in Preble counties.

Before the shutdown added to Shared Harvest’s totals, nearly 50,000 people in the five counties were helped last month.

Shared Harvest recently spent $130,000 on three truckloads of food, which is a fraction of the number of truckloads the food bank receives monthly.

“It fills a gap, but the problem is there’s a delay in the food arriving to us,” said Perdue. “From the time we order it, purchase it and it’s delivered to us, several weeks pass. And as soon as it arrives, it’s out of the warehouse almost as quickly.

“What we’re doing now is using every resource we have in our warehouse and distributing that out en masse to our partners, and we’re using that to supplement or refill, restock what we lost,” he said.

While they’ve been diligent about sourcing food, the amount of food coming from the state and federal governments is about half of what it used to be.

“About 25% of our food is coming from government sources, and we’re supplementing, thankfully, with our retail partners, namely Kroger and Meijer, who are providing a lot more than they have in the past.”

The grocery chains’ donations increased once Kroger opened a fulfillment center in Monroe and Meijer opened a distribution Center in Miami County.

HOLIDAY FOOD RELIEF