KDSN RADIO News
Food Pantries Hustling to Keep Up With Holiday Demand
Rising food costs and seasonal changes have some rural Iowans leaning harder on local charities. Gail Eischeid volunteers at the food pantry in Sac County and says her team is serving at least 75 people bi-monthly.
“They receive a bag of frozen, a bag of dry, a bag of cans, and then miscellaneous items like peaches and grapes and that kind of thing,” said Eischeid.
She says numbers only grow during the coldest months.
“I think we’ll consistently keep going with the price of things and a lot of families if their main breadwinner is anything outside a lot of them get laid off. I would not be surprised at all if we get close to 100 families by the end of the year,” said Eischeid.
Eischeid says most people are not just taking advantage of the system.
“I know what it’s like to be hungry. I grew up that way. If we can give somebody just a little bit of warm feeling that they know that they have a meal to feed their family that night then we’ve helped,” said Eischeid.
She says a truck from the Iowa Food Bank delivers once a month and the holiday spirit of giving always helps out too.
“I can order up to 6,000 pounds of food at a time from the Iowa Food Bank. This time of year people are so generous so it allows us to stockpile sometimes,” said Eischeid.
Eischeid says it’s pretty much a full-time job to keep the pantry going year-round.
