Editorial: Food banks need your help | TribLIVE.com - TribLIVE

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Getting back to normal doesn’t mean being back to normal.

Being there is a goal. Getting there is a process.

There may be no better example of that than food banks.

During earlier days of the coronavirus pandemic, nonprofits that provided nutritional assistance were overwhelmed as some people were thrown out of work amid lockdowns. Families were facing the dual challenges of being without paychecks and long on days at home with kids who weren’t eating at school. At the same time, store shelves were cleared of pantry staples.

Food banks filled the gap. As distributions happened around the region, lines of cars waiting to pick up boxes of food stretched up to a mile, gaining national attention.

According to the Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank, the numbers have dropped from those early peaks. Instead of 800 cars per day, president and CEO Lisa Scales says the nonprofit is now seeing about 500 households at distributions.

The regional effort serves 11 counties. The food bank is showing an increase of 54% over its 2019 distributions to date. More than 10 million pounds of food have been handed out in the last three months.

The Westmoreland County Food Bank was serving 7,000 families a month before covid-19 bumped that up to 9,500. It has dropped by 1,000 but is still more than 20% higher than in 2019.

Yes, things are better. It is progress. It is still alarming. Thousands of people throughout the area are still unsure of what the economic future holds, which means many people in precarious financial circumstances are still prioritizing paying rent over buying food.

We may have restaurants and stores opening back up. But not everything. Not the way it was. We are getting there, but we aren’t there yet.

The real problem is even that goal is not enough. It took just a week or two of quarantine to send panicked people to the food banks because so many are already food insecure, the clinical term used for people who don’t know when or from where their next meals might come.

Before the coronavirus pandemic, the Greater Pittsburgh food bank was distributing millions of meals with the help of 6,000 volunteers.

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, there are 37 million food-insecure Americans — 11 million of whom are children.

For many, food banks are the difference between hungry kids and healthy kids on a good day, when school is in session and Mom and Dad have jobs they can count on being there tomorrow. If food insecurity is normally a three-legged stool, the coronavirus pandemic kicked out one of the legs.

“We’re still operating in emergency mode,” said Westmoreland executive director Jennifer Miller.

Because the need has always been there. It is just exacerbated now. Food insecurity isn’t something that should get back to normal. Back to normal should be the bare minimum. It is a problem that needs to be addressed in more than just times of crisis or at holidays.

The food banks don’t just help people. They need help, too. They need money, food and volunteers. If you can fill any of those needs, contact your local food bank.

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