Enough peanut butter to make 3M sandwiches stored in Fife as part of state food reserve
The Washington State Department of Agriculture has established an emergency food reserve to prepare for the increasing demand for food from hunger-relief organizations this fall.
Since July 1, the new food warehouse in Fife has been filled with about 1,300 pallets of non-perishable food. That includes enough peanut butter to make over 3 million sandwiches. The warehouse has enough storage to hold over 2,000 pallets.
WSDA hopes the food will help supplement food banks when many non-perishable food products are difficult or impossible to come by due to COVID-19.
In April when the coronavirus pandemic caused unemployment to rise over 15 percent in Washington, demand for food and basic necessities skyrocketed. Store shelves at many groceries became scarce, and the food supply chain was strained.
“With the increased distribution that all the food banks were experiencing in the beginning of April, there was a concern that our hunger-relief network warehouses would empty by the end of April, so we began doing direct food purchasing,” said Katie Rains, WSDA’s policy advisor.
According to a WSDA spokesman Chris McGann, the combination of record unemployment levels and the scarcity of products needed at food banks threatened the food security for nearly 1.6 million people in Washington.
That resulted in some of the highest numbers ever for local food banks. So in mid-April, the state’s three main food bank distributors — Food Lifeline, Northwest Harvest and Second Harvest — told the WSDA that they had only a two-week supply of food left for hunger relief.
“The state reserve is in response to a break in a supply chain,” said Gary Newte, the director of sourcing and procurement for Northwest Harvest. “So as we recognized there would be ebbs and flows of availability of product, we decided to put together food to have available to pull from and draw from in time of excessive gaps in availability.”
McGann said WSDA and its partner agencies responded to the need by marshaling resources and developing new partnerships with established hunger-relief agencies to push food out to communities across the state.
“We’ve been in this very desperate situation starting toward the end of March. This (warehouse) is a continuation of our efforts to make sure we have fusions of product that will help us to continue to weather the storm,” said Derek Sandison, director of WSDA, on a recent tour of the facility.
Many other food distributor organizations were in the process of purchasing food. That caused a spike in prices as well as a delay in delivery.
Rains said that out of the $6.1 million spent on 4,000 pallets of food, only about 1,300 of pallets have been delivered.
WSDA also was competing with grocery stores across the state. Many high-demand items, like peanut butter, were going out of stock.
“In anticipation of spikes and demand and to move away from a just-in-time procurement model in a highly competitive grocery market, our director wanted to establish a reserve so that we could mitigate some of those lead times,” said Rains.
Newte has seen the direct effects of the delay. He said that there are some pallets of food he purchased in March that he has not yet seen arrive.
“The food supply chain where the time between purchasing product and receiving it had gone initially from a week or two to six to 12 weeks,” said Newte.
So, for food distributors like Northwest Harvest, the food reserve could not come at a better time.
“All the products here will be designated for food pantries, so for individual programs that are in the emergency food response network. As we get requests from certain food banks we will then be able to draw down from this food, if needed, to provide for those,” said Newte.
More than 2.2 million Washingtonians are expected to experience food insecurity as soon as this month, according to the food security model developed by WSDA.
WSDA has been developing plans to maintain a strong food security response, including a reserve of foods that can be difficult to acquire. Their goal is to use the food they purchase to feed people all across the state.
“(Northwest Harvest, Food Lifeline, and Second Harvest) really are the reserve of food that feed a network of 500 smaller hunger-relief organizations that actually get food into the hands of low-income people. So, the food in this reserve is really about supplying those larger food banks, so that they in turn can do logistic support and get it out to the local level,” said Rains.
McGann said that the emergency food reserve will help WSDA remain agile in the face of a possible surge in demand and mitigate delays in the supply chain.
The goal of the reserve is to maintain 50-85% of total capacity at all times, moving new supplies into storage and distributing food for hunger relief from the stored reserve, said McGann.
“When there’s an immediate need, we’ll now be able to respond,” said Newte. “The goal is to no longer need this food, but we understand that having it available and being able to supplement what is already happening in the different communities will be critical.”
Rains hopes that the reserve can help keep the hunger relief network remain stocked and stable. She understands the needs of individuals and families are changing every day throughout the COVID-19 crisis and how important it is to provide for people.
“We want to make sure that people ultimately have somewhere at every time they can turn to for food,” said Rains. “We want people to know that there are lots of new partners coming to the table to make sure that there are resources available and that we care about them.”
This story was originally published August 13, 2020 at 11:30 AM.