Food Bank Supplies Down but Need Is Up : Hunger: The charities are scrambling to make ends meet amid reductions in private donations and federal surplus items.

Cuts in aid, a rise in hunger and even the Mediterranean fruit fly have left Ventura County food banks grappling this holiday season with more mouths to feed and less food to fill them.

Food Share, Ventura County’s massive food bank network, is scraping for donations at a time when donors’ generosity usually peaks.

“We’re presently struggling to meet the requests from our agencies,” said Jim Mangis, executive director of the Oxnard-based collective. “We are entering the holiday season with a lot less food than we normally have.”

Food Share delivers fresh, frozen and canned food to its 257 member agencies every month. In turn, the agencies feed more than 100,000 people countywide--53% of whom are children.

“What we’re seeing is an increase in families that need it, an increase in people who never thought they’d need assistance with food,” he said.

Some of Ventura County’s new needy have been laid off recently. There are others who simply cannot make ends meet:

* Elderly people who live on Social Security benefits of only $300 to $600 per month.

* Single parents who skimp on food to pay for child care so they can be free to work.

* Two-parent families in which one or both adults are laid off or working for substandard wages.

And at the same time, Mangis said, widespread cuts in the supply of food to Food Share have conspired to shrink its stores by 20%:

* Federal budget cuts have lopped off 75% of the supply of surplus food from the U. S. Department of Agriculture that Food Share once relied on for 17% of its supplies.

* The Medfly scare in Camarillo’s citrus groves cut off a steady supply of oranges and other fruit that Food Share’s volunteer gleaners once brought in for the hungry, Mangis said.

* And private food drives, corporate food donations and contributions from the public--whose gifts of a few cans or a single bag of groceries usually help propel the food banks through the heavy holiday demand--are scarcer this year than ever.

The cut in U. S. surplus food was devastating to agencies that relied on it, such as Food Share.

“It means that last year, we received around 2 million pounds of food--rice, beans, butter, corn meal, flour, peanut butter, canned fruits, canned pork, powdered milk,” Mangis said. “This year we probably won’t get more than 500,000 pounds. . . . It’s part of trying to balance the (federal) budget, and unfortunately, poor and hungry people don’t have a lot of clout.”

But the decline in public and private donations also has hurt, he said.

“The real key is local involvement when we get into this time of year--all the food drives,” Mangis said. “We’re below where we have been. We’re presently struggling to meet the requests from our agencies.”

The countywide food squeeze has rippled down to pinch smaller outlets such as St. John’s Community Outreach, which feeds Oxnard’s needy La Colonia neighborhood.

The St. John’s food pantry gathered just enough food from Food Share and other donors to put together 150 Thanksgiving food baskets for poor families in the last week, said its operator, Sister Carmen Rodriguez.

But the Outreach pantry will have to refill its shelves for the coming months--and for Christmas meals--from Food Share’s already strapped larder, she said.

“I keep thinking, ‘God will provide, God will provide,’ ” Sister Carmen said. “But I still worry. It hasn’t been as full this year as it has in the past couple years.”

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In Ventura, Project Understanding has been giving out only 10% of the surplus USDA food that it used to distribute, said Jeanine Faria, who runs the homeless aid agency’s food pantry. That puts more of a demand on individual donors to help, she said. “And right now, people aren’t rushing to give any food. You know what I mean?”

By the time Thanksgiving rolled around last year, five volunteer groups had held food drives or promised to hold them for Project Understanding’s holiday needs, she said.

As of last week, Faria said, none had volunteered.

“We’ve got 6,000 people on our database that have received food here over the last 2 1/2 years,” Faria said. “With that kind of demand--in terms of maintenance we’re fine. But in terms of long-term assistance, we’re not.”

Even the tiny Help of Ojai food pantry has been hit by high demand and low supplies that threaten to last well past Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Usually, one or two families come seeking help each week.

Last week, Help of Ojai fed seven families in one day, said its operator, Marlene Spencer.

“Right now, if the demand gets any worse for our present-day needs,” Spencer said, “we’re not going to have anything left.”

Laid off, struggling to pay unseasonably high heating bills and unable to stretch their food stamps any further, more poor people are turning to the Ojai pantry for help, she said.

“Or, they’re just putting everything into paying the rent, and there’s nothing left over,” Spencer said. “They’re setting priorities as far as keeping a roof over their head. You hate to think of it, but you could always hit a dumpster if you have to.”

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Yet so far this holiday season, one Ventura County food pantry seems to be faring better than most: Manna, in Thousand Oaks.

“The donations are starting to come in right now, and it looks fantastic,” said Pauline Satterbo, executive director of Manna.

With a recent truckload of fresh produce--onions, potatoes and such--and 81 turkeys donated by the Rotary Club, the pantry was well stocked for Thanksgiving, she said.

“We just pray that the holidays will bring in the rush of donations, and so far--boy--they just keep on doing it,” she said. “It keeps coming in.”

But all the food bank operators agreed: Once the holidays end and donations fall off, thousands of Ventura County residents will still be hungry.

Food Share is running a five-year fund-raising drive called Hunger 2000 in hopes of reaping $1 million in donations to pay for a $500,000 warehouse expansion and create an endowment to buy more food in the future, Mangis said.

“We see the county really needs a strong food bank, and we can’t rely on outside sources to maintain that food bank,” he said. “We can’t rely on (USDA food) anymore. We have to rely on ourselves, so to speak.”

FYI

Donations of food or money for Food Share can be dropped off at its Oxnard headquarters between 8 a.m. and 2 p.m., Monday through Friday, at 4156 N. Southbank Road.