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About 47 million Americans are food insecure. As federal food cuts take effect, more and more people are turning to food pantries. But the volunteers who run the nation's emergency food network, they're getting older. As Elaine Appleton Grant reports, a hunger crisis is about to come smack up against the country's volunteer shortage.
ELAINE APPLETON GRANT: Phylis Allen spends her days looking for things. She searches for potatoes at Sam's Club, cheap beets and ginger at Walmart. Today she's at Sam's Club, looking for those icons of the current American economy - affordable eggs. Allen finds them high up on the top shelf of a cooler.
PHYLIS ALLEN: That's seven and half dozen. I'll get two cases.
APPLETON GRANT: She has two huge boxes of eggs.
ALLEN: It is $21. It's 2.82 a dozen, which is a good price for eggs.
APPLETON GRANT: Every Monday, Allen shops for the Winterport, Maine, food pantry she's been helping to run for 17 years. She'll bring eggs, potatoes and bread there on Tuesday. Wednesday morning at 9, she and a tight-knit handful of volunteers will open the doors of the small, sunny building to a line of 25 or 30 people. Volunteer Pauline Botting perches on a stool next to a shelf full of pantry items.
PAULINE BOTTING: We have baking powders, baking sodas, salt and pepper, cranberry sauce. If there's anything that they see that they can use, then they get it.
APPLETON GRANT: Nearby, 65-year-old Janette Benitez Ruiz stands at a table covered with local vegetables. She's wearing black splints on both wrists. She has carpal tunnel, but it's not stopping her from helping patrons.
JANETTE BENITEZ RUIZ: Go ahead and grab what you need.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: Thank you.
RUIZ: All right. Good morning, sir. How are you?
APPLETON GRANT: Phylis Allen loves this. She's part inventory manager, part volunteer recruiter, part customer service specialist, part administrator and part cheerleader. But she knows she can't do it forever.
And may I ask how old you are?
ALLEN: Seventy-eight.
APPLETON GRANT: You're 78, and you're running this day-in, day-out huge operation.
ALLEN: I'm not the oldest.
APPLETON GRANT: No. Who's the oldest?
ALLEN: One is 88, and the other one, I think, is 89.
APPLETON GRANT: Volunteers like these keep America's emergency food network running. Losing even one can cripple a small pantry. But younger volunteers are harder to find than affordable eggs. Last year, at Neighbor's Cupboard, an elderly driver left to care for his ailing wife. He held a crucial role, picking up food weekly from Maine's only food bank. Food banks in every state distribute free USDA and other low-cost food to agencies like Neighbor's Cupboard. The pantry needed a new driver badly. Allen joked about it to everyone who would listen.
ALLEN: Any place you go, tell them that I'm looking for a hunk with a truck.
APPLETON GRANT: Volunteerism has declined dramatically over the last 20 years. Plus, demand for food assistance is growing. Things will get worse with cuts to the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP. They're also feeling the squeeze at the Mid Coast Hunger Prevention Program, which operates a food pantry in Brunswick, Maine. Last year, they put more than 650,000 meals on area dinner tables.
HANNAH CHATALBASH: The average age of our volunteers is probably about 75.
APPLETON GRANT: Executive director Hannah Chatalbash worries about how the pantry's 145 volunteers will feed an unprecedented number of visitors.
CHATALBASH: We consider this, like, impending cliff of these current volunteers, who've been very dedicated for the last decade, aging out. We label that as a risk factor for our organization, absolutely.
ALLEN: Yeah. Right now.
(SOUNDBITE OF ITEMS BANGING)
APPLETON GRANT: Back at Neighbor's Cupboard, Phylis Allen did find her a hunk with a truck. He's 67. She was thrilled. But it hardly solved the problems barreling toward them. There are the SNAP cuts, and winter's coming, meaning less food from local farmers and even more demand. Still, she always finds a way to keep things light. It's Tuesday, food delivery day. A white Toyota pickup drives up piled with boxes.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: That's pretty good.
ALLEN: The hunk is here (laughter).
APPLETON GRANT: The volunteers spring carefully into action. They're still managing to feed everyone who shows up, at least for now.
For NPR News, I'm Elaine Appleton Grant in Belfast, Maine. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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