River Bend Foodbank is opening its own food pantry Saturday at SouthPark Mall, Moline, to help the food bank distribute a surplus of food arriving from a federal trade mitigation program.
River Bend CEO Michael Miller said the new location will distribute surplus food received from The Emergency Food Assistance Program, or TEFAP, as well as other food items collected by the Davenport-based foodbank.
"It's not that we have too much food. We still need more food to end hunger in our community," he said. "But we have a whole bunch of the same food at once."
The U.S. Department of Agriculture launched TEFAP in September as part of a trade mitigation package aimed at helping farmers hurt by the trade dispute and new tariffs on farm products. Through it, the administration set aside $500 million to purchase surpluses of foods such as apples, oranges, pork, milk, beans and rice from farmers, he said.
"The staple foods that we typically export, those are made eligible for the program," he said, adding "That food is being distributed to hungry people across the country."
He added that the SouthPark pantry could be temporary while River Bend deals with the trade mitigation surplus situation. "Or if it's helpful to the community, we'll continue it."
Miller stressed it is not meant to compete with the community partners it supplies who operate food pantries across eastern Iowa and western Illinois. "We will continue to distribute food through the area food pantries as we always have."
But the volume of some surplus shipments is taxing storage space and distribution at the food bank and its partners, he said. "Some of our pantries are saying 'Great, send us double (shipments),' but others are saying 'This is more than we can handle.'"
In the case of perishable items, there is a shelf life and the items must be distributed quickly. For example, he said River Bend would normally receive a half-truckload of oranges that its pantries could easily distribute. "But at the beginning of the year, we got three truckloads in the same week. That's more than our pantries can handle."
Part of the issue is in how each state is ordering surplus items. Miller said each state administers its TEFAP and River Bend has seen larger volumes of food coming from Illinois, where the Department of Human Services is responsible for ordering. In Iowa, the Northeast Iowa Foodbank is responsible for ordering on behalf of the state and the volumes have been more manageable, he said.
While the new Moline pantry is open to residents of both Illinois and Iowa, he said Iowa residents are not allowed to receive Illinois TEFAP surplus items. They can be given other food items, but he encouraged them to use an Iowa pantry.
"We'll serve anyone that shows up," he added.
Miller is concerned the community might get the impression the food bank no longer needs its help because of the surplus. "We have a surplus of only certain things," he said.
River Bend's goal is to provide 20.6 million meals by the year 2025. "We're not there yet," he said, adding that in 2018, it provided 15.1 million meals.
"That is only happening because so many people are getting behind his cause," Miller said.
