InFocus featuring Andrew Morehouse (Food Bank of WMA)

From the 22 News Plus Studio, this is 22 News In Focus with Patrick Barry. Hello everyone, and welcome to this edition of In Focus. I'm your host, Patrick Barry. It's 2026, and sadly, the need for food and support in our local communities here in Western Mass, across the state, across the nation, is not getting any better. It's actually getting worse. I'm excited today to have this conversation because sitting across the desk from me is Andrew Morehouse, the Executive Director of the Food Bank of Western Mass, and Andrew's here to give us an update as to, really, the need. And Andrew, I cannot believe those words came out of my mouth, that it's worse today than it has ever been. I honestly thought, when you and I last talked, that COVID was the big hit. I thought, when we last talked, that you were gonna give me some information on, all right, COVID's behind us, we're kinda coming out of this, people are getting the food and resources they need, but that's not the case, and COVID's now been gone for almost five years. Yeah, well, first, thank you for having me this morning. I can't say it's a pleasure to be here, but it's a very sobering topic, but it's one that, in the work that we do at the food bank, we live day in and day out, and of course, the people who face food insecurity, going hungry, experiencing hunger for extended periods of time is more than sobering. It's struggle of life. Are there specific triggers that are causing this? Yeah. Is it high unemployment? Is it people just unable to manage their finances? What are some of the triggers? Sure, well, it's what we're all observing, if not experiencing ourselves, it's the high cost of living. That's what spiked after COVID, with lots of things that had to do with the economy, including inflation. Inflation's come down, but the cost of living continues to go up, and incomes and income supports are not matching the increased cost of living. So, whether it's the cost of food that people see when they go to the supermarket, or the high cost of living, rental prices, home ownership prices. I mean, just this past winter, the cost to heat our homes was ridiculous. Yeah, well, and fortunately, we're out of the heating season now, but fuel prices are going up for everything, from gasoline to heating fuel to diesel, and that's all going to impact the cost of everything even more. So, we haven't seen the worst of it yet because of this. There's a lot of uncertainty in the economy, and we know that 300,000 people are losing healthcare benefits due to federal budget cuts. So, give me an overview of what does the Food Bank of Western Mass do on a day-to-day, month-to-month, year-to-year basis? I appreciate that question, because there's often confusion. The Food Bank of Western Massachusetts sits right here in Chicopee, Massachusetts, and we are a large warehouse, and we receive very large quantities of food, half of which come from the federal and state governments, funding thereof, and the other half comes from the food industry, every supermarket you can think of, and local farmers. We store it in our warehouse, and then we provide it to 200 food pantries, meal sites, and shelters in local communities across all four counties of Western Massachusetts. So, is it a safe or apt description to say you're sort of the central glue of all the food and money designated to buy food through the Food Bank, and then you go out to those 200 different local resources that could be up in Orange, in Springfield, it could be anywhere. Yeah, it's in almost every town and city in Western Massachusetts, and that's right, yeah, we're referred to as the Clearinghouse, the Hub, we've even been called the Mothership by some folks. Who cares what they call you, as long as you're putting food on people's table, right? Yeah, and in fact, because of that, we're providing the equivalent of 1.2 million meals every month to 121,000 people across all four counties, urban cities, suburban communities, and rural communities up in the hill towns and as far as Berkshire County. 121,000 meals, no, excuse me, 1,000 people. 121,000 people every month. Every single month. That's right. So, let's go back in time, so this is 2026, 2016, what were those numbers? I couldn't tell you back then because we didn't, well, we knew it was about 100,000 people, and it's gone up significantly since then, but before 2016, meaning before the Great Recession of 2008 to 2011, it was far lower than that. It was in the 80,000s, 70,000s, so it's gone up with spikes, with every passing hit to our economy, recessions, COVID, and now just generally the high cost of living, and we're concerned about what's going to come. There's so much economic uncertainty right now, we don't know what's gonna happen. Do you find that more and more people are, and this is the wrong word, but comfortable in asking for help now than maybe they were a year, five, 10 years, 20 years ago? That's a really great question because- The stigma, I guess. There's always been a lot of stigma and shame associated with it. We're trying to debunk that myth that people should feel stigmatized and shameful because they need to seek food assistance, and we view it as a help, not help out or hand out, but a hand up because no one wants to go hungry. I haven't met anybody who chooses to be poor, chooses to go hungry. Everybody has the same kind of hopes and dreams. They wanna be able to provide for their family, put a roof over their head, put food on the table, and unfortunately, society continues in many situations, in many arenas, many people choose to blame people who need a hand up because of the ostensibly poor choices they make and then, therefore, the circumstances they live in, and we like to say that people don't choose to go hungry. People don't choose to be poor. They face barriers that they sometimes can't overcome, and it includes the cost of living, and it includes access to reliable transportation, affordable housing, childcare so that folks can go to work, medical expenses, keeping car on the road so you can get to work because you can't rely on public transportation to get to work and back and drop your kids off and so on and so forth, so this is the reality that people face, and people who wanna learn more about it, you go to our website and read some of the community stories, and I'd like to just share one if I may, and they're all recorded on our website so you can actually hear the individuals telling their own story, but here's a paraphrase of one. A young father with two children with another on the way who lost stable job due to a company layoff, and despite working long hours across multiple low-wage part-time jobs, he and his family weren't able to keep their apartment, so things like the food bank and SNAP have helped them get through really, really hard times, and there's tons of stories like that, and you can read about them and listen to them if you go to our website. Fantastic. We are up on our first commercial break. Plenty more to talk about when it comes to the Food Bank of Western Massachusetts. We're back in just a moment. This is 22 News In Focus with Patrick Barry. Welcome back, everyone, to this edition of In Focus. I'm your host, Patrick Barry, sitting here across the desk from me from the Food Bank of Western Massachusetts is their executive director, Andrew Morehouse. Andrew, thank you for joining me. This is a very tough conversation, but this is one that we need to have, and we need to have it regularly so that you viewers and other members of our community recognize the dire need for food in our community. 121,000 people every month look to their local food distribution source, a nonprofit food distribution source that you end up providing for food every single month. 121,000 people right here in the Pioneer Valley. That's not across the state or New England. That's right here up and down the valley. But what's interesting is, and it's not just one. I think of the Westfield Food Pantry because I live in Westfield. There's probably 10 in Westfield. There's probably 20 in Chicopee. Everybody thinks of you guys as being the one, but you service all those other little neighborhood organizations. Tell me a little bit more about that relationship and how it works. Yeah, sure. Again, there are 200 member food pantries, meal sites, and shelters across all four counties that go through a very rigorous application process to become a member. We inspect them once every two years because we want to uphold food safety, and we support them by providing capacity grants so that they can purchase coolers and freezers and other kinds of infrastructure or other kinds of things so that they're able to receive and distribute more food from the food bank, including perishable foods. Over half the food that we provide to pantries and meal sites and also directly to individuals seeking food assistance is perishable food. So you need ways to store that. That's right. For immediate distribution. Exactly. So we're talking about frozen meats that are provided to us, that we buy, and that are donated to us by supermarkets, namely Big Y and Stop and Shop. Every week or month, and we're able to save that from going into a dumpster because it's frozen at the sell-by date and we can distribute it. Also fresh produce from local farmers and dairy as well, and dry goods as well from supermarkets and the like. And of course, the food that we get from the federal and state governments. I wanted to ask you about our local farmers because the Pioneer Valley is pretty well known globally for great soil, great fertile land. And there are so many wonderful local family farms in our area. So you utilize those family farms up and down the valley too? Absolutely. We invest funding we get from the Massachusetts Department of Agriculture through something they call the Mass Grown Program. And we use our own private dollars as well that are donated to purchase food from local farmers over a dozen. Local farmers provide the equivalent of almost a half a million pounds worth of food every year during the growing season. Others donate about 300,000 pounds. So we're getting over a million pounds of food from local farmers. And cumulatively, we're providing about 4 million pounds of fresh vegetables from all sources over the course of the year. How is the Food Bank of Western Mass funded? Is it all fundraising? Do you get federal, state, local grant money? How are you guys funded so that you're, I mean, you have an enormous facility, which it all comes with the cost of refrigerators and then the trucks or whatever it might be to distribute. How are you funded? Yeah, that's a great question. Honestly, about two thirds of the funding we receive comes from private individuals and businesses. We rely heavily on support from the community and that's a great way to get involved. And then the remainder of our operating budget is paid for through grants that we receive from private foundations and public grants that we receive from the federal government and the state government. And then of course, on top of that, that's a $10 million operating budget for about 82 staff, full-time and part-time staff. We have the value of the food that we receive that's either, again, paid for or donated from the private food industry. And that's the equivalent of another $25 million of value of food. One of the things that I have heard, and please correct this story if I'm wrong, is it's better to donate money versus food. And the reason I've heard that is because, it's always wonderful between November 1st and January 1st, it's the season of giving, yadda, yadda, yadda. All these stores, you put bins out, drop off your cans or whatever. And that's wonderful, don't get me wrong. But the buying power of cash is significant. You can get much more, I'm just gonna use an example. A can of corn is $2, all right? And I put that in the bin to donate. But if I gave you $2, you could buy four cans of corn. Yeah, it's complicated. And the easiest way to tell the story is the food bank, thanks to support from so many donors during our capital campaign, we built a new warehouse. And so we have the capacity between our warehouse, our trucks, and our staff to receive vast quantities of donated food. So we can leverage that donated food while we can leverage, excuse me, our infrastructure, our staff, our truck fleet to leverage large quantities of donated food. So when individuals support the food bank, a dollar donated enables us to leverage the equivalent of three meals because so much of it is donated. And that's because of our capacity. Okay, and that's all part of the move to Chicopee a few years ago. Exactly, exactly. And so if individuals want to donate food, that's great. We encourage them to donate directly to a food pantry or meal site in their community. But the food bank deals with much larger quantities of food and the way we're able to work that magic is because of the capacity we have to attract and leverage donated food from the food industry, including farmers and beyond. Very good. We are up on our second commercial break. Stay with us. Plenty more to talk about when we come back. This is 22 News In Focus with Patrick Berry. Welcome back, everyone, to this discussion on today's In Focus. We're here in the 22 News Plus studios. Joining me across the desk, the executive director of the Food Bank of Western Massachusetts is Andrew Morehouse. Andrew, thank you so very much for joining me. You've given me a ton of information and stories about the need for food, which is just, it's so heartbreaking. How do you do it every day? You know, that has to be a difficult job for you and your staff because you're faced with these people who are just trying to make ends meet. Nobody, you have to eat every single day. Yeah, well, I'd say, you know, first everyone at the Food Bank is committed to the mission of the Food Bank to build lasting food security by providing nutritious food and partnering with communities to end hunger. We believe together we can end hunger. We believe that access to food is a right. And we believe that everyone who seeks food assistance should be able to do so in a convenient and dignified manner. So we come to work ready to do our part. And we invite everyone in the community to help support our mission. And, you know, we believe that our team is our greatest asset. So we're quite fortunate. I don't know if you can answer this question or not. Maybe you can. So if someone is hungry, if somebody needs food and they go to one of those 200 partners that you work with, do they just walk in and say, I'm hungry, I need something? Or do they need, you know, an EBT card, a snap card, whatever those things are, or you just walk? You walk in and you say, I need help. And, you know, some pantries, depending on the type of food that they're receiving, if it's from the federal government, there are certain eligibility requirements, but essentially you can sign off on that pretty quickly. But even in that case, if they don't get the federally funded food, they can walk in the door and get a bag of groceries and go home and they will be treated with respect and dignity. All confidentiality. Yep, totally confidential. And it's important because we are determined to make sure that everyone who needs food gets food when and where they need it. We're providing the equivalent of about 16 million meals every year to those 121,000 individuals every month. But our impact pales in comparison to the Federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, commonly referred to now as SNAP. For every meal that we provide, the SNAP program provides seven meals in Western Massachusetts. It's a fully 100% federally funded program, although that's going to change. Last year, Congress made changes to the SNAP program beginning this November. States will have to pick up an additional 25% of the cost for a total of 75% of the cost to administer the program. States used to only have to pay half the cost. That's going to be a hit on the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. And a year from now, in November, 2027, Massachusetts may have to start paying for some of the benefits of this federally funded program as well because of what's called an error rate. And that's not waste, fraud and abuse. It's because the State Department of Transitional Assistance, which administers the program, doesn't have enough staff to accurately vet applications and even answer calls. Right now, three quarters of all calls going to the Department of Transitional Assistance are going unanswered. So people are losing their benefits or not able to apply for benefits. And that's going to hurt hundreds of thousands of individuals who need food assistance and are not getting it through the federal SNAP program. And it's going to impact our economy because we are leaving federal SNAP dollars on the table that could otherwise flow to Massachusetts to feed people and bolster our local economy. Businesses that rely on income, largely SNAP benefits to hire employees and buy food from local vendors, including local farmers. So it's a snowball effect. It's a snowball effect. You'll cut money here, but then what people probably aren't realizing is to your point, the businesses that rely on that to stay in business, to provide food, they may be closing, which then means there'll be fewer places to get food. It's the most effective federal stimulus policy that exists. And it's designed to work when people need the food assistance. And when they get a job and their incomes go up and they're no longer income eligible, they don't need it anymore. But often there are many working families who receive SNAP benefits because they're eligible for it. And then their income goes up and then it's just over the income eligibility level. And they're no longer eligible for SNAP benefits. And so they have to rely on a local food pantry or meal site to get them through until their paycheck, the next paycheck, and they can afford to put food on the table. So it's complicated. And in fact, 85% of people who receive SNAP benefits who have a child or an elder are actually working, even if it's part-time. It's when their income gets to be too high that they no longer need those benefits, therefore they're no longer eligible. So it's designed to help people when they need it. Yeah, I applaud the efforts and I love the food drives. You know, like I said, during the thankful season of November through the end of December. I don't know about you, everybody eats every single day. So come March and June and August and September, back to school when families need to feed kids. Hunger, it's a 365 day, 24 seven battle that we face. So I'm appreciative to have this conversation. So hopefully our viewers will recognize that it's not just the holidays. That's right. And half the people who receive SNAP benefits are children and elders who can't work. And shouldn't be forced into position to decide between going hungry in the classroom or having food or having food over the weekend when they're not able to receive a school meal during the school week. Fortunately, we do and it's fully paid for now or an elder who has to choose between medicine or food. So there are things that everyone can do. And we invite people to go to our website, foodbankwma.org to learn about how you can get involved. You can, of course, support us financially. You can read our website to educate yourself. You can volunteer at the food bank in Chicopee or at our farm, the food bank farm up in Hadley, Massachusetts, or you can help us advocate for change. And right now we're asking people to call their legislators which you can also do through our website. Very easy, enter your zip code and you can send an email. We're encouraging people to advocate for the state of Massachusetts to invest more money in ministering the SNAP program in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts so that we can get some of the federal funds that are sitting on the federal table when they should be feeding people here in Massachusetts. Fantastic. Andrew, thank you so very much for joining me today. Such an important conversation that we need to keep having. So I appreciate you coming in and giving me some of your time. Thank you, Patrick, for letting me share the story. Absolutely. This is 22 News In Focus with Patrick Berry.