Northern Michigan snapshots from the recent pause in SNAP benefits: A pantry manager reported that cars started to line up six hours in advance of the food pantry opening its doors. Another pantry manager reported many new families, all needing access to food, showed up at her small rural church’s food pantry on the same day, emptying shelves so that the kids could eat breakfast before school.
Pantry coordinators throughout the region, trying to meet the spike in demand, searched their usual wholesale outlets for additional food to purchase, but found themselves unable to order basic staples like canned tuna and peanut butter because regional demand was so high.
These are just some of the stories that emerged from the Northwest Food Coalition during the chaos of early November’s pause in SNAP benefits due to the federal government shutdown. The Northwest Food Coalition is a network of over 70 food pantries, meal sites, and baby pantries in a five-county region of northwest Lower Michigan, and members witnessed a surge in people seeking help at coalition sites during the interruption in SNAP benefits.
But at the same time, the coalition also saw an outpouring of community support that established the group’s Immediate Needs Fund, which will be distributed directly to member pantries to quickly and efficiently purchase the food their communities need most during times like these.
According to the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services, 13,602 residents in the five-county region served by the Northwest Food Coalition—Antrim, Benzie, Grand Traverse, Kalkaska, and Leelanau—currently receive $2,214,949 in food assistance each month. More than one-third of those receiving assistance are children. And while SNAP benefits in Michigan have been restored, it’s important to realize that earlier this summer, when the federal administration signed the One Big Beautiful Bill into law, they enacted the largest reduction in food support in our nation’s history.
This legislation will have lasting effects and place undue hardship on young families, elderly adults and disabled people who already struggle to pay for food. Our region’s network of food pantries has been reporting increased need for help, and this increased need is likely to continue.
One way the Northwest Food Coalition supports its members in providing more healthy food to neighbors in need is through its Farm2Neighbor program. Groundwork works in partnership with the coalition and Food Rescue (a program of Goodwill Northern Michigan), to purchase nutritious, healthy food that’s grown locally, and we distribute that food to food-insecure people and families. The purchases invest in our area’s family farms and increase the amount of healthy food available to those who need it. Through our efforts, we’ve been able to purchase over $550,000 of fresh fruits and vegetables, and proteins like ground beef and eggs, from around 30 farms and food producers in our community.
This means our food pantries and meal sites have produce tables overflowing with local produce, even at a time when other forms of federal assistance are cut. This means our area farmers can count on this important market segment to purchase their crops, and they know that the food pantries and meal sites will pay a fair price throughout the year. The Farm2Neighbor program is a vital part of the coalition’s operations, and it is needed now more than ever.