University of Wisconsin - Extension

Wisconsin's economy, like much of the country, continues to prosper. More people are working and fewer are on welfare because of W-2. But at the same time, many of the state's food pantries report increasing demand for their services.

County UW-Extension family living agents and Food and Nutrition program (FNP) educators wanted to know who is using Wisconsin's food pantries and what the factors are that contribute to people's needs for outside sources of food.

"Here in La Crosse County, people are working and still are not able to pay all the bills," says La Crosse County FNP coordinator Sue Schultz.

"Food insecurity really is an issue in all parts of the state. The economy may be booming, but there are working people who are still skipping meals because they don't make enough to meet their expenses."

Judy Bartfeld, UW-Extension resource management specialist with Cooperative Extension's Family Living Programs and a professor of consumer science at UW-Madison, responded to county interest by developing a food pantry survey last year designed to look at who was using Wisconsin food pantries, what their employment circumstances were, and what types of economic problems and employment barriers they were facing.

The survey was available to all FNP educators and family living agents in the state. Last fall, 27 Extension educators coordinated the survey in their counties, collecting data from nearly 4,000 food pantry users in the state.

"I realized that widespread county interest provided an opportunity to not only gather county data, but to do it in a way that could be pooled across counties to generate a statewide picture," Bartfeld says. "The survey helps 'put a face on hunger' in Wisconsin by helping us understand which families need emergency food assistance and what these families see as their most pressing barriers to economic independence."

Food pantry survey findings

• Close to half of clients (44 percent) have a least one employed person in their household, usually working a very low wages. While most employed clients earn above the minimum wage, only 18 percent earn more than $8 an hour.

• A disability or health problem is by far the most frequently mentioned reason for not having a job or not having a better job. A disability or health problem was cited by 35 percent of working-age clients.

• More than a quarter of working-age clients mention a problem with either the availability of jobs or with their own level of skills, education or experience.

• Food pantries serve a very-low income clientele. Almost a quarter have monthly household incomes below $500, and only 5 percent report incomes over $1,500 per month.

• Despite low incomes, only 17 percent report using food stamps. Food stamp use is higher in nonworking households than working households.

• Almost a quarter of pantry users say someone in their household skipped meals in the past year because there was not enough food. That includes 4 percent of households in which a child skipped meals.

• Single parents report the lowest incomes and highest rate of skipped meals and other hardships.

In La Crosse County, Schultz works on a local Hunger Task Force that has started a food recovery program from wholesalers and a large community garden that brings 40 low-income people together twice a week on summer nights to harvest organic food and distribute it to people in need. She says the survey helps tell the community and partnering agencies the story of food insecurity in that area of the state.

And Lori Bryant, executive director of the WAFER food pantry in La Crosse, says she appreciates the detailed information on clients, as well as the fact that UW-Extension compiled the results, a task her staff wouldn't have time to do on their won.

Those sentiments are echoed in Green Lake County.

"We had seen food pantry use go up, and we were wondering who our clientele were. The survey did a nice job of telling us," says Deb Lyons, Green Lake County economic support unit manager for the Department of Health and Family Services. In our county, 36 percent of pantry users are 65 or older. Many of the older adults prefer to access the food pantry or make do with what they have than apply for food stamps."

Many counties were concerned by the low rate of food stamp receipt among pantry clients. One response to that particular survey finding occurred in Sauk County, where the pantries have responded by including flyers about the food stamp program in food bags.

Shelley Tidemann, UW-Extension family living agent in Green Lake County, says she has shared the food pantry survey with the county's W-2 steering committee, which may be able to think of projects based on needs identified in the survey results.

The survey findings also provide a valuable way to educate the public about food insecurity in individual communities.

UW-Extension conducted surveys of food pantry users at pantry sites across the state to determine what financial challenges they are facing.