"Gas prices are so high, I can't get food," the veteran of the Vietnam and Gulf wars said last week as he lined up outside Hildegarde's Pantry in downtown Salt Lake for emergency food help. "That's why I'm here today."
Many Utahns have seen skyrocketing prices for gasoline and food staples make a dent in their wallets.
"I went grocery shopping yesterday. Are you kidding? It killed me," said Cynthia Millar, a Murray mother of five who budgets about $650 for food each month. "I spent $750 yesterday — and I didn't buy any meat. That's for the month."
Some people are altering budgets and habits to make ends meet. But it appears more and more Utahns have no place else to cut.
The Utah Food Bank's 2-1-1 hotline this year has taken double the calls for food assistance than it did in the first quarter of 2007. Crossroads Urban Center served 44 percent more families last month than it did the same time a year ago. For Hildegarde's Pantry, a ministry of St. Mark's Episcopal Church, that number increased nearly 50 percent.
Utahns also spent a record $13 million in food stamps in March.
Wasatch Front food prices jumped 3 percent between February and March. But this is no locals-only problem. Globally, food prices have risen 57 percent in the past year, driven by huge increases in staples such as corn, wheat and rice. The prices of cereals are up 88 percent, those of dairy products have increased 48 percent, and costs of oils and fats have risen 107 percent, according to the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations.
Reasons for the price hikes are interrelated and complex in our global food market. They include increased demand, especially from developing countries such as China and India, where a growing middle class can now afford to drive and put more food on the table — particularly meat. At the same time, food supplies are down because of drought in Australia, one of the world's largest wheat producers. And the skyrocketing price of oil, fueled by a declining dollar, have raised commodity prices.
"The total impact of these rising food prices is much bigger than people realize, especially when it's in combination with the cost of every other basic necessity going up," said Bill Tibbitts, Crossroads Urban Center's anti-hunger advocacy project coordinator.
How did we get here?
Oil futures last week reached a record $117 a barrel. That means the price of getting food from farms to grocers and to our dinner tables is going through the roof. Diesel-fuel prices have risen 40 percent in the past year to nearly $4.17 a gallon nationally.
"Guys who ship cattle from here to slaughter out of state are spending $700 to $800 for freight, where they used to pay $200 to $300," said Seth Winterton, deputy marketing director of Utah's Own, part of the Department of Agriculture and Food.
While a handful of grocers contacted for this story declined to discuss the affect of commodity prices, big-box stores are seeking more locally grown produce, Winterton said. "They realize that freight is killing them."
The rising transportation costs also are giving Utah farmers some incentive to ship out of state. It's cheaper for Monticello's organic wheat farmers in southern Utah to haul crops to Colorado mills than to Utah mills up north, for instance, Winterton said.
These transportation patterns have consequences.
"We can't even produce enough food in our state to feed our state population. We're kind of food-dependent," Winterton said. "Our peach growers ship to Arizona, and we import from California. It seems ridiculous to me."
At the same time, oil costs have driven an increasing focus on alternative fuels such as ethanol, and the demand for ethanol has led many U.S. farmers to grow crops for fuel rather than food. Congress, pressured to ease America's dependence on foreign oil, late last year passed automobile fuel-efficiency requirements and called for a six-fold increase in the nation's ethanol production — to 36 billion gallons — by 2022.
Last year, the United States produced a record corn harvest, according to the International Food Policy Research Institute in Washington. A third of it went to ethanol production.
Some Utah farmers also are cashing in on ethanol, shipping oilseeds such as safflower and sunflower to Colorado for production.
Corn, used to make ethanol, is in just about everything, from feed for beef and dairy cattle, to breakfast cereal to the high-fructose corn syrup in a Coke.
That's why some in Congress feared the new requirements would affect corn prices and ultimately, food supplies.
They were right.
"Land that would have gone into the production of food to keep food prices low has been shifted to the production of energy," said Bruce Godfrey, professor of economics at Utah State University. "What we're trading is reducing the price we pay for our energy at the expense of increased food prices. We're going to pay for it one way or another."
Millar has long prepared meals from scratch. She doesn't buy soda, fruit snacks, macaroni and cheese or other boxed foods. Now, she's cutting back more.
Your wallet
Millar never thought she'd be so excited to see a coupon.
The Murray mom overspent her $650 shopping budget by $100 this month, and still didn't have any meat. So when a $160 Costco rebate appeared in her mailbox, if felt like "a tender mercy from God, just when I needed it."
Other moms in Millar's Murray neighborhood are feeling the same pinch. Several are cutting into their family food storage, she said.
For Millar, gone are dinner dates at restaurants with her husband, a health-care consultant. She writes on cracker boxes, "do not open until May 1," to ration kids' snacks.
Next, she'll plant a garden to trim costs. "Hopefully, that will help a little bit with some of the fresh produce."
Along the Wasatch Front, the price of green peppers went up 33 percent from February to March, according to the Wells Fargo Consumer Price Index. Banana prices rose 14 percent. Meat, poultry, fish and egg prices went up a half of a percent.
Similar rising prices are being felt around the globe. Increased demand for food and energy has given way to six years' worth of increasing prices, the World Bank in Washington reports.
Global wheat prices have nearly tripled over the past three years, and overall food prices increased 83 percent. Some nations are reaching the breaking point.
The World Bank says 33 impoverished nations may face social unrest because of the rising food prices. People in Egypt this spring have rioted over the costs and low wages. In Haiti, people are eating dirt to alleviate hunger pains.
The World Bank has called on other nations to help. President Bush last week released $200 million in food aid, the White House said, not only to help other nations, but to address the impact of rising food and fuel prices on our own country's emergency food programs.
But economists say more help will be needed to combat the ongoing problems, globally and here in Utah.
Social consequences
By 10:30 a.m. Tuesday, a line has formed outside Hildegarde's Pantry at St. Mark's Episcopal Church.
Denise Ham is first. The West Jordan resident has taken a bus to the downtown pantry monthly for the past couple of years to help stretch her Social Security and disability income. Other times, she goes to a Kearns food pantry.
Another man shows abscessed teeth he can't afford to fix.
"We're in a deep mess right now," says a former car salesman as he moves up the line.
Housing costs are compounding pump and food prices. Rent in Salt Lake City averages $803 a month, up nearly 10 percent over the past year, the research firm RealFacts reported. The rising rent prices come as one in 25 Utah homeowners are projected to be in foreclosure in the next two years, based on the number of subprime loans here, according to a report last week by the Pew Charitable Trusts.
Utah's job growth for March is up 2.1 percent. But the construction industry lost jobs — more than 2,100 in the past year, according to the Utah Department of Workforce Services. Herrera says many of those former workers are coming to her pantry.
Some also may be turning to food stamps, which Utahns Against Hunger says is necessary, because people cannot rely for long on emergency food pantries, which often limit their visits to just a couple of times a month.
Utahns spent a record $13 million worth of food stamps in March, up from $11.7 million in February, Department of Workforce Services spokesman Curt Stewart said.
While more people are using and receiving more federal money than they used to under the program, they also may have spent February allotments in March, leading to the record-breaking number, he said.
Greater need for help
Along with the increased use of food stamps, the number of calls for food assistance has doubled in the past year, the Utah Food Bank reports. In the first quarter of 2007, the food bank's 2-1-1 Information and Referral program, which aims to link people to various services, took 1,011 calls from people seeking food assistance. That number skyrocketed to 2,060 calls this year, Food Bank spokeswoman Jessica Pugh said.
Crossroads fed 1,469 families, and Hildegarde's helped 1,184, in March alone. Salt Lake County's other 24 pantries served thousands of others.
Aid trends are unknown for the Bishops' Storehouse, a regional food pantry service of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to which anti-hunger advocates say many turn in crisis. Church spokesman Scott Trotter said the church considers such information confidential.
Despite the increasing demand, the Food Bank says its donations are up, even though everyone's feeling the pinch. The Scouting For Food drive yielded 600,000 pounds of food, a 20 percent increase from last year, Pugh said.
But Tibbitts wonders if donations can continue to keep pace with need.
Rev. Libby Hunter, deacon at St. Mark's Episcopal Church, said Hildegarde's Pantry has seen a substantial increase in the number of people coming in.
"I think in Utah we tend to believe sometimes we're really different than the United States," she said. "We're protected and sheltered and we're not like them. But we really are."
Looking ahead
Food prices are not likely to come down any time soon, Wells Fargo economist Kelly Matthews said last week.
"We have a particular problem with rising commodity prices," he said. "Combined with the weakness of the dollar... we're not going to rectify easily or quickly."
The International Food Policy Research Institute projects that by 2020, nations' biofuel projects could raise the cost of corn by 26 percent and oilseeds by 18 percent. Prices could be exacerbated if governments take no major steps to deal with climate change, the institute said, citing decreased crop yield in drought-stricken Australia.
Scientists' efforts to develop biofuels using grasses and agricultural waste products could help in the future, if those sources don't compete with land, water, and food for feed, the institute reports.
How world leaders choose to deal with those issues will affect how much Utahns continue to feel the pinch of rising food costs in coming years.
"President Bush needs to stop the wars and put his attention right here," Hildegarde's Pantry supervisor Lydia Herrera said as workers scurried to put food out for the waiting crowd. "We need to focus on the people right now. People are going to die hungry if this continues."
E-mail: jtcook@desnews.com