DALLAS (BP) – With food supplies falling as low as 11 percent below last year, church-based feeding programs are finding it more difficult to provide traditional Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners this holiday season.
“We have run from store to store to store to store trying to find (turkeys),” Chris Simmons, senior pastor of Cornerstone Baptist Church in Dallas, said. “It’s just a supply chain issue. … But it’s been a challenge this year.
“We’re even sending word out to some of our partners to help us to purchase turkeys and bring them to us. I think we will meet our quota, but it’s just really going to take an all-hands-on-deck effort to make that happen. Whereas in the past, we’ve been able to just go out and purchase turkeys in bulk. This year because of the supply chain, we might have to get other partners to come alongside us and purchase those items in their own communities to help us out.”
Cornerstone will serve a holiday meal this weekend and on Thanksgiving Day, reaching about 1,500 people on Thanksgiving alone, Simmons said. The weekend preceding Thanksgiving, Cornerstone will give away 300-400 food baskets in partnership with other churches and community groups.Whole turkeys had only a 38.9 percent stock availability Oct. 31, market research firm IRI reported Nov. 9. On average, global supply chain disruptions cut food and household supplies by 4 percent to 11 percent through last month, compared to the same time last year, IRI said.
“We use a lot of turkeys this time of year. If we can’t get them, one alternative is to do ham or chicken, or something like that,” he said. Prices “have gone up tremendously. From our perspective, we just have to pay the price to bring the traditional turkey dinner to our homeless community, our families in need.”
An 8- to 16-pound turkey costs nearly 25 percent more than a year ago, Wells Fargo reported.
The supply chain crisis and inflated prices are impacting states differently, with IRI reporting Texas, Nebraska and Kansas among the hardest hit. In Florida, Michigan and Pennsylvania, supplies are more plentiful than the national average, exceeding it by 7 to 9 percentage points.
But some Florida churches are experiencing difficulties in securing adequate supplies for holiday meal programs, said Jeffery Singletary, Florida Baptist Convention central region catalyst, pointing out at least two churches that have requested help. Singletary will secure some of the needed supplies through a partnership with the One More Child (formerly Florida Baptist Children’s Home) food bank and provide dollars to purchase additional supplies if needed.
“They were citing costs to me,” he said of churches, “because at some level they want me to help.” Churches cited higher prices for such items as turkeys, chickens, rice, potatoes and cooking oil.“It’s costing us more to get less,” Singletary said. “We were looking at some of the prices last week, and they almost doubled. Some items have doubled. Some items have tripled, in terms of their cost. It’s supply and demand. The supply is down, the demand is up.
Jerry Haag, president/CEO of One More Child, said the organization, which serves children around the world, has worked with partnering grocers to meet the demand.
“We have all been facing challenges that have made it more difficult to provide essential food to a growing number of children and families in crisis who are hungry and need our support. Thankfully we have been able to pivot and find new ways to get food into the hands of hungry children and struggling families through our partnerships with companies like Publix and Kroger,” Haag said. “We have the processes and structure in place to remain nimble, and we thank God that we are still on track this year to provide more than 20 million meals in spite of the challenges we face. We are constantly establishing new partnerships and evaluating solutions to serve one more child.”
