NANZAN REVIEW OF AMERICAN STUDIES
Volume 45 (2023): 43-55

Responses to the COVID―19 Pandemic
by Food Banks in the United StatesDavid M. POTTER ＊Introduction
Since their establishment in the early 1970s, food banks and food pantries havebecome a fixture of welfare policy in the United States. Scholars attribute their
proliferation to the deepening of neoliberal policies that have favored corporate
and nonprofit philanthropy in social welfare provision and a corresponding
reduction and restructuring of public policies that give the poor limited access topublic sources of assistance―trends found in other developed democracies, but
especially prevalent in the United States. Food banks have developed withinincreasingly sophisticated networks of public and private agencies―the federal
government, food manufacturers, local and state public welfare agencies, NGOs,
churches, private philanthropic foundations, corporations, and regional
associations―that distribute food and other necessities to people facing foodinsecurity.
The onset and spread of the COVID―19 pandemic since 2020 affected foodbanks and their operations. Early academic research,1 as well as research fromfood banks themselves, points to two contradictory effects. First, supply anddistribution operations were interrupted by the pandemic, and new methods ofdelivery to clients had to be devised in order to reduce the risk of infection,
resulting in a reduction in distribution capacity. Second, lockdowns andquarantines disrupted the economy, which led to higher unemployment andincreased food insecurity among vulnerable populations. This resulted inincreased demand for food bank services.
This article investigates how networks related to food banks were affected by＊David Potter is Professor in the Faculty of Policy Studies, Nanzan University, Head of the
Graduate School of Social Science, and Director of the Nanzan University Center for American
Studies. Earlier versions of this research were presented as a research note in Academia: Social
Sciences (25) and as a public lecture hosted by the Center for American Studies. The author is
grateful for a 2022 Pache 1―A―1 research grant to conduct the fieldwork for this research and a2023 Pache 1―A―2 grant to support the completion of this article.
1. Annamarie Farmer, “A Growing Crisis with Food Banks,” Celebrating Writers andWriting in our Communities 3, no. 24 (2020): 64―70; Anne T. Byrne and David R. Just,“Impacts of COVID―19 on Food Banks,” Choices 37, no. 1 (2022): 1―7.
43

the pandemic and how food banks and their partners changed supply and delivery
operations. In both cases the author is concerned as to whether these effects were
temporary or long-term. The primary research question seeks structural changes
in these networks that might have been caused by the pandemic, and the second
question seeks tactical innovations at the final delivery stage.
I: Literature Review
A robust academic literature on food banks and their evolution exists.
Prendergast2 examines the economics of market mechanisms for food distribution
through food banks. Another line of research traces the development of the foodbank movement from addressing issues of the disposal of food surplus tocommunity development based on food justice and food sovereignty.3 A third lineof research traces the development of food banks in developed countries in thecontext of the neoliberal restructuring of social welfare policies toward corporate
and nonprofit charities.4 This literature takes a critical stance on the subject,seeing the development of food banks as legitimating corporate and state policies
that lead to food insecurity among poor people.5 These research approaches,
however, focus on the operation of food bank-related networks in normal times.
The author identified four studies that examined food banks in the context of
the COVID―19 pandemic. Two used indirect means to measure the pandemic’s
impact: Byrne and Just (2022) conducted a telephone survey to ask food banks
about demand, safety, and staff, and conducted an online survey that tracked
unemployment and food bank use.6 Lee, Zhang, and Nagya (2021) tracked
donations to food banks during the pandemic.7 Farmer (2020) provided an initial
2. Candice Prendergast, “How Food Banks Use Markets to Feed the Poor,” Journal of
Economic Perspectives 31, no. 4 (2017): 145―62.
3. Alison Hope Alkon and Teresa Marie Mares, “Food Sovereignty in US Food
Movements: Radical Visions and Neoliberal Constraints,” Agriculture and Human Values 29(2012): 347 ―59; Dominic Vitiello, Jeane Ann Grisso, K. Leah Whiteside, and Rebecca
Fischman, “From Community Food Surplus to Food Justice: Food Banks and Local
Agriculture in the United States,” Agriculture and Human Values 32 (2015): 419―30.
4. Ugo Gentilini, “Banking on Food: The State of Food Banks in High-income Countries,”
working paper no. 8, 2013, Center for Social Protection; Graham Riches, Food Bank Nations:
Poverty, Corporate Charity and the Right to Food (New York; London: Routledge, 2018).
5. For example, Joshua David Lohnes, “The Food Bank Fix: Hunger, Capitalism andHumanitarian Reason,” PhD dissertation, West Virginia University, 2019; Zsofia MendleyZambo, Dennis Raphael, and Alan Taman, “Take the Money and Run: How Food Banks
Became Complicit with Walmart Canada’s Hunger Producing Employment Policies,” Critical
Public Health (2021): 1―12. Doi: 10.1080/09581596.2021.1955828.
6. Byrne and Just, “Impacts of Covid―19 on Food Banks.”
7. Sunyoung Lee, Yu Yvette Zhang, and Rodolfo Nagya, “Donation to Food Banks Amidst
the COVID―19 Pandemic: Experiment on Impulsive vs. Deliberative Nudges.” Paper presented
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NANZAN REVIEW OF AMERICAN STUDIES 45 / 2023

descriptive account of problems food banks face but did not analyze possible
long-term effects.8 Immel et al. (2021) examined Seattle area food banks’ use of
web and social media technology to communicate information about foodavailability and accessibility in the early phase of the pandemic.9
II: Methodology
None of the research cited above, however, addresses the central theme taken
up here: the durability of nonprofit organizational networks during times of acutesocial and economic upheaval. The research presented here combines archival
research with face-to-face interviews with food bank staff and representatives ofrelated agencies, site observation, and materials collection in California, southern
Michigan, and southern Nevada from mid-August to mid-September, 2022. All
three states experienced high levels of infection and concurrent economic distress.
The California sites represent regions with different economic and demographic
characteristics within the state.
In order to survey a range of organizations, interviews and site observations
were conducted at the Greater Lansing Food Bank in Bath, Michigan; the Three
Square food bank in Las Vegas, Nevada; the Los Angeles Regional Food Bank in
Los Angeles, California; the Food Share food bank in Oxnard, California; theNapa Community Action Agency in Napa, California; the Mother Lode Food
Project in Sonora, California; Sierra Senior Providers in Sonora, California; andthe Jamestown Christian Fellowship in Jamestown, California. These sites
represent large-scale operations (Lansing, Las Vegas, and Los Angeles), mediumsized operations (Oxnard), and small-scale operations (Napa). The interviews inSonora offer perspectives from food bank partner organizations.
Weir and Schirmer identified two “worlds of welfare” in the United States inwhich the characteristics of social welfare nonprofit organizations differ
depending on whether they are in the northeast and Midwest, or the west andsouth. The former tend to have a “civic-public” character while the latter are
based on a mix of religious and private service provision.10 This may well have
implications for understanding the agencies that work with food banks. Similarly,
research has shown that donations to urban food banks are higher than those toat the 2021 Agriculture and Applied Economics Association Annual Meeting, August 1―3,2021.
8. Farmer, “A Growing Crisis.”
9. Audrey Immel, Yona Sipos, Amber Khan, and Nicole Errett, “Getting the Food Out: A
Content Analysis of Seattle Food Banks During the Initial Phase of Covid―19.” Journal of
Agriculture, Food Systems, and Community Development (2021) vol. 10, no. 4: 267―282.
10. Margaret Weir and Jessica Schirmer, “America’s Two Worlds of Welfare: Subnational
Institutions and Social Assistance in Metropolitan America,” Perspectives on Politics, vol. 16,
no. 2 (2018): 380―99.
NANZAN REVIEW OF AMERICAN STUDIES 45 / 2023

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banks in rural areas, and the latter face a variety of logistical obstacles to theiroperations. 11 The distribution of areas is hypothesized as important for thecomposition of food bank networks. A sample of organizations in western andmidwestern states and in urban and rural settings will allow us to test these
conclusions.
III: Food Banks as Intermediary Institutions
Food banks are not stand-alone agencies. In principle, they do not distribute
food directly to clients, although several interviewees stressed that their bank will
not refuse food to first-time walk-in clients but will direct them to affiliated foodpantries nearest the clients’ homes for further service. They do not exclusively
rely on food drives to obtain needed foodstuffs for distribution, but rather theyreceive supplies from a variety of external institutions. They therefore act as
central clearinghouses for complex networks of food-providing and foodconsuming institutions. These networks are composed of “upstream” suppliersand “downstream” consumers.
Suppliers vary depending on the food bank, but the agencies and actors shownin Table 1 are representative. Supply sources include food directly purchased by
the bank, food drives that target individual donors through periodic campaigns,
retail stores such as supermarkets, agricultural producers that supply the banks
directly or allow them to glean a surplus following a harvest, and government
agencies. The most prominent among the latter is the United States Departmentof Agriculture, which distributes surplus food to food banks, among otherorganizations, as a component of federal agricultural price stabilization policy.
Volunteers make up an important set of supply-side actors. While all foodbanks surveyed include professional full-time staff to manage operations,
volunteers are a significant source of manpower for floor operations. Three
Square reported that in 2019 volunteer manpower was equivalent to seventy-threefull-time employees; 12 in 2020, 3,374 volunteers provided Food Share with work
equivalent to that of thirty-eight full-time staff.13 Volunteers were present at twosites visited during the research. Volunteers from a regional bank were sorting
donated items while the author was being given a tour of the Greater Lansing
facility; retired volunteers had just finished a similar task when the author visitedthe Food Share facility.
11. Andrew Youn, Michael Ollinger, and Linda Scott Kantor, “Characteristics of MidAtlantic Food Banks and Food Rescue Organizations,” Food Review 22, no. 1 (1999): 45―51.
12. Interview with Brian Burton, President and Chief Executive Officer, Three Square, Las
Vegas, Nevada, August 12, 2022.
13. Food Share Ventura County, “Annual Impact Report, Fiscal Year 2020―2021,” (Food
Share Ventura County, 2021): 11.

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Table 1: Food Bank Supply Stream
Suppliers

Consumers

USDA

Food pantries

Feeding America

Churches

State food bank associations

Food banks

Shelters

Individual donors

Nonprofits

Corporate donors

Schools

Restaurants

Elderly care services

Supermarkets

Other

Community gardens
Producers
Source: Author compilation

Finally, there are private financial donors. These include area corporations andindividuals. The most prominent among these is Feeding America, the nationalumbrella organization with a membership of some two hundred food banks.
Feeding America makes grants for facilities improvement and food purchase.
Other large-scale grant providers include state food bank councils andphilanthropic organizations.
Food banks distribute to many consumers, including food pantries (often
religious institutions or agencies affiliated with them), shelters or group homes,
school programs (after school programs or school lunch programs), drive-throughoperations (see below), congregate meal sites (for homeless or other needy
clients), and operations such as Meals on Wheels that deliver food and meals toelderly shut-in clients. It should be noted that food banks apply means testing,including income assessment, when determining whether individuals are qualified
to avail themselves of food bank supplies. Food banks and affiliated pantries areunderstood to be supplemental to regular consumption rather than a substitute forit.
The author identified two types of food bank organizations during the research.
One type is the independent food bank, typically chartered as a nonprofit
organization. In Michigan, seven food banks covering different regions of thestate are members of the Food Bank Council of Michigan. Each food bank is
responsible for multiple counties in its region. The Greater Lansing Food Bank
covers the seven counties around the state capital, Lansing (Clare, Clinton, Eaton,
Gratiot, Ingham, Isabella, and Shiawassee counties).14 The Food Bank of Eastern
14. Greater Lansing Food Bank, “About GLFB,” https://greaterlansingfoodbank.org/aboutglfb.

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Michigan covers twenty-two counties.15 A second type of organization, thecommunity action agency, is found alongside independent food banks in
California. Community action agencies are typically combinations of publicprivate partnership that were mandated by the 1964 Economic Opportunity Act.16
As such, they are public agencies rather than private nonprofits. They act not only
as food banks but are also responsible for other social services within theircommunities. While food banks are prominent in that state, community action
agencies operate as food banks in the less populated (and often poorer) parts ofthe state, particularly in counties of Northern California, the Central Valley, andthe foothill and mountain counties of the Sierra Nevada mountain range. 17
California food banks typically serve a particular county: Food Share, forexample, serves Ventura County on the Central Coast. Community action
agencies, on the other hand, tend to serve two or more counties. The Amador
Tuolumne Community Action Agency, for example, serves both foothill counties;
its website also mentions that clients from neighboring counties avail themselvesof its services.
IV: Issues in Food Bank Networks during COVID―19
The COVID―19 pandemic affected food banks in a number of ways. Per theabove discussion of networks, this section discusses the challenges they faced interms of suppliers, consumers, and internal organizational issues. Unlessotherwise noted the following is taken from the interviews conducted during
fieldwork.
1. Suppliers
Food banks faced the following changes in supply networks. First, thecomposition of supplies changed. In particular, donations from individuals andretail establishments (grocery stores and supermarkets) were reduced. The Food
Share respondent stated that individual donations during the pandemic were“nonexistent” and food drives could not be conducted.18 This was especially acutein the early period of the pandemic when consumers hoarded essential items outof fear that they would become unavailable. Grocery stores that had provided
items no longer had the surpluses that food banks had come to rely on. Moreover,
15. Food Bank of Eastern Michigan, http://www.fbem.org/.
16. ATCAA, “Who We Are,” https://www.atcaa.org/history.
17. See California Department of Social Services, “Food Banks,” https://www.cdss.ca.gov/
food-banks.
18. Interview with Jennifer Caldwell, Chief Development Officer, Food Share VenturaCounty, Oxnard, California. August 19, 2022.

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individuals made fewer donations as they faced their own shortages resulting fromlockdowns or loss of employment. Lockdown and social distance constraints also
made it more difficult to collect food items directly from individual donors.
USDA supplies, a mainstay for many food banks, continued, but these areearmarked for school programs or Meals on Wheels-style distribution to elderly
shut-ins and cannot be diverted to programs serving other kinds of clients. Three
Square reported donations of food from area casinos and restaurants just before
they closed for the first lockdown in Nevada.19 The respondents at Greater
Lansing reported being “inundated” with food from restaurants trying to clear
their stock, leading to a short-term peak, but which was offset by a drop in
supplies from store chains.20 This may have been the case in other areas, but such
donations were singular events, however, rather than continuous.
Delays in distribution, sometimes by weeks or months, occurred at a number oflocations as supply chains were interrupted.21 Supply issues varied by location,
however. As noted above, Three Square was able to avail itself of surplus foodfrom casinos and restaurants immediately before lockdown. It experienced
significant delays in receipt of fresh produce, however, because it depends on
supplies from California. The director noted that before the pandemic his staff
could order produce with a one-week lead time; during the early months of thepandemic the time lag stretched to up to two months.22 Access to fresh produce
was less of an issue elsewhere: respondents at the Greater Lansing Food Bank andFood Share noted that they had access to produce from community gardens. Food
Share’s warehouse facility, in fact, is adjacent to the county-sponsored community
garden. In the Ventura County case, moreover, the respondent observed that thebigger issue for local growers was how to dispose of produce that could not bedelivered due to disruptions in distribution.23
One unexpected issue arose at several food banks. Financial donations fromvarious donors increased during 2020 and 2021 but decreased in 2022 asgovernment agencies announced the end of the pandemic. Demand for food,however, remained above pre―2020 levels. The Greater Lansing Food Bank
actually distributed more meals in 2022 than in 2020 (9,173,560 versus

19. Interview with Brian Burton, August 12, 2022.
20. Interview with Michael Steibel, Marketing and Communication Manager, and Kirsten
Breau, Individual and Foundation Giving Specialist, Greater Lansing Food Bank, Bath,Michigan, August 26, 2022.
21. Interview with Brian Burton, August 12; interview with Elizabeth Cervantes, Directorof Agency Relations and Product Acquisitions, Los Angeles Regional Food Bank, Los Angeles,
California (online), August 17, 2022; interview with Jennifer Caldwell, August 19, 2022.
22. Interview with Brian Burton, August 12, 2022.
23. Interview with Jennifer Caldwell, August 19; interview with Michael Steibel, August
26, 2022.

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8,074,000).24 As one respondent put it, the end of the pandemic did not signal theend of hunger in the region served by the bank, even though donors often reachedthat conclusion.25
2. Consumer Issues
The most prominent issue food banks faced during the pandemic wassignificantly increased demand for food from clients who had lost their jobs or
faced reduced working hours. Respondents were nearly universal in replying thatpeople who had not previously used food bank services found themselves doing
so for the first time. Moreover, several interviewees pointed out that while thenumber of clients had decreased since 2021, they had not decreased to pre―2020
levels.
At the same time, food pantries and other partners faced lockdown orders justlike other institutions. A common problem faced by the food banks investigated
was the closure of food pantries, which limited the ability to distribute food toclients. Food Share reported a reduction of 25 percent of its food pantry
partners.26 Three Square reported that its network of 180 agency partners (foodpantries, etc.) was reduced to ten during the initial lockdown in early 2020.27
Distribution to school programs was also affected when schools temporarilyclosed or moved to online teaching. In a twist to this problem, the pastor of achurch/food pantry noted that the community action agency with which his
operation is registered temporarily closed due to state lockdown orders in 2020.28
Four main internal organizational issues emerged from the interviews. The
first was the reduction of volunteer labor due to lockdown and social distanceconsiderations. One respondent noted that many of her bank’s volunteers aresenior citizens,29 a demographic especially vulnerable to early strains of the virus.
This correspondingly placed logistical burdens on the organizations and full-time
professional staff. The second was how to allocate staff tasks. The larger foodbanks (Las Vegas and Los Angeles) moved administrative staff to remote work:
one interviewee was still working remotely at the time of the interview. The CEOof the Las Vegas food bank noted that this created a potential division among thestaff between “carpet and concrete,” in other words administrative staff working
remotely versus warehouse staff who had to remain on-site to receive and
24. Greater Lansing Food Bank, “A Year of Hope: 2020 Impact Report,” 44; Greater
Lansing Food Bank, “About GLFB,” https://greaterlansingfoodbank.org/about-glfb.
25. Interview with Jennifer Caldwell, August 19, 2022.
26. Ibid.
27. Interview with Brian Burton, August 12, 2022.
28. Interview with Robert P. Rice, pastor, Jamestown Christian Fellowship, Jamestown,
California, September 5, 2022.
29. Interview with Elizabeth Cervantes, August 16, 2022.

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distribute foodstuffs, and suggested that the decision to put administrative staff onremote work affected social dynamics within the organization.30 In the smaller
food banks, for example Napa and Oxnard, administrative staff continued to work
on-site throughout.31 As noted above, the pastor of a church operating a foodpantry noted that the local community action agency upon which his pantry waslargely reliant temporarily closed in the early stages of the pandemic. Meanwhile,
he decided to suspend church services for three months while continuing tooperate the food pantry.32 Finally, social distancing requirements posed challenges
for operations supplying food directly through Meals on Wheels to shut-ins andthe elderly or to policies such as that at Food Share that allow food pantry
volunteers to select bakery items directly at the warehouse.
V: Responses
1. Supplier Responses
In addition to regular USDA food provision, the agency enacted theCoronavirus Federal Assistance Program and the Emergency Food Assistance
Program to help alleviate increased demand faced by food banks. Three Squarespecifically noted that without such federal aid “Three Square would not havebeen able to serve the thousands of Southern Nevadans seeking food assistance.”33
California growers found themselves faced with crop surpluses as demand fromstores and schools declined during lockdowns. In response, Food Share partneredwith growers and the Port of Hueneme to ship local agricultural surplus to otherfood banks in the state. In return, it received credit from the California
Association of Food Banks to receive items it needed from other food banks. The
respondent commented that “(W)e are getting pretty good at handling produce.
We can get it out on a dime.”34
In addition to grants, state governments also helped alleviate the gap involunteer labor by dispatching the National Guard to food banks. The Greater
Lansing Food Bank, Food Share, and the Community Action Agency of Napa
reported receiving such manpower during the pandemic.35
Increased food provision by USDA did not cover food need completely. Foodbanks increased direct purchase of food items as private food donations
30. Interview with Brian Burton, August 12, 2022.
31. Interview with Jennifer Caldwell, August 19; interview with Drene Johnson, Executive
Director, Community Action of Napa Valley, Napa, California, September 1, 2022.
32. Interview with Robert Rice, September 5, 2022.
33. Interview with Brian Burton, August 12, 2022.
34. Interview with Jennifer Caldwell, August 19, 2022.
35. Food Share Ventura County, 11; Greater Lansing Food Bank, “A Year of Hope,” 4;interview with Drene Johnson, September 1, 2022.

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diminished, with corresponding budgetary burdens. The respondent at Food
Share, the food bank serving Ventura County on the California central coast,reported that the usual $50,000 direct purchase budget had to be increased to$250,000 to meet shortfalls from reductions in other supply sources. As of 2022
she estimated that direct purchase accounted for about 40 percent of total foodacquisition.36
Likewise, reductions in volunteer numbers resulted in reallocation of staff totasks previously assigned to volunteers. Respondents noted that in 2020 full-time
staff had to undertake tasks such as food sorting and packing. 37 Paid staff
positions also increased. In the case of Los Angeles Regional Food Bank, staff
increased from 135 in 2019 to 147 in 2020, 167 in 2021, and to 184 in 2022.38
Finally, theft emerged as a problem related to increased demand. The pastor of
the Jamestown church/food pantry noted that he had to install a security camera at
his facility to deter thieves.39 The respondent in Napa stated that her facility faced
the problem of “food bank hopping” in which out-of-area people would use drivethrough operations (see below) to collect food that they would then sell. Her
agency had adopted online registration, which more efficiently tracks client
eligibility, as a remedy to the problem.40
2. Responses to Consumer Problems
As noted above, demand for food increased during the pandemic. Los Angeles
Regional Food Bank reported delivering 81,807,593 pounds of food in 2019,
174,680,137 in 2020, and 131,086,763 in 2021. As of July 2022 the bank had
distributed 64,404,074 pounds.41 Note that 2022 mid-year data suggest that evenin that year food delivery for the Los Angeles operation was likely to be higher atyear end than it had been in 2019. Food Share distributed 25,660,496 pounds offood in 2020, of which 9,660,329 pounds (38 percent) was classified as “COVID―
19 response.”42 These numbers are indicative of the situations other banks faced
during the pandemic.
At the same time, food pantries closed, putting food banks in the unaccustomed

36. Interview with Jennifer Caldwell, August 19, 2022.
37. Interview with Michael Steibel and Kirsten Breau, August 26; interview with Drene
Johnson, September 1, 2022.
38. Communication with Elizabeth Cervantes, Los Angeles Regional Food Bank, August20, 2022.
39. Interview with Robert Rice, August 5, 2022.
40. Interview with Drene Johnson, September 1, 2022.
41. Communication with Elizabeth Cervantes, Los Angeles Regional Food Bank, August20, 2022.
42. Food Share Ventura County, “Annual Impact Report,” 12.

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position of having to distribute food directly.43 In addition, food banks faced thenecessity of maintaining social distance while doing so. In some cases, banks
innovated while maintaining their intermediary roles. One respondent noted that
other food banks have partnered with Amazon and DoorDash (a private fooddelivery service). Her bank had not done so because it was thought that it would
be difficult to break relationships with these companies once the emergency was
over.44 School lunch programs and Meals on Wheels service continued. In thelatter case, delivery personnel adopted delivery styles used by Amazon and otherprivate delivery services, dropping off food boxes at doorsteps without directly
meeting clients.45 During the pandemic, agencies adopted online registration tolink clients to food banks or delivery services, a move away from traditional“walk-in” food pantry services. Students using the University of California Los
Angeles food pantry, for example, could download an application that allowed
them to make pickup appointments remotely.
A widespread innovation to meet the problem of providing direct service was
the introduction of drive-through food distribution when access to parking lots orother large spaces was available. All of the food banks researched here adopted
this policy, and it appears to have been a nationwide response. Clients could drive
up to a distribution point and remain in their vehicles while food bank staff orvolunteers placed groceries in the vehicle’s trunk. This eliminated the need for
close face-to-face contact and allowed food banks to take up some of the slackfrom closed food pantries. Three Square was able to use parking lots provided byarea casinos. The respondent noted that in peak periods traffic lines extended up
to four miles (about 6.5 kilometers), but efficient distribution operations kept lines
moving. 46 Several interviewees noted a positive side effect of this kind ofoperation: drive-through seemed to lessen the sense of stigma for using a foodbank felt by clients who were using them for the first time. As one noted, drivethrough pickup meant a client did not have to leave the car, helping the person
retain a sense of privacy and dignity.47 While many of these operations have been
terminated since the end of the emergency period, some food banks continue
reduced drive-through operations to supplement their other distribution efforts.
Conclusion
Referring to the diversity in his industry, the director of the Three Square Food
43. Interview with Brian Burton, August 12, 2022.
44. Interview with Jennifer Caldwell, August 19, 2022.
45. Interview with Thomas Beck, Sierra Senior Providers Meals on Wheels Volunteer,
Sonora, California, August 5, 2022; conversation with a food bank volunteer, August 2, 2023.
46. Interview with Brian Burton, August 12, 2022.
47. Ibid.

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Bank quipped that “if you’ve seen one food bank, you’ve seen one food bank.”48
Food banks covered here range from large-scale metropolitan organizations tolocal agencies in less-populated areas covering three states. Yet in many respects
the problems they faced during the COVID―19 pandemic were the same, and therepertoire of their responses were, in the main, uniform. No doubt this is due tothe nationwide impact of the pandemic and the fact that it presented common
challenges to social services agencies―changes in manpower composition, social
distancing, and increased unemployment leading to heightened demand forservices. Individual food banks innovated depending on local circumstances, but
the responses described above represent a repertoire of policies that can be foundamong the banks researched in all three states. This suggests that Weir andSchirmer’s conclusions about regional differences among food banks and othersocial services agencies may be less relevant in the face of a disruption of themagnitude of the COVID―19 pandemic.
Another reason for a common repertoire of responses may stem from the factthat COVID―19 is not the first time that food banks have dealt with disruption.
When asked about this, the Napa respondent chuckled and commented that her
agency was constantly dealing with some disruption or another. She pointed
specifically to large-scale wildfires in Central California in 2014 that had
displaced large numbers of residents in her area.49 Thus, while the pandemicpresented unique problems of social distancing, for example, it was not unique inbeing an emergency that required food bank responses.
The ability of food banks to respond to the pandemic is no doubt due to thestrength of the networks in which they are embedded. Official agencies provided
timely support, as can be seen in the augmentation of USDA supply programs or
the substitution of National Guard personnel for volunteers during lockdowns.
Drive-through programs require space for vehicles. Offers of area casino parking
lots for Three Square to use attest to the bank’s embeddedness in the community,
as do multiple responses concerning restaurant offers of surplus food on the eve of
lockdown (tax incentives to donate were no doubt also a factor here).
Three Square officially ended its COVID―19 emergency response on July 26,
2022.50 As conditions returned to normal, emergency programs by many foodbanks were suspended or curtailed. For example, drive-through distribution was
replaced by pre-pandemic walk-in service as food pantries reopened, and the
National Guard was replaced by returning volunteers. The pandemic, however,appears to have changed certain food bank policies or at least accelerated them. A
notable example is the move to online registration of clients, which has
efficiencies in terms of data gathering and circulation that go beyond social
48. Ibid.
49. Interview with Drene Johnson, September 1, 2022.
50. Interview with Brian Burton, August 12, 2022.

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distancing issues. A second is the move away from individual food donations andfood drives. The Greater Lansing Food Bank respondents noted that the bank isphasing out food drives; 51 the Mother Lode Food Project, which supports the
Amador Tuolumne County Community Action Agency’s food bank activity, now
encourages cash donations instead of in-kind contributions.52 Food drives andindividual donations are labor-intensive ways of gathering food that requiresorting and packing typically done by volunteers. Such donations also lack
uniformity, and food banks can buy food in bulk much more cheaply and ingreater volume through direct purchase. In terms of cost, therefore, this change
makes sense. Conversely, such donations are staples of community involvementwith food banks that link religious and civic organizations to them.
Finally, the pandemic may have benefited food banks themselves. Increased
demand for food led to the need for an enhanced response, which then led togreater institutional capacity and the infrastructure to go with it. The Greater
Lansing Food Bank completed its new and expanded warehouse facility in BathTownship, Michigan, in 2021. The warehouse includes five bays for simultaneousdelivery and loading of large-size trucks and separate refrigeration systems for
produce and dairy products. 53 Three Square completed a new program fordelivery to elderly clients in September 2020, six months after the onset of theemergency.54 While plans for these had been initiated before the onset of thepandemic, the ability to complete them in the midst of a health crisis requiring
short-term responses to highly fluid circumstances speaks to that institutional
capacity.
Respondents also noted that the leveling impact of Covid raised awarenessabout food banks and opened a debate about the causes of food insecurity.
Preliminary research about public support for related welfare policies stemmingfrom the Covid experience55 suggest that positive experiences with food bank use
might lead to public support for broader public social welfare. This point deservesattention and further research.

51. Interview with Michael Steibel and Kirsten Breau, August 26, 2022.
52. Interview with Ellen Beck, co-founder, Mother Lode Food Project, Sonora, California,
August 5, 2022.
53. Interview with Michael Steibel and Kirsten Breau, August 26, 2022.
54. Interview with Brian Burton, August 12, 2022.
55. David Crabtree and Wesley Wehde, “Examining Policy Feedbacks from Covid―19 on
Social Welfare Support: Developing an Outcome Distance Dimension,” Policy and Politics 51,
no. 4 (2023): 156―79.
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