Why Should Delaware Care?
More than 120,000 people in Delaware are estimated to face food insecurity, and food prices continue to rise due to various factors like war and climate change. While the state government works to address the issue through the Delaware Grocery Initiative, Delawareans are taking it upon themselves to counteract the rising burden.
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This story came from questions from the public during a Spotlight Delaware appearance at The Mill Summit in July.
For many Delawareans these days, concern has risen along with record-breaking food prices that are strapping family budgets with little relief in sight.
Brenda Puller said she goes to multiple stores — including ShopRite, Adams Four Great Valu, Save A Lot and the Dollar Store — to find affordable groceries.
“You really have to watch what you buy,” Puller said. “Pricing is the big thing. I get two [boxes] for the same thing, I’m looking at the price and it’s $6.79 for one, and there’s two for almost the same price as one. So I’d rather get two than one.”
Other shoppers told Spotlight Delaware that only a few years ago they could pay for groceries with $50, and now that amount might only be one-tenth of what is needed today.
Those price increases are not limited to brand names in the grocery store aisle, but increasingly in staples like meats, eggs, bread and fresh vegetables, among other food items. Delaware is not unique, with the reality of inflated grocery prices affecting millions of Americans. The country’s urban consumers spent roughly $305.91 on groceries in August, compared to $240.94 in August 2019 – a 27% increase.
The average cost of a gallon of milk in a U.S. city is $4.04 as of last month, higher than any point in the last 30 years aside from earlier this year when it touched a record $4.20. It’s the same story for a loaf of bread ($1.95), a pound of ground beef ($5.57) and a dozen eggs ($3.20) – all of which are substantially higher than five years ago.
Global impacts hit locally
Although food prices in local grocery stores are hitting families in Delaware, the reason for those spikes are global according to Allison Karpyn, an associate professor at the University of Delaware and the co-director of the Center of Research in Education and Social Policy who studies food policy and community nutrition.
Ukraine is often called “the breadbasket of the world” because of its outsized agricultural exports, and the ongoing war there has led to an increase in the prices of certain items, she said.
Agricultural products are among Ukraine’s most important exports, accounting for 41% of the country’s total exports in 2021. Their top exports include corn, seed oils and wheat, among others.
Karpyn also pointed toward climate change as another reason for the price increases. Studies show that heat affects the prices of food, with rising temperatures predicted to drive price inflation between 0.9% and 3.2% a year through 2035.
“Given the global disruption to the situation in Ukraine, we just have seen increases in prices for certain items,” Karpyn said. “We also see changes in the environment that have really made production of certain items much harder, and so costs go up.”
The United States also faced a resin shortage until 2022 which affected the food industry as the material is a key part of a variety of food and drink packaging, like ketchup and mustard squeeze bottles.
“There’s a lot of factors that go into that increase in food prices, packaging is another one,” Karpyn said. “When we really saw a lot of shortages in the country around things like plastics. You wouldn’t think that that had anything to do with food, but if you can’t package your food that typically is in plastic, and now you have to pay more for [the plastic packaging], then the unit price goes up too.”
Price gouging may play a part
Zakaiya Deshields started budgeting for her grocery shopping for the first time, despite not having to in years past. She explained that it’s harder to get groceries now because there is no parity in the marketplace.
“It really depends on different stores, because everybody has different prices. And you wouldn’t really know until you look,” Deshields said.
Vice President Kamala Harris recently called on Congress to pass a federal ban on price gouging as part of her economic plan to lower grocery prices. If passed, it would be the first-ever federal ban on price gouging in the food and grocery sectors.
Multiple court cases are looking at price gouging, with the most recent being the Federal Trade Commission’s court case against Kroger’s proposed acquisition of Albertsons. One of the FTC’s central arguments was that Kroger would raise prices after the acquisition. The FTC produced an email from Kroger’s senior director for pricing, Andy Groff, where he acknowledged the company raised the price of eggs and milk “significantly higher than the cost of inflation.”
Although Americans will learn more about price gouging as the cases play out, there’s a gray area between price gouging and offering a product at a premium because of a shopper’s experience, Karpyn added.
“I think where price gouging comes in is really for staple products, things that people really, really rely on, as opposed to offering a more premium product at a more expensive price,” Karpyn said.
Rising food insecurity
Regardless of the reason for rising grocery prices, they are putting a squeeze on all residents, with Delaware getting hit harder than other areas.
Prices in the greater Philadelphia region, including Wilmington, are even higher than the national average, with consumers in the region spending $310.45 on groceries in August, compared to $241.90 in August 2019 before the COVID-19 pandemic.
In Delaware, an estimated 120,130 people are facing hunger this year — with 37,680 of those being children, or about one in six children statewide.
Subsequently, multiple food distribution centers have seen an increase in the amount of food received and the number of people attending while the state government attempts to address the challenge.
During Fiscal Year 2023, the Food Bank of Delaware saw an all-time high of 17.2 million pounds of food distributed, according to Kim Turner, the organization’s vice president of communications.
This past fiscal year, which ended June 30, saw the Food Bank of Delaware distribute 16.3 million pounds of food, or 19.5 million meals, through multiple food distribution programs.
Between the 2019 and 2020 fiscal years, the Food Bank of Delaware saw an increase of more than 5.8 million pounds of food being distributed.
Turner believes that increase is the result of two things: the pandemic and inflation, and the Food Bank of Delaware’s capacity increase. Within the last five years, the organization has nearly tripled its storage capacity across two facilities in the state, now totaling 150,000 square feet.
While the organization saw a decrease in poundage over the last two fiscal years, Turner believes this is from the Food Bank of Delaware reallocating its resources rather than a decrease in need.
As pandemic benefits ended in September 2021, some of the Food Bank of Delaware’s previous funds became unavailable, and individual donors’ ability to contribute was also impacted, Turner said. As a result, the organization ended its weekly food delivery program and shifted to a “monthly box of food to help supplement other services that people might be receiving.”
“We saw a lot of people who were driving very far to go to the mass distributions because they were highly publicized,” Turner said. “But we want to remind people, if you live in Georgetown, you don’t need to drive to Dover because there are community food pantries right in your community.”
Continuous need
Those smaller food pantries around the state have become indelible beacons of support for many, and the demand for their charity has risen too.
When St. Patrick’s Center Executive Director Peter Slattery joined the organization in January 2022, the center served about 50 families per day through its food pantry. As of July, the center now averaged 160 families.
At St. Patrick’s Center in Wilmington, volunteers aid the church in providing free breakfasts on weekdays from 9:00 a.m. until 10:30 a.m. and free groceries on weekdays from 9 a.m. until 1 p.m.
After the federal public health emergency expired on May 11, 2023, many of the Department of Health and Social Services programs changed their benefit program rules and ended some services.
“[Attendance has] just been sort of steadily climbing, and some of the catalysts for that has been when the pandemic-era benefits started falling off, more families started showing up,” Slattery said. “It’s been just continuously growing for the last two years, as more and more people are finding themselves in situations where they need more food.”
Delawareans lead initiatives to address hunger
Before the start of the pandemic, Trish James joined Susi Ayers and a couple of other women from Orchard Church to help serve hot meals in the soup kitchen. From there, James was asked to organize an “eat-in” kitchen so people could have a free, hot meal while collecting toiletries.
Today, the Orchard Kitchen has two chefs and has recently had their restaurant license renewed. Last year they served over 3,000 families, according to Karen Bradley, who has been volunteering at the Orchard Kitchen for five years.
That growth has spurred the development of a drive-thru program that sees those in need begin lining up two hours before distribution begins. The church organization distributes food on the third Saturday of every month, from 9:30 a.m. until 11 a.m. or until supplies run out.
The Orchard Church also recently added a “blessing box” within the past year outside of the church’s main entrance. The box is stocked with things like pop-lid items, boxes of cereal, and boxes of pasta and pasta sauce.
“The beauty of the blessing box is we have folk who come with little wagons, and it’s wonderful to see that maybe they can’t sit in the drive-thru, but we can help them anyway,” James said.
Providing food seven days a week
Over a decade ago, James Parker was invited by his mentor to a church meeting where police and community members were discussing issues like violence and shootings in Wilmington.
When discussing how to solve the problem, Parker said he was “led by the Holy Spirit” and told the others the solution was to bring food out to people.
Toward the end of the night, Parker noticed that the food prepared for the attendees was being thrown away and decided to take some food and bring it to homeless people near the train station and stayed with them until 2 a.m.
Parker soon became involved with the Amazing Grace Ministry in Middletown and drove to different grocery stores to collect food. He asked the stores what they did with the food on the six days he wasn’t there to pick it up, and was told the store was throwing out food – it led him to begin picking up food more often.
“That’s how the food ministry started in our area. I would pick up on the other days and bring it into my community,” Parker said. “Then it got bigger than the community, I would take it around to different churches on Sundays. I was just trying to find ways to give it away, and that’s when we ended up coming to Rose Hill, starting the food ministry.”
Eating at the King’s Table started in October 2011 as a way to serve breakfast, lunch and dinner at Christiana Park, where participants could eat during the holidays. By January 2012, they started giving away food at the Rose Hill Community Center.
Parker retired in 2022 and passed the ministry down to Maureen Tulloch.
The food distribution has a different look than before the pandemic when they distributed food inside the community center. In the years since, Tulloch has kept the food distribution outside. Every day, food is placed outside and individuals can take what they want after the volunteers have set everything up.
The food is typically gone 30 minutes after Tulloch gives participants the go-ahead.
“We just switched it to putting out all the tables where it is now, and then everybody can get out, get their own food, because they’re getting what they want, not what we’re giving them,” Tulloch said. “We always asked them what they wanted when they were in the car. But now it’s more of them literally coming out the cars and seeing what we have.”
Tulloch also said the food distribution is similar to how it was before, but it’s being done on a larger scale because there’s more need.
State seeks to make impact
The state has taken various measures to attempt to address the growing concern for access to food, especially in a climate of rising prices. In June, the legislature passed a pilot program called the Delaware Grocery Initiative.
The initiative, which was signed into law on Aug. 29, aims to:
- Create the Delaware Grocery Initiative to work with independent grocers, food banks, supermarkets and other resources to expand access to healthy foods
- Convert the First State Food System Program into a state-funded program focused on improving healthy food access
- Require the state government to develop a strategy addressing food insecurity in its urban, suburban and rural communities — an effort that will be led by the Delaware Council on Farm & Food Policy.
State Sen. Darius Brown (D-Wilmington) also noted the importance of supporting multi-ethnic grocers in the state as Delaware’s demographics continue to diversify.
“Many times [ethnic grocers] do not have the same access to capital from our financial banking institutions or alternative capital resources,” Brown said. “These grant funds help to provide the capital for infrastructure, for refrigeration, for property acquisition, development of sites for them to stand up their grocery stores in these communities.”
