The demand for help by families trying to keep food on the table is growing in Montgomery County, Maryland, and officials who work to help them are redoubling their efforts to make sure that no food collected in the county’s food recovery efforts goes to waste.
“Over 40% of our residents are potentially at risk for food insecurity,” said Heather Bruskin, the director of Montgomery County’s Office of Food Systems Resilience.
Bruskin explained that means they don’t have consistent, reliable access to nutritious food for their families. In many cases, those affected families are not able to get financial assistance, she said.
“They make too much to earn federal benefits and nutrition assistance, but they don’t make enough to cover their basic cost of living, including food,” Bruskin said.
And things have gotten more challenging as the costs of food increase.
That’s where Manna Food Center comes in.
Craig Rice, CEO of Manna Food Center, said many families that have been to the food bank in the past on a temporary basis and have been self-sufficient for years have come back to get help, a situation he attributes to the escalating food costs.
Manna is currently serving more than 106,000 residents each month.
That bump in requests for help is “coupled with new families who’ve never asked for assistance before,” Rice said. “We’ve heard from some of the families that we serve that are new that are federal government employees that have been laid off.”
Rice told WTOP the recent cuts at the U.S. Department of Agriculture have affected regional food banks, such as the Maryland Food Bank and the Capital Area Food Bank. And while Manna doesn’t receive grants from the USDA, the Capital Area Food Bank, which partners with Manna, does.
“So any hits to the larger organizations are a hit to us and to all of the other smaller nonprofits that are in the food recovery and food assistance space,” he said.
Bruskin said the county’s efforts to recover food from restaurants, retail stores and farms is being redoubled.
Her office heard from 25 food recovery partners who said they need help with transportation, cold storage and coordination, so that food is stored and distributed efficiently. One of the ways that’s being done is the offer of grants. Applications for that effort are open through May 30.
There are also grants in the county’s fiscal 2026 budget.
“We’re not spending more, necessarily. We’re using the resources that we have more strategically and creatively to address a growing problem,” Bruskin said.
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