DATE: Friday, November 14, 1997             TAG: 9711140663

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B1   EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA 

SOURCE: BY PAM LOWNEY, CORRESPONDENT 

DATELINE: ELIZABETH CITY                    LENGTH:   56 lines

SHORTAGES STRAP ALBEMARLE FOOD BANK PANTRY FEEDING MORE HOMELESS, FORMER WELFARE RECIPIENTS.

More and more hungry people are asking for Spam, tuna, canned goods, fruit juice and powdered milk as a shortage among food banks nationwide has reached Albemarle Manna and its 15-county service area.

``In the four months I've been here, the agencies we supply have gone from 63 to 79,'' said Executive Director Cindy Wagner. ``I think they'd been existing on community support, but now they're finding they can't meet the demand. They're getting more people and the people are more hungry.''

From 63 agencies in 1996, Albemarle Manna expects to serve 90 by the end of this year, a 30-percent increase, all of it since July.

The food bank distributed 750,000 pounds of food in 1996, and ``we're on track to distribute 836,000 pounds this year,'' a 10-percent increase, Wagner said.

Albemarle Manna is a nonprofit warehouse for northeastern North Carolina agencies that feed the hungry - such as food pantries, shelters, day-care centers and senior centers.

The food bank also operates its own pantry two days a week, giving away sack lunches and emergency food bags with up to three days of supplies. Food shortages forced the pantry to cut its hours from five days to two days in September.

Across the country, providers of free food are trying to meet greater demand with fewer donations. Welfare reform sent more people to food pantries and soup kitchens when they became ineligible for food stamps. Improved food-processing technology reduced the amount of ``waste'' offered to food banks.

``We're pretty much the last resort,'' said Wagner, who fears more people also are doing without other necessities. ``We serve a lot of seniors and lot of people with medical problems who are being forced to make decisions on whether to buy medicine or food.

As people's needs grow, like this winter when they'll have heating bills, more people will be forced into making these decisions.

Health problems affect the demand on Albemarle Manna in other ways, too. Wagner said the food bank has a shortage of canned fruit and juice and 100-percent fruit juice, needed by poor people with diabetes. Uninsured people with AIDS and cancer drain the supply of liquid nutritional supplements such as Ensure.

Wagner also suspects Albemarle Manna's food pantry is feeding more homeless people. She said that would explain why the number of sack lunches it provided in June, July and August nearly doubled to 650 from 340 last summer, while the number of emergency food bags - which contain staples that require additional preparation - rose to just 931 from 905.

She said recent food drives and fund raisers have been helpful, but hunger will remain a complex, long-term problem in a region where one in five people lives in poverty. ``The community's been very supportive and that's really great. The problem with hunger is you can feed somebody today, and tomorrow they're hungry again. Unless there's help for the person in other areas besides food, they're always going to be hungry.''

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