Food Insecurity Doesn’t Take a Summer Break

How local organizations keep families fed when school’s out

While many people associate food drives and charitable giving with the holidays, food insecurity affects many people year-round or in certain seasons more than others, including during the summer.

The Northwest Food Coalition (NFC) is an agency that helps collect, stock, and assist pantries and meal sites in six northwest Michigan counties. The NFC now includes over 70 food pantries, baby pantries, and meal sites to address those hunger needs.

Many families rely on the school programs that provide free meals to school-aged kids every weekday during the school year, but what happens when school is out for the summer? Quite a few pantries notice an uptick in visits from families who need help keeping their growing children fed while at home on summer vacation.

“We see seniors who are on a fixed income use our services year-round,” says Mary Clulo, chairperson of the operating committee for NFC. “But many of our pantries see an uptick in families with children during the summer. Children are impacted more because they aren’t in school and growing kids are more voracious eaters.”

An Increase in Need for Food (and Volunteers)

Food pantries and other agencies that provide aid and essential items to individuals in need have seen a rise in the number of people seeking assistance over the last four years.

Benzie Area Christian Neighbors (BACN) has served Benzie and Manistee counties since 1983 by providing food, clothing, essential items, utility bills, transportation, and more. The agency was founded by a group of churches in the area with the goal of helping any and all neighbors with limited resources to overcome an immediate crisis. In a typical year, they serve over 1,000 households.

BACN has seen a 70 percent increase in usage between 2020 and 2024, in part thanks to a new facility that allowed the agency to expand, but also due to the rising cost of living and the changes to certain government programs that provide assistance to those in need.

While BACN credits seasonal homeowners and their donations as very powerful for the organization’s monetary needs, Diane Mahoney, BACN’s executive director, shares that they always struggle to find volunteers, and that’s how they really survive.

“We have 188 volunteers—some are our core volunteers, while others only volunteer during summer when they have time or are in town, and others volunteer only during the winter, which is all a reflection of our demographics,” explains Mahoney. “The challenge is recruiting younger volunteers, which is tough because we often serve our neighbors from 10am-2pm so those demographics are typically working.”

Clulo adds that volunteers are one of the top needs of every agency the NFC partners with.

“We are struggling to find volunteers because people are finding it harder to volunteer,” she says. “Volunteering is very rewarding and it really allows people to put things in perspective. Every time you serve somebody that’s a touchpoint with somebody who they might not be meeting every single day in their circle. And it really is a mutual opportunity to experience an education for what others are going through.”

Competing Needs

Another factor that has come into play for many people who find themselves in need of assistance is transportation. Between the cost of gas, the cost to own and maintain a car, and the rising cost of all other essential items, Clulo and Mahoney have heard from many people that they work with and serve that transportation is becoming a major issue for those struggling with food insecurity.

Mahoney says that transportation help is BACN’s fastest growing area of request, which is why many of the smaller food pantries are in existence: To help the area’s neighbors access food help without the need for transportation.

“Now people are choosing food or transportation,” says Clulo. “It’s all part of the equation. Families need to continually stress over and deal with a variety of factors in order to get the basics that they need on a daily basis.”

Those choices, Mahoney insists, are what makes food insecurity look different in America than in other countries.

“Hunger in the U.S. is different than in many other countries—it’s more about choices people have to make,” Mahoney says. “We have a system that forces poor decision-making in a sense. When our families are going to the grocery store, it is much more expensive to buy lean protein or fresh produce, so they are making good decisions for their finances by buying highly processed foods and frozen items, but things that are not as nutritious. So, my take on hunger in the U.S. is it’s less about calorie intake and it is more about the quality of the food we are feeding to our children and we’re feeding to our seniors.”

Summer Bounty

Thankfully, there are organizations like Food Rescue of Goodwill Northern Michigan that are part of NFC and supply fresh, nutritious foods with its own transportation to the member food pantries and meal programs of the Coalition. Food Rescue’s mission is to increase access to healthy food and to reduce food waste, and it does that with two to four trucks running routes that deliver over 10,000 pounds of food every day at no cost to the food pantries.

While Food Rescue tends to see a modest decrease in the amount of food it rescues during the summer from retail stores because there’s less excess food and stores are busier, it has the opportunity to work with as many farms as possible.

“We work with over 80 different farms every year,” says Food Rescue’s director Taylor Moore. “This is the season when we will be working as hard as possible to ensure that anytime a farm has excess produce, we rescue it and deliver it to the pantries. … That’s our responsibility in this system: To make sure we’re doing our part to rescue healthy food and distribute it to those who need it.”

Fruits and vegetables are consistently the most requested and sought after items at food pantries. In 2014, just 13 percent of food pantries in northwest Michigan always had fruits and vegetables. Last year, Food Rescue helped raise that to 84 percent.

Moore says that 2026 is the first year where every food pantry in the five-county area has had fruits and vegetables available every time they open their doors.

“Our goal is to continue that and make it 100 percent throughout the entire year,” Moore states. “In the summertime, that’s a lot of produce and it’s really important that we have the capacity to store the food, to repack the food, and then to distribute it out. We work in partnership with the food pantries and meal programs to make sure that we’re building our capacity together.”

Growing During the Growing Season

In order to achieve that increase in capacity, Moore tells us that Food Rescue has added additional routes, taken food into more rural areas, and expanded its services to farms, adding more cooler space, repacking more food, and adding more trucks.

“It’s about mindset shifts, too,” he says. “Working collaboratively, being in alignment with partners. That’s made it all possible. Many, many people are involved.”

Moore estimates that Food Rescue is able to serve about 16,000 people who use food assistance programs, and he doesn’t see that number decreasing anytime soon. If anything, he is prepared for it to increase due to the same factors Clulo and Mahoney are seeing.

“Food insecurity is such a massive issue that we’re not going to be able to food-bank or food-rescue ourselves out of food insecurity,” Moore says. “It’s a much larger systemic issue that involves childcare costs, housing costs, and healthcare costs. There’s a lot of points of intersection. It’s really important work going on with the food pantries and meal programs and food rescue organizations and food banks across the state of Michigan.”

What Lies Ahead

“I’m really proud of the work we’re doing, and also it’s a challenging time,” Moore adds.

“Food insecurity is higher than when I started 11 years ago,” he tells us. “We’re going in the wrong direction, and that’s surprising to me. And we’re doing more work than ever before, too. It just shows how food insecurity is such a structural issue in our society. And we need to be talking about it in that way—that policy has a significant impact on rates of food insecurity. It’s also surprising to me that what we do as stewards to our community’s resources is not happening in other places and it needs to be happening. It’s not acceptable to me that anyone in our community goes hungry.”

Moore gives kudos to his team’s employees, their volunteers, the pantry workers, and all those who work in the stores that Food Rescue picks up from. Moore also credits his team’s quick turnaround—about 80 percent of food is picked up and delivered within 24 hours—to great relationships and solid, fast communication.

“All the work that’s done at the stores to make sure that this good food doesn’t go to waste is huge,” he says. “It requires businesses to make it a priority [to gather the food for us] and their staff have to prioritize it. We get to work with amazing people. We’re in this together.”

Learn more about the various organizations in this article at northwestmifoodcoalition.org, benziebacn.org, and goodwillnmi.org/food.

Pictured: Volunteers from Food Rescue of Goodwill Northern Michigan on the farm.

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