Your Neighbors Are Hungry: Demand at Food Pantries Up 70 Percent

Food insecurity experts share their concerns and ask the community to step up

By Jillian Manning | Aug. 2, 2025

Feeding America West Michigan serves the western part of the Lower Peninsula and all of the Upper Peninsula, working with 800 partners and food pantries to provide 23 million meals each year. They estimate that one in seven people in their coverage area is food insecure, including 80,000 children, and that the demand for services has jumped 70 percent in the last four years.

With the passage of the Trump administration’s “Big Beautiful Bill”—which cuts nearly $300 billion from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) through 2034, per the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office—Feeding America expects that one in seven figure to rise.

“Because Feeding America West Michigan is already challenged to meet the current level of need, we are unprepared for the influx of people who will turn to us in 2026 if the cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) take effect,” the agency wrote in a June newsletter. “In addition, we are deeply concerned that the bill shifts costs to the states, and our state can’t afford it.”

In turn, Gov. Whitmer released a state budget memo in June that found the bill “will cost Michigan $900 million, threaten benefits for nearly 15% of [the] population, increase hunger, harm retailers, [and] worsen health outcomes for kids and families.”

We turned to local food pantries and nonprofits to get their take on the snowballing issue of food insecurity Up North.

Longer Lines, Less Food

Carrie Klingelsmith, executive director of the Manna Food Project—a Feeding America West Michigan affiliate food bank which serves Emmet, Charlevoix, and Antrim counties—says food insecurity impacts nearly 15 percent of their coverage area’s population, with 514,950 visits to Manna in 2024 alone.

“A lot of people think, ‘Oh, Petoskey, Harbor Springs, there’s a very affluent area,’ but then they don’t really understand what lies beneath, and it’s a lot of people that are struggling,” Klingelsmith tells us. “We’re getting a lot of new people, because [food insecurity] is affecting so many more people.”

Klingelsmith chalks much of the pressure up to rising housing and cost-of-living prices, noting that a single bag of groceries can easily cost $50-$75. (On the flip side, the dollar can be stretched much further by a pantry.) She says that in her four years with Manna, she has only seen the need for services grow—and that trend isn’t likely to change.

“In the face of the SNAP benefits and Medicaid changing, our lines will probably just get longer. Therefore, we as a community need to come together to help our neighbors in need,” she adds.

Klingelsmith tells us that Manna is working on deepening local partnerships—“I speak at every group I can speak to,” she says of local civil groups and businesses—exploring new grants, and seeking greater community awareness of the hunger problem lurking in their backyards.

“You might not know what somebody is going through … it might be your neighbor next door, and you don’t even know it.”

No Light at the End of the Tunnel

Cathy Somes, executive director of Kalkaska KAIR, knows what it’s like for neighbors to be in need. Her organization offers financial and utility assistance, a food pantry, and community meals throughout Kalkaska County to individuals and families who are under-served.

“In the past few months, we’ve seen about a 40 percent increase in the number of families we are serving,” Somes says. In 2025 alone, their food pantry visits have gone from 700 to 1,000 per month, and their meal sites have seen an increase from 80 people to 100 or even 120.

For Somes, this shift represents a perfect storm. Demand for their services is going up—as is the cost of food—but donations, grant dollars, and volunteers are all down.

She’s even concerned about losing the help provided by Grand Traverse Industries (GTI), a nonprofit that offers vocational training, employment, and habilitation services to people with disabilities. Right now, GTI is facing a potential reduction in services due to Medicaid changes and funding shortages at the community mental health authorities that support their programs.

“They’re able to assist with trucks [to transport food], and that is a huge, huge blessing,” Somes says of GTI. “Those kids come in here, and they are just amazing. I don’t know what we would do if we didn’t have Grand Traverse Industries.”

When asked if there is a light at the end of the tunnel, Somes replies with a disheartened “no.”

“This is the first layer of cutbacks,” she says of the federal cuts to the U.S. Department of Agriculture and SNAP funding. “Six months from now, I expect it to be a lot harder. … I think this trickle down is going to be a two-year, three-year cycle, maybe even longer.”

And that’s a hard pill to swallow when more and more neighbors are headed to KAIR’s doors. “If this continues down the path it’s on right now, I think it’s going to affect more households than we can even envision at this point.”

Food Insecurity Hurts Everyone

Mary Clulo, chairperson of the operating committee for Northwest Food Coalition (NFC), shares those concerns. She has been fighting hunger for 29 years and says she’s seen “huge change” in the number of people needing food.

NFC connects a group of 70 of food pantries, emergency meal sites, and baby pantries and helps them work together on sourcing food, sharing best practices, getting grants, and strengthening the regional food web. But already, Clulo says one of NFC’s grants has been canceled, a local food purchasing assistance grant from the USDA. That grant and others like it allow NFC to purchase food from local farmers, linking the needs of the agriculture community and the needs of the food insecure population. Doing away federal and state funding that supports those in need, Clulo says, hurts everyone.

“What we’re seeing, really, is the rug being pulled out from the safety net,” she says. “We fear [that] is going to have people … needing more food and seeking assistance from our pantries.”

Worse, she does not feel optimistic that local fundraising, even within a generous community, can fill the gaps from the loss of grant funding. Nor can farmers or other businesses magically have more food to donate or sell.

“We’re worried about an increase in demand and then … a reduction in the supply of food, unless we can get funding sources elsewhere or increase fundraising in order to meet that demand.”

Back to Square One

Food Rescue, a program of Goodwill Northern Michigan, works with NFC in their Farm2Neighbor program, which, per their website, purchases a variety of food “from local farmers and distributes them to food insecure people and their families through food pantries and meal sites in Northwest Lower Michigan.”

Taylor Moore, manager of Food Rescue, says that between the Farm2Neighbor program and other efforts, his team picks up and distributes 8,000 pounds of food a day, including soon-to-expire food from local grocery stores and bakeries. That food accounts for about one third of all food in local pantries and meal sites.

While that sounds like a lot, Moore explains that “of all the food assistance that’s out there, nine out of every 10 meals comes from the federal government, comes from programs like SNAP. These programs are significant. Any cuts to those programs, that difference needs to be covered. What’s expected is that the charitable food system—food banks, food rescue organizations, food pantries, and meals community meal sites—we’re going to need to pick up the difference. And in terms of the scale, it can’t be matched.”

Moore adds, “We can’t simply double the amount of food that we are picking up” when that food isn’t available for rescue or doesn’t even exist.

Finding Food Rescue in this position is frustrating, Moore says, because in 2021, federal programs like the Child Tax Credit, Pandemic EBT, universal meals in schools, and stimulus checks had actually helped communities reach the lowest rate of food insecurity in the last two decades. Now, Moore laments, it’s back to the status quo…and getting worse.

“This is difficult for us because we knew that rates of food insecurity were going to increase when the federal government eliminated some of the pandemic-era social services, and now we’re seeing another rollback.”

Moore believes Goodwill’s programs will “become increasingly needed” in the coming months and calls for an increase in donations and volunteerism. He also recommends “getting involved, whether that be reaching out to your representatives and telling them that you care deeply about this issue or with other community organizations that are helping to meet our basic needs.”

“Stay engaged,” Moore concludes. “We don’t know exactly what this will look like, but we do know that it’s going to require a lot of collaboration amongst the community and organizing within the community to make sure that people have access to the food that they need.”

How You Can Get Involved

When it comes to asking for community support, nonprofits operate under the “Three T’s”: time, talent, and treasure.

Volunteers—who share their time and talent—are needed in pantries across the North. “If we see an increase in people coming, we will need more people volunteering,” Clulo of Northwest Food Coalition says, noting that most of the people working in any given pantry are volunteers, not staff, which helps keep operating costs low so that the pantries can spend as much money as possible on food.

All of the folks we talked to emphasized there are many ways to volunteer, from working in the pantry, to cooking meals, to going out in the field and harvesting food with local farmers. You could deliver food or meals to sites in your area, or even repack bulk items in the pantry into household sizes.

And then there’s treasure, aka donations. Many of the orgs above allow you to donate to general operating funds (preferred) or to specific programs within their purview. Depending on the pantry, you can also donate newly-purchased toiletries and food—cereals, canned proteins, and soups are always popular—as well as gently used clothing and household items.

“I just would like people to reach inside themselves and listen to their heart and see if they’re able to give back to help us in the community,” Somes of KAIR says. “Because I guarantee you, it does change your life. It changes how you look at things. And there’s that certain amount of joy that comes with that.”

Do You Need Help with Food?

This article may be hitting a little close to home for you or one of your loved ones. If you need help getting access to food, there are resources available.

“We’re here for them—everybody needs help at some point in their life, I’m sure,” Klingelsmith of Manna says. “We just want to welcome people, serve them with respect and dignity, and try to release that stigma that some people may have that is associated with pantries.”

To find a pantry near you, head to feedwm.org/findfood or northwestmifoodcoalition.org/food-pantries. There, you can put in your address or zip code and find nearby options. You can even sort by the days of the week that that particular pantry is open, as well as find meal sites and other food resources.

Each individual food pantry website (or office, if you want to call in) will have more information about what to expect when you visit.

“New people are unsure how to navigate accessing food, and it can be a very, very stressful and emotional step that people would take to come to a pantry,” adds Clulo of Northwest Food Coalition. “People should not feel that they aren’t deserving or aren’t needful enough. If there is a need, it’s important that people have good nutrition and for themselves and their families, and so they should feel like they can come to pantries and meal sites in the region. That’s what we’re there for, and we want to hear their story and help them out.”