By Hector Gonzalez
Staff Writer

March 23, 2015 -- Surplus cruciferous vegetables and slightly over-ripe fruit are becoming scarcer and scarcer luxuries in the one or two bags of groceries volunteers hand out to homeless people and others in need every Wednesday at a small Southern Baptist church across from Santa Monica College.

By this summer things could get even worse.

“We used to have broccoli, cauliflower, cucumbers all the time. We’re lucky to get lettuce now,” said Bill Frazier, one of a handful of longtime volunteers at Church on Pearl's weekly food pantry. “Before, we used to get four or five different kinds of fruits. Now we get two, maybe.”

As the cumulative impacts of California's four-year drought continue to pile up, one area of increasing concern for agriculture and food bank officials is its effect on the charity food chain that funnels millions of pounds of donated surplus fruit and vegetables from Central Valley farms to regional food banks across the state, which distribute it to local food pantries.

“That is definitely a growing concern,” said Andrew Shane of the California Association of Food Banks, which last year provided more than 140 million pounds of produce to 42 regional food banks through its Farm to Family program.

Already, an increased demand on the supply chain is being felt in the Central Valley, where farmers this year are facing the prospect of having less groundwater to pump to irrigate crops – nearly 2 million gallons less than in a normal rain year, a 2014 UC Davis study predicted  –  and leaving more fields to fallow, agriculture officials said.

“It is a two-fold problem,” said Steve Lyle, spokesman for the California Department of Food and Agriculture. “There's the risk of potentially having shortages of produce that could be donated to food banks and there's also a greater need for food at the food banks to meet the needs of farm workers who were previously employed and now are not.”

An estimated 17,000 farm workers were laid off last year, the UC Davis study said, but Shane thinks the number is probably higher.

“Unfortunately, unemployment figures are a lagging indicator,” said Shane, who recently spoke by phone with several Central Valley food banks. “We don't any real-time data on unemployment, so to the best of my knowledge that number is accurate, but if anything that may have been an underestimate.

“We just don't know yet what the scope of the drought will be like this year,” he said.

At the Westside Food Bank in Santa Monica, which last year supplied 4.4 million pounds of food to about 16 area food pantries, administrators are aware of the drought's growing threat to donated produce supplies, although they haven't experienced any shortages so far, said Yvonne Leun, director of operations.

If the drought persists, “that's definitely going to have more and more of an effect,” she said, adding that some indirect impacts are already happening at the wholesale level.

“The stuff that is too small or has blemishes -- a lot of the stuff that wasn't acceptable to the grocery stores before is now acceptable,” said Leun.

Aaron, a worker at the Salvation of Army Food Pantry in Santa Monica, who declined to give his full name, said he's had no problems picking up produce like celery, cucumbers, bell peppers and tomatoes from the Westside Food Bank. But “it's definitely first come, first served,” he said.

“They do run out. You have multiple pantries that pick up from the food bank, so if you show up late, you get the end rations.”

Although the Farm to Family program met food banks' demand for produce last year, “there were a couple of varieties of fruits and vegetables that were more difficult to get,” Shane said, adding the program had to turn to farmers outside the state to supplement produce supplies.

“We're fortunate in that farmers are really aware of their role in feeding and nourishing the state,” he said. “But with one in six Californians facing food insecurity, and with the drought, it is challenging.”

Leun said the need for food and monetary donations at Westside Food Bank hasn't changed, despite a recovering economy.

“The food demand is still pretty high,” said Leun. “I would say at the same levels as when there was the financial crisis. For the poor, things have not gotten better. They still need just as much as before.”