Nearly every day, someone asks us how things are going here at Second Harvest. Do we have enough food? Were we impacted by hurricane disaster relief efforts?

Our response is usually mixed. We are OK for now. We have enough supplies to meet regular service needs and special holiday needs this month. But come January, the outlook will be less certain. Uncharacteristically, we may not have enough food to help our hungry neighbors during the cold winter months.

We are moving into the holiday season with a lower-than-normal food inventory and a budget that has been noticeably impacted by higher-than-normal fuel prices. After the hurricanes in the Gulf states, America’s Second Harvest – the nation’s food bank network – mounted a successful campaign to collect millions of pounds of food for disaster relief and recovery from the nation’s largest food producers and distributors. Because of this unprecedented need, some food that we normally receive from sources outside our region was not available to us.

At the same time, summer fuel increases depleted some of the budget we normally use to bring extra loads of food from other parts of the country. We turned down some food donations because we literally could not “pay the freight” to bring them from out of state. The overall result is more than a 500,000-pound reduction in our food supplies.

This has a direct impact on our ability to provide enough food to dozens of Spokane and North Idaho charities. When we have less food to distribute, they have less to give to their clients.

Food bank clients are already making tough choices. As the weather turns colder, the cost of having a warm home is just another challenge faced by low-income families and seniors. They struggle to make ends meet any time of year, and regularly have to choose between paying the bills – rent, day care, transportation and prescription drug costs – and putting enough food on the table. Seniors tells us they sometimes forgo meals in favor of their medications. And we know parents skip meals so their kids won’t have to.

More than 300 charities throughout the Inland Northwest, serving 44,000 people every month, depend on Second Harvest as a significant source for a good mix of high-quality, nutritious food. We cannot afford to fail these community charities or the struggling families, kids and seniors they help.

Last year, Second Harvest provided more than 14.8 million pounds of food to our partner agencies – The Salvation Army and St. Vincent de Paul, the Coeur d’Alene, Post Falls and Bonner County Food Banks, Valley Food Bank and The City Gate, Women’s and Children’s Free Restaurant, Spangle Food Bank and many others. The need is just as great this year.

The challenge is clear. We are fortunate to live in a region that responds so generously to calls for help. We usually meet most of the needs. That may not be possible this winter. Many of us dug deep into our pockets to help with the crisis in the Gulf states. Now local charities don’t want to face a crisis of their own. We must count on our community to reinforce the local safety net one can of food and one dollar at a time. With winter off to a cold start, we have the opportunity to do a little more this holiday season to bless our neighbors in need all winter.