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Going into 2025, Food Bank of Wyoming looks local to combat increasing food insecurity

A line of cardboard boxes filled with food sit on top of and underneath a folding table in a parking lot. A blue car in the background has its trunk open, with one of the boxes of food inside.
Food Bank of Wyoming
A car gets loaded up with a box of food at a Food Bank of Wyoming mobile food pantry in Pinedale.

The price of groceries was a big talking point in this year’s election, and high costs of living continue to make headlines across the country. Those costs have kept the Food Bank of Wyoming busy this year as they work to help get food on the table for folks around the state.

The Evansville-based nonprofit got groceries to more than 55,000 people and distributed roughly 10 million meals this fiscal year, as documented in their 2024 Impact Report. That’s a 25 percent increase in the number of meals distributed last year.

Jill Stillwagon is the Food Bank’s executive director. She said that increase is in response to what’s happening on the ground.

“ Food insecurity is still an urgent issue across Wyoming. The need for food assistance is higher than it's been in the last 10 years,” she said.

According to Feeding America’s 2024 Map the Meal Gap study, one in seven adults and one in five children in Wyoming are food insecure.

The Food Bank of Wyoming collaborates with more than 150 “Hunger Relief Partners,” which include pantries, programs and organizations, to address that need. The group also supports a number of mobile pantries that pop up across the state every month.

A man in a plaid shirt waves at a white van in a parking lot. In the background is a large “Food Bank of Wyoming” semi-truck and a table with cardboard boxes of food on it.
Dan Cepeda
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Food Bank of Wyoming
A volunteer waves at passing cars during a mobile pantry at the Sheridan Fairgrounds in 2023.

Stillwagon said that she and statewide partners have seen lines at pantries and mobile pantries get longer and longer.

“ We're finding that many neighbors are hitting rough patches and challenges, whether that's a loss of a job or cost of living, such as housing or rental prices, really impacting people's budgets. And it's causing them to really turn to the network that's here, which is to support people,” she said.

Looking ahead to 2025, Stillwagon said the Food Bank will continue to buy from local producers to help Wyomingites in need through a more than $500,000 Local Food Purchasing Agreement Grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA).

So far, the Food Bank has sourced roughly 72,000 pounds of produce, 15,000 pounds of protein and 1,200 pounds of grains from eight different regional producers. That meant more beets, carrots, zucchini, lamb and beef going out to families, along with about 40,000 ears of fresh sweet corn from 1890 Farms in Riverton.

“ This program has been so critical to nourishing Wyoming neighbors facing hunger, but also supporting the local producers that we've been able to purchase from, and their business and local community,” she said.

The Food Bank also received funding from the USDA through its Reach and Resiliency Grant, which focuses on helping state agencies better understand barriers to access to food through the federal Emergency Food Assistance Program (TEFAP).

A person in a yellow vest that says “Food Bank of Wyoming” sorts through heads of cabbage in a cardboard box. Other people work in the background in a large warehouse. One girl wears cabbage leaves as a hat.
Food Bank of Wyoming
Volunteers sort through food at the Food Bank of Wyoming’s distribution center in Evansville.

The grant is specifically looking at  Albany, Converse, Lincoln, Park, Sheridan and Sublette counties, which Stillwagon described as places with a high level people in need and not a lot of TEFAP access.

“This [grant] is going to help us understand how many Wyomingites actually do qualify for TEFAP, and it's quite a bit of neighbors. So when we think about access, how do we add more partner pantries to distribute TEFAP?” she said.

Stillwagon said the Food Bank also hopes to add more stops to its FRESH Express Route program, which launched as a pilot in 2023 and makes additional deliveries of fresh produce to more than 50 partners throughout the state. They’re also planning to expand their food rescue program in 2025 by connecting more partners to local convenience or grocery stories in order to pick up and re-distribute food that’s near the end of its shelf life.

Hannah Habermann is the rural and tribal reporter for Wyoming Public Radio. She has a degree in Environmental Studies and Non-Fiction Writing from Middlebury College and was the co-creator of the podcast Yonder Lies: Unpacking the Myths of Jackson Hole. Hannah also received the Pattie Layser Greater Yellowstone Creative Writing & Journalism Fellowship from the Wyoming Arts Council in 2021 and has taught backpacking and climbing courses throughout the West.

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