Abbotsford Food Pantry Sees Substantial Growth

Wednesday, March 1st, 2023 -- 2:00 PM

(By Rob Mentzer, Wisconsin Public Radio) One of the confessionals at St. Bernard Catholic Church in Abbotsford is filled nearly to the ceiling with boxes of dried beans, rice and sriracha sauce.

According to Rob Mentzer with Wisconsin Public Radio, Tthere are several flats of cereal boxes in the confessional next door. "Right now, the deal is, you come to confession, you get a box of cereal," jokes the Rev. Tim Oudenhoven.

St. Bernard's started hosting a weekly food pantry in 2020, and parts of the church have become overflow storage for dry goods. What started as a pandemic response serving 30 or 40 families has "mushroomed," Oudenhoven said, to an operation serving 230 families per week and growing.

Abbotsford, a city of about 2,300 people in central Wisconsin, has become a center for Latino immigration. By official U.S. Census data, the city is now about 40 percent Hispanic. But most residents believe that count doesn't capture hundreds more who have immigrated illegally or who've overstayed their visas.

According to state data, the Abbotsford School District is about 62 percent Latino. And recently, Oudenhoven said, the area has seen an increase in new arrivals from Central and South America, including Nicaragua and Venezuela, as people flee humanitarian crises there. The clients for the pantry are about half Latino, half white, he said. They include families, retirees and single mothers. 

In the early pandemic, the pantry distributed the USDA food boxes that were instituted as emergency aid to farmers and families. But even as the economic effects of COVID-19 abated, the demand for food in the rural, central Wisconsin area has continued to grow.

Oudenhoven said it has revealed a serious need in the region. "When we started this up, I wasn't thinking future plans," he said. "I wasn't thinking sustainability. I was just saying: 'What can we do now?'"

Now, with the expiration this week of the pandemic boost to federal FoodShare benefits, food pantries across Wisconsin are bracing for demand to increase even more. In Abbotsford, food pantry supporters are seeking new sources of funding and building new partnerships to ensure that the effort can continue to serve the community's needs.

Oudenhoven is storing several tons of food in the church, the cereal boxes in the confessional, bags of rice and canned goods off the building's entrance. And food pantry staffers are already making plans to increase their offerings from two truckloads of perishables weekly to three.

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