The cavernous walk-in freezer at the St. Louis Area Foodbank stands virtually empty. The shelves in the giant warehouse are thinly stocked, too. And outside, where workers from area food pantries and soup kitchens haul boxes of food from a loading dock, delivery vans and trucks idle, half empty."

Demand is high and there's less food," said Matt Dace, associate director of the food bank, which is a primary source of food for about 500 agencies in Missouri and Illinois. "Food sources have been drying up."

It's a perennial problem: Food pantries see increased demand and fewer supplies as winter approaches. But this year, the situation is worse. Food pantries throughout the St. Louis area say they're seeing more people walk through their doors in need of food. The increased demand, coupled with a whopping 700,000-pound reduction in food contributions from the federal government this year, as well as stagnant donations from the food industry, means food pantries across the region are struggling to feed the hungry.

Some area pantries have closed their doors, others have cut down their service hours. Still others are managing to stay afloat only by dipping into meager savings to buy food from discount stores.

"I gave out what I got, and my shelves are empty," said Lizzie Harrison, of the Emmanuel Seventh-day Adventist food pantry in St. Louis. The pantry has cut its food service to twice a month from four. "We don't get nearly what we used to."

For people who depend on the food pantries, the shortages are starting to hurt. Antonio E. Wilson of St. Louis knows all the pantries and soup kitchens in the city, and memorizes which days of the month they're serving. An unemployed driver, Wilson says he goes from one pantry to the next, looking for food to fill his cabinets. Increasingly, he's finding the pantries closed or giving out less than they have in the past.

"Last month was real bad," he said, after picking up some canned goods and cereal at the George Washington Carver House in St. Louis this week. "If people don't donate, there's nothing to get."

About one-third of the food distributed by the St. Louis Area Foodbank comes from the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Bonus Commodities Program, which buys surplus food from farmers and distributes it to the hungry. But over the past three years, purchases have dropped sharply. In 2004, the program distributed $233 million worth of food nationally. In 2006, the figure dropped to $67 million.

In part, the program is buying less food because American farmers are harvesting record crops, and demand for food on the open market is strong.

"The USDA buys surplus crops in order to keep prices stable," explained Ross Fraser, of America's Second Harvest, the country's largest hunger relief group.  "When they don't have to buy it, they don't, and they don't give it to us."

The St. Louis Area Foodbank has seen a decrease of 700,000 pounds of food, out of the roughly 13 million pounds it distributes each year, because of the commodity program cuts. That means less food for pantries, which have to look to already strained churches or social service groups.

"Everybody's scrambling," said George Culley, of the Least of the Brethren Food Pantry in Pinckneyville, Ill. "I don't have enough food to go around."

Food providers are looking to the Farm Bill, currently stalled in the U.S. Senate, for relief. Frank Finnegan, executive director of the St. Louis Area Foodbank called the bill "our shining hope."

While the government supplies a good chunk of food to the country's hungry, the majority of the food distributed by food banks comes from the food industry, mostly from giant corporations such as Nabisco or ConAgra Foods Inc. But those companies, and others like them, have managed to fine tune the amount of food they produce, leaving less to contribute to the hungry.

Electronic scanners at the grocery store, track inventory, said Dace. "That means food producers know how much is sold everywhere in each year, so there's no more overproduction. … The food industry is getting better at minimizing mistakes."

Industry donations also tend to be less nutritious than the contributions from the government, which are required to have a higher nutritional content.

Finnegan walked through the group's warehouse Tuesday, pointing at pallets of donated food. One pallet held bottled water, dish detergent and sports drinks.  "That is great," he said. "But you can't make a meal out of it."

The saviors in the region's food security picture this year have been the Boy Scouts of America, who collected more than 2 million cans of food — a new record — at their November food drive, the nation's largest single food gathering event.

"Without them we'd be in a world of hurt," Finnegan said.

Still, food pantry operators, are worried.

"People are just storing up for themselves, there's uncertainty," said Lawrence Staple of the George Washington Carver House. "We'll get through it. … We just need to make it through the winter. It's a year-to-year thing, but this year's going to be a little worse."

ggustin@post-dispatch.com | 314-340-8195

About The St. Louis Area Foodbank: The St. Louis Area Foodbank feeds hungry people by distributing food through its member agencies, and educates the public about the nature of and the solutions to the problems of hunger.  The Foodbank gathers and distributes nearly 13.4 million pounds of food each year to 500+ food pantries, homeless shelters, soup kitchens and emergency feeding programs throughout 14 counties in eastern Missouri and 12 counties in southwestern Illinois.