EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the final installment of a three-part series in The Call looking at ways that Blackstone Valley residents are coping with skyrocketing commodity prices during the recession.

By RUSS OLIVO

WOONSOCKET — As she lingers in front of the meat aisle at Park n’ Shop supermarket in nearby Blackstone, Mary Crisafulli reaches in for a bright red package of shrink-wrapped hamburger, giving it the squeeze test before she deposits it in her wire basket with a decisive plunk.
“It’s on sale today,” says Crisafulli. “That’s why I’m buying it.”

Forget name brands, store loyalty and convenience shopping. Faced with the worst food inflation in years, Crisafulli and countless other shoppers who find it hard to stretch their food dollars are increasingly trying to make ends meet with an old fashioned strategy: bargain hunting.
They’re willing to travel. Instead of one big haul, they’ll make more trips to different supermarkets to get the things they need, buying only what’s on sale at each location. They read the advertising fliers of competing supermarkets to find out where the best prices are, and plot their shopping strategy accordingly.
On any given Wednesday, Crisafulli and her husband, Andy, of North Smithfield, are likely to be prowling the aisles of Park ‘n’ Shop, one of the few independently owned supermarkets in the area. The supermarket bills them as “Wacky Wednesdays” because it cuts the prices on a wide range of food staples, making it one of the busiest shopping days of the week.
“You just have to go where the bargains are,” said Sybil Sugarman of Bellingham as she perused the fresh fruits. “That’s all.”
While shopping around seems like a sound money-saving strategy, some food experts warn that it doesn’t work for everyone, and people who do it sometimes don’t save as much money as they think they do. Bargain hunting requires an investment in time and travel, and, particularly in view of the high cost of gasoline, some shoppers are better off sticking with a supermarket close to home, even if the prices aren’t always as low as they’d like.
“It’s a complicated issue,” says Lorraine Keeney, project coordinator of the Food Stamp Nutrition Education Program at the University of Rhode Island. “There are food deserts all over Rhode Island where some individuals would have to be on a bus for over an hour a day to get their shopping done.”
Price is certainly a critical factor in saving money on food, says Keeney. But people who are serious about cutting back should consider a variety of strategies. Avoid restaurants and eat more self-prepared foods at home, pack leftovers for lunch, clip coupons and stay out of the supermarket when you’re hungry, she says.
If food prices continue to rise, as many economists forecast, Keeney and others fear more shoppers will trade nutrition off against price.
“It’s very expensive to have a healthy diet,” says Joyce Dolbec, a health and literacy consultant with the YWCA.
Dolbec says the best nutritional value usually comes from fruits and vegetables that are in season. They don’t always have to be fresh, either, she says, because frozen fruits and vegetables are just as healthy from a nutritional standpoint, and sometimes they’re cheaper.
Consumers get in trouble when they venture beyond “the two ends of the supermarket, the fresh and the frozen” sections, she says.
“It’s the in-between that has the high-processed food that is usually very expensive,” she says. “It may save time, but it’s not always the healthiest and it’s not always the most reasonably priced.”
How high are food prices and what’s driving them?

IT DOESN’T take an astrophysicist to figure out that high fuel prices are putting pressure on a wide range of consumer goods in the economy, and food is one of them. But the United States Department of Agriculture says retailers passing on food-related transportation costs is just one factor behind some of the eye-popping prices consumers are seeing on store shelves.
A mosaic of inflationary forces is behind the steep rise in food prices, from stronger global demand for food, weather-related crop shortages in other parts of the globe and the diversion of food staples, like corn, to the bioenergy industry, the USDA says. Even the weak dollar is partially to blame, prompting a spike in food exports to countries that can buy certain commodities more cheaply than ever.
The perfect storm of price-spiraling forces is driving up food costs higher than consumers have seen in at least a decade. Leading the inflation parade are cereals, including wheat and bakery products, up 11.7 percent since August 2007, several times the overall increase in the Consumer Price Index, according to the USDA. Next up is beef, 7 percent higher since last year. Eggs, dairy products and fruit are just a tad behind, while poultry and pork bring up the rear, checking in at just 4.2 and 3.4 percent higher than they were a year ago.
And, while consumers have gotten some relief as gasoline prices have edged back from their record mid-summer highs, food economists say it won’t be getting any less expensive to eat anytime soon. In the unique dynamic of the food economy, the retail prices for cereal, eggs, cheese and meat typically lag several months behind the world prices for major commodities like wheat, corn and soybeans — the raw ingredients of many food products.
“Food prices tend to go up pretty quickly and they tend to stick on the way down,” said Jim Sartwelle, an economist with the American Farm Bureau, told the Associated Press recently.
Retail food prices don’t follow the same rules as gasoline, economists say. The price at the pump drops relatively quickly when the price of crude falls because it is a major component of gasoline. But processed foods like cereal, crackers or cookies use comparatively small amounts of corn, wheat or other staple foods.
So, even when the price of major food commodities fall, as they have been, manufacturers have less wiggle room on retail prices.
People at the margins of the economy are already feeling the pinch. But winter is bearing down on New England, threatening to add another layer of escalating costs, in the form of high home heating prices, to the equation of survival.
“I don’t know how we’re going to do it,” says Zaida Lopez, a 29-year-old mother of four. “There is nowhere else to cut. We’ve tried.”
Until recently, Lopez and her husband, a mechanic, were both working. Then she was forced to quit her job when her youngest child, six months old, got asthma. She gets nearly $600 a month in food stamps, but it doesn’t pay for all the food her family needs. While rent and electricity already gobble up most of the family’s other income, the Lopezes are looking at some $450 per month in added home heating costs this winter.
Social service agencies and charitable groups are feeling the pressure as more and more low-income families like the Lopezes come looking for help.
Deb Grasso, an family advocate at Family Resources Inc., a human services agency at 245 Main St., said over 700 people picked up USDA surplus food items at the Family Resource Center last month - a far higher number than the same period a year ago. Family Resources Inc. is one of eight regional community agencies in the state that distribute government surplus food items to low-income families.
It’s by no means a comprehensive safety net for the hungry, but USDA surplus allows needy families to stretch limited food budgets by an extra day or two per week, the agency says.
“Our numbers are increasing steadily,” says Grasso. “Families who haven’t been here for a couple of years are coming back for our services. You can feel the increase, just the busy-ness of the place. Families are struggling more this year.”
USDA surplus food isn’t the only way Family Resources can help those whose cupboards are at risk of running bare. The agency also distributes vouchers that can be redeemed at church-operated “food cupboards” as often as once every three months. Individuals must be income eligible to receive the vouchers, which can be redeemed for several days’ worth of food, according to Darlene Magaw, director of family support services for Family Resource Inc.
 “Our goal isn’t to make them dependent on the food cupboards,” says Magaw. “Our goal is to get them through the next two or three days.”
Perhaps one of the most powerful tools Family Resources Inc. uses to stave off hunger is pre-screening and support for those seeking food stamps through the state Department of Human Services. Tracey Carlough Abrams, development director for the agency, says food stamps are one of the most underutilized forms of public assistance. The application process is so burdensome some give up on it, while others simply do not realize they are eligible.
Only 60 percent of those eligible for food stamps are currently receiving them, in part, because the application process “is not friendly,” according to Abrams. Many also mistakenly assume they are ineligible because they think they earn too much money.
Eligibility for food stamps, worth anywhere from $10 to over $500 a month, is based on a formula that includes rent, utilities and the number of children in an applicant’s household, as well as income, says Abrams.
Others sources of help for individuals seeking emergency food are the so-called food pantries. They’re run by a variety of charitable, volunteer and non-profit groups and, unlike the church-based cupboards, are open to anyone, without proof of income eligibility.
And they too, are feeling increased pressure to serve the disadvantaged, says Fritz Page, the president of the St. Vincent de Paul Society food pantry. The pantry operates out of the rectory of St. Charles Church on North Main Street.
It’s open every Thursday for about three hours to anyone who lives in the city. Clients are allowed to fill up a small plastic grocery bag with as much food as they can stuff in it, usually a variety of non-perishable canned and boxed goods.
On a typical week of late, over 150 people file in to the tiny pantry, some of them waiting in the parking lot for the doors to open. The sad part is, says Page, they’re not the sort of folks you’d think of as being on the dole.
“I think they’re more or less the working poor,” says Page.
Connecting for Children and their Families, a non-profit family advocacy group, operates a food pantry on Tuesdays from 9-1 p.m. at 37 Center St.
“The food pantries in the city seem to be getting hit the hardest - folks who are just barely making it in other areas of their lives, just have nothing left over for food,” says Kristen Allen, CCF’s director of grants and assessment. “In our case, the numbers of people coming to us for food has tripled since April. Unfortunately, our resources have not increased anywhere near that much.”