ELYRIA — Christmas is just around the corner and the only thing more barren than the trees outside seemed to be the shelves of food banks.

According to a news release from the Ohio Department of Agriculture, food banks statewide are experiencing shortages. These shortages have left some agencies rationing their food in order to stretch the number of people helped.

To help aid the statewide shortage, eight agriculture groups donated $8,000 to the Ohio Association of Second Harvest Foodbanks this week. The money will be used to provide hunger relief to soup kitchens, food pantries and other assistance programs all over Ohio.

But state organizations aren’t the only ones digging deep to help the hungry.

To assist the Elyria Salvation Army’s food pantry, Equity Trust Co., a financial custodian specializing in self-directed IRAs, ran a food drive to help stock the shelves.

Equity Trust collected more than 5,000 food items for the Elyria Salvation Army’s food pantry.

“A number of our employees live and work in the area and heard various news reports that the food banks were short on food,” said Brendan Hughes, a representative from Equity Trust.

He said that the idea was brought to the attention of the company’s community service committee. The committee then organized the food drive, dividing members of the company into teams.

“People were just in competition to get as much food as they could,” said Hughes. “We have 170 employees and what was really wonderful about the experience was that everybody was involved.”

The food donated will feed more than 500 local families.

Elyria Salvation Army Capt. Paul Pelletier said that over the past few days, the organization served food to more than 1,000 registered families for holiday dinners. During that time, the food pantry was not open.

“As soon as we finished at noon, we started to see people lining up for the food pantry,” he said.

Currently, the food pantry is well-stocked due to seasonal food drives. However, it’s hard to tell how empty the shelves will be after the holidays.

“The food that we have down there, if we continue to have the seasonal crowd, would last about a month,” Pelletier said.

Contact Kristen Halliday at khalliday@chroniclet.com or (440) 653-6285

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