Demand at area food shelves has soared as rising fuel prices take a bigger chunk of household budgets.

The number of households served at food shelves in Cook, Tower and Ely rose a combined 29 percent from January to May this year, according to Shaye Moris, executive director of the Second Harvest Northern Lakes Food Bank in Duluth, which serves Iron Range food shelves. “That’s 50 more households relying on food shelves,”said Moris.

Theo Sigford said the Tower Food Shelf is serving twice as many families this year as it did in the previous year. The shelf was averaging about 18 to 20 families each month last year but now averages between 36-40 families a month.

“Obviously the price of gasoline and heating fuel has a lot to do with it,” said Sigford.

The Cook Food Shelf averages about 70 families a month, up from an average of 60 a month last year. “Sometimes we see as many as 80 families in a month,” said Anne Poce. “We have seen a lot of new faces, a lot more younger people with families.” Poce added that news that Ainsworth doesn’t plan to reopen the Cook plant in the near future is likely to have an impact.

Rising fuel prices also play a big role in the increase, she said. “Everyone talks about how expensive gas is,” Poce said. She told about about one family which missed the monthly distribution day and had to wait until the next month because they didn’t have any money for gas for their car.

The Ely Area Food Shelf hasn’t seen a similar rise in use, according to co-coordinator Betty Firth, but she has heard people talking about the impact that the rising cost of gas is having on their home budgets.

Rising fuel prices seem to fall hardest on seniors. Many are on fixed incomes that haven’t kept up with jumps in fuel and food staples, and may also be encumbered by costly prescription drug bills.

Even so, seniors are typically among the last to use food shelves. They’re proud of being self-sufficient and are sometimes reluctant to seek help, said Sigford. But circumstances may be forcing them to reconsider. One senior was convinced to go to the food shelf after discovering that it took her entire month’s check to pay for a fill-up of her propane tank, Sigford said.

Moris said that she’s seen a tremendous surge in the number of seniors inquiring about Second Harvest’s nutrition program for seniors. “There have been a ton of inquiries in the last couple of weeks,” she said.

Meanwhile, rising fuel prices will likely contribute to an increase in the number of Minnesota children living in poverty, according to a spokesman for the Minnesota Children’s Defense Fund. The fund’s annual KIDS COUNT report, released last month, found that 152,000 children, or 12 percent, lived in poverty in 2006, the latest year that data is available. In St. Louis County, the number rose to 15 percent.

“And that’s based on guidelines that a family of four needs $20,000 a year to meet essential expenses,” said Marc Kimball. “Most experts agree that number should be $40,000 — twice that amount. By those standards, another 200,000 kids would be living in poverty.”

Kimball said the jump in fuel prices this year is really having an impact on families. People grumbled but lived with gas at $3 a gallon, he said, but now that it’s around $4 a gallon or more, folks are uneasy.

“This past year has really been a shock,” he said. “Fuel prices have gotten to the point where they are really taking a bite out of budgets. These are tough times for everybody.”