“There he is!”
Al Quist spins around as a car slowly rolls up to his station at the mobile distribution center in the Scottsville Pavilion, window down, driver leaning out.
“Hey! There you go! Have a good day,” Quist breaks into a big smile of recognition, handing a bag of groceries to another volunteer loading the trunk.
When you’ve been volunteering with the Blue Ridge Area Food Bank for as long as he has, he says, you start to recognize people.
“Have you been loaded yet?” he asks as the next car pulls up.
Service providers report that need is at an all-time high as federal support for some food security programs dries up.
In food deserts across Central Virginia, the Blue Ridge Area Food Bank holds mobile food pantry distributions to meet rural hunger needs.
For over 15 years, BRAFB has given out food monthly at 10 mobile pantry locations across Virginia, from McDowell in Highland County to Palmyra in Fluvanna County.
Its goal is to increase access to fresh fruits and vegetables for those living in areas with limited food options or transportation challenges.
And the distributions are open to everyone — no income requirements.
“This puts food where people are,” said Les Sinclair, the organization’s communications and public relations manager.
That’s significant, he tells VPM News, because it can be harder to access food in rural areas.
“Urban communities, you can catch a bus, you can get where you need to go, you can do what you need to do within a mile, mile and a half of your home,” said Sinclair. “In a rural community, it’s a mile, mile and a half to your neighbor.”
Anyone who wants food checks in with organizers at the parking lot beside Dorrier Park in Scottsville. Then, they’re waved toward a drive-thru distribution where volunteers load cars with fresh groceries.
Some volunteers deliver the bags straight to the Scottsville School Apartments or other spots outside of town.
From July 2025 to June 2026, the pantries served an average of 4,350 people each month, according to the latest impact report.
At the Scottsville location, about 20 volunteers distribute food monthly to around 120 households.
Locations for the mobile food distributions are chosen strategically, because they’re trying to target food deserts.
“This is one of the oldest ones,” said Colleen Berger, BRAFB’s manager of community nutrition programs. “When we established it, there wasn’t a lot of pantries in the area, and 20 is a major road, so there’s lots of traffic into Buckingham.”
State Route 20 runs from Orange to Buckingham counties and is the only James River crossing between Buckingham and Albemarle.
Andrea Fischer waited in her car at the Scottsville site with her daughter on June 23 to pick up food for their family. She used to volunteer, but she couldn’t help out anymore when she started working.
“And now with the baby, it’s nice for them to give back to us,” she said.
Berger said many of the volunteers themselves used the pantry at some point and now value serving their neighbors.
“This food bank saved me, so when I got back on my feet, I just had to give back,” said volunteer Jackie Aikens as she loaded boxes of tomato sauce onto a pallet.
Each BRAFB distribution site is funded entirely by private donations.
“A lot of times, what happens is when there is a crisis in the economy or a government shutdown is usually when we see a lot of support, particularly private support towards the food bank,” said Berger.
That means the bank is generally in a good place with funding right now, she says, but need continues to rise, posing a challenge.
While numbers dip during the summer months, mobile pantry use is higher than in previous years.
In total, BRAFB is servicing 178,000 individuals monthly through its programs and partners — that’s higher than when the pandemic hit, according to Berger, as well as during and right after the 2008 financial crisis.
Changes on a federal level have also impacted food security.
The “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” signed in July 2025 by President Donald Trump as part of his campaign to slash federal spending, changed how SNAP benefits, administrative costs and nutrition education costs are funded.
Provisions of the law are already making it harder for some people to qualify and reducing households’ monthly benefit amounts — and immigrants have been hit particularly hard by those changes.
Berger says they hear a lot of fear around accessing government benefits.
“Thankfully, we didn’t see a big decline in people accessing the mobile food pantries who are potentially undocumented, but they are fearful to go and get benefits that they might be able to access,” she said.
A coalition of community organizations led by Sin Barreras have organized a crowdfunding campaign to fundraise for grocery gift cards for local immigrant families experiencing food insecurity.
They want to make sure that families of detainees, deportees and people who fear accessing social service programs or community food pantries because of federal immigration enforcement can still get enough food.
So far, they say they’ve raised over $75,000.
In the parking lot next to Dorrier Park in Scottsville, neat rows of cars queue to drive over to the pavilion where volunteers load trunks with bags of food.
Fischer waits for her turn to drive through the distribution while her daughter plays in the back seat.
“It’s just really nice for the community to come together and think about us.”
