This was Geneva Driver's final visit to the Buckhead Christian Ministry for food this year.

She left with about a half-dozen bags. But the peanut butter, beans and ground beef she carried away were the end of help from the ministry for Driver, her husband and their two daughters. Rising food costs have forced the ministry to limit clients to five trips.

Hyosub Shin/AJC (ENLARGE)

Geneva Driver takes home groceries from the Buckhead Christian Ministry. 'It's hard for us to buy food,' she says, 'and this makes a difference.'

Louie Favorite/AJC (ENLARGE)

Beulah Colbert sorts food for the co-op program at the Georgia Avenue Community Ministry in Grant Park. Groups that help families with groceries are suffering as prices rise.

Louie Favorite/AJC (ENLARGE)

Co-op member Beverly Freeman sorts donated food for pickup from the Georgia Avenue Community Ministry.

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The groceries will only last three or four days.

"I am here because we are down to one income for the family," she said. "It's hard for us to buy food, and this makes a difference."

Like a growing number of the ministry's clients — including teachers, firefighters and nurses — Driver had never needed assistance before; the good job that lured her husband to Atlanta evaporated, and the one he has now pays much less.

Unfortunately, the groups that have been feeding families on the edge also find themselves shoved toward the precipice with each increase in food prices.

The Buckhead Ministry, a consortium of 29 churches, spent 20 percent more in the first three months of this year than in the same period last year, said Helen V. Cunningham, the executive director.

Ground beef is up 77 percent. Canned fruit is up 115 percent, so fruit is not given anymore.

Soon the bags of groceries given as emergency relief will no longer include powdered milk because it has become too expensive. Many groups stopped handing out produce long ago.

Upward pressure on prices comes from a range of factors:

• Demand for food has grown along with growth in such places as China and India.

• Soaring oil prices make transportation of foods dramatically more costly.

• U.S. support for ethanol has shifted vast amounts of corn production from food to fuel.

• The sagging value of the dollar makes imports more expensive.

• Some countries have slapped bans on food exports, the better to ensure they can feed themselves.

A string of nonprofit groups across metro Atlanta distributes food to people in need. Whether they accept donations or purchase food — or both — the pressure on them has been rising.

With the economy slowing, if not in outright recession, donations for many groups are down. Meanwhile, there is a swelling need for food.

"I've been doing this for about 30 years, and this is the most difficult that it's ever been," said Bill Bolling, executive director of the Atlanta Community Food Bank, the largest and best-known clearinghouse for food distribution.

"Overall donations are down 5 percent from a year ago," he said. "Our donors — the number has stayed pretty steady, but the amount they are giving is less. I can tell you that we are working a lot harder. And we are losing ground."

An $8.5 million-a-year operation with a network of 820 organizations, the Food Bank handles more than 23 million pounds of food in a year.

Most is donated, although the group spends about $3 million a year buying food, Bolling said.

Among the groups depending on the Food Bank is the co-op program at the Georgia Avenue Community Ministry in Grant Park. There are four co-ops with 50 households in each, said Brian Lowring, the ministry's program director.

Each co-op meets every other week, with members paying $3 per food pickup. Most of the groceries come from the Food Bank. Some is bought from the state of Georgia and the USDA, or at the state Farmers Market in Forest Park.

They truck the food back to their base at the Georgia Avenue church. Members divide it according to the size of the household.

The co-op members have less money than many of the clients who come to the Buckhead Ministry.

Many co-op members are on food stamps or disability, but they need the co-op because their benefits do not cover the higher cost of food.

For people with children at home, summer is typically a more costly time: Kids who received subsidized meals at school suddenly need to be fed from household budgets.

"The poor have always struggled," Lowring said. "I think now, it's worse. Someone has to ask, do I buy medicine today or do I feed my family? And the group of people making that choice is going to increase."

The co-op's buying choices also keep changing — shaped by rising prices and the need to get the most it can.

"Last year, the price of onions doubled and almost tripled and we stopped buying onions," Lowring said. "Now, we get the potatoes and onions one time a month and sometimes not at all."

They also stopped buying chicken for members.

"People are in harder shape," Lowring said. "I have to order more food. The food we give out doesn't go as far. We are not going to be able to provide food security to folks, because they are having to buy more."

Corn is, for now, also off the co-op buying list.

The Buckhead Ministry has sliced portions to avoid turning anyone away.

"We are reducing the amount of food that we give to families," Cunningham said. "We have stopped giving out canned fruit. We have eliminated sugar and flour and cooking oil. We used to give chicken — and chicken can really stretch. Now we give a pound of ground beef."

Since its 1987 founding to offer emergency help to people in 15 of the city's more upscale neighborhoods, the organization has not hurt like this before. "If the trend continues, then we have to start looking at other budget cuts," Cunningham said. "We've always increased what we've done, and it's painful to look at reducing services."

Now, she says, they are giving less when people come for emergency help.

"We can no longer say it [the bag of groceries] is food for a week," Cunningham said. "We can say it's food for four to five days. If you're clever, you can make it stretch."

All consumers confront higher prices. The lower a person's income, the greater the proportion going to necessities like shelter and food.

To stay afloat they must look for cheaper choices.

But the global forces that have been driving food prices higher do not seem likely to fade soon, said Lowring of the Georgia Avenue co-op.

HOW ONE WOMAN LEARNS TO MAKE DO WITH LESS

To stretch her dairy-buying budget, Geneva Driver gives her two daughters powdered milk.

But that price too is going up.

"I ... mix it with 1 percent milk for their cereal, and the kids don't know the difference," said the Sandy Springs mother. "Or you mix it with chocolate milk."

She and her husband had an income in six figures in New York. She left her work to relocate the family to Atlanta where he had found a better job in real estate.

But his position evaporated and has been replaced by one that pays only $30,000. It's not enough to cover food costs, she said.

To get through the month, she picked up a half-dozen emergency bags of food from Buckhead Christian Ministry. But she's not allowed any more for the rest of this year.