Facing Hunger in America

Onward with Facing Hunger in America!

2012-01-11T16:53:00.000-05:00

If you’ve been following the adventures of Facing Hunger in America, perhaps you’d like a brief status update. So far, we have visited a total of about 60 programs in 37 states plus DC.

Right now, we’re getting ready to travel again, this time to programs in 4 states in the northeast, followed by 9 states in the southwest. By the end of May, we expect to have finished our survey of hunger-related organizations across the country. Following these final visits, we’ll transition to spreading the word about what we’ve found and working for needed change.

Actually, the word’s already being spread – at least 3 articles have been published about our project. The first was published in the spring 2011 issue of the Oklahoma City Indian Clinic magazine, Horizons, page 27. Last spring, when we visited this comprehensive clinic, we volunteered at TURTLE Camp, their innovative day camp for Native American children ages 5-18 that teaches healthy eating. Children learn about portion control, learn to distinguish between “everyday” and “sometimes” foods, and practice the importance of physical activity to help with weight control and diabetes prevention. While we were there, in a turn of the tables from us interviewing them, we were interviewed by Steve Barse for an article in the Horizons magazine. This picture of Betsy was taken by their photographer and published in the article.

The second article was published in the Duluth News Tribune Budgeteer of June 26, 2011, as a result of the well-attended talk we gave at First United Methodist Church in Duluth, MN. Finally, when we were in Seattle in August, we volunteered sorting dented cans of vegetables at Food Lifeline, the Seattle area food bank. Staff we met there were also intrigued by Facing Hunger in America, and included an article about us in the Food Lifeline Fall 2011 newsletter, page 5. Here’s the photo of Carolyn that was included in that article.

In addition to the three news stories, our blog, and informal presentations to many small gatherings, we’ve also given eight talks to groups in these locations:

University United Methodist Church, Chapel Hill, NC – October 24, 2010
St. Matthew’s United Methodist Church, Acton, MA – November 21, 2010, and October 1, 2011
Beaver Memorial United Methodist Church, Lewisburg, PA – Feb 13, 2011
West Michigan Conference of the United Methodist Church Annual Conference – June 4, 2011
First United Methodist Church, Duluth, MN – June 19, 2011
Program in Ecological Agriculture and Society, Missoula, MT – July 6, 2011
Kent First Presbyterian Church, Kent, WA – August 14, 2011

If your group would like to learn more about the charitable and federal food safety nets and what works best to attack the problem of hunger in America, perhaps we could arrange a speaking engagement.

Meanwhile, we’ve got a project to complete!

Surprises from an Iowa Farm

2011-09-17T12:36:00.002-04:00

Most of our visits for Facing Hunger in America have focused on supplemental food for those who are hungry or on programs to bring healthier fresh produce to everyone. But what’s happening on modern, main-stream farms and how does that contribute to the provision of healthy, sustainable food in America?

For one example, we drove through the lush corn fields north of Des Moines to the Couser Cattle Company in Nevada, Iowa. There we met owner Bill Couser, who operates the farm with his wife Nancy, son Tim, and about 6 other full-time employees. Couser Cattle encompasses all of the steps in modern livestock production: raising corn and soybeans, selling much of the corn for use by the locally-owned ethanol plant, finishing cattle, collecting and storing the manure, and using it to fertilize the fields for the next crop season.

Bill Couser (left) with Graeme Quick

The Couser Cattle Company’s feedlot operation won the 2011 national Environmental Stewardship Award from the National Cattlemen’s Foundation. Because this full-circle operation is innovative and based on cutting-edge science at each step, students at Iowa State University (which is only about 10 miles away) find this farm an educational place to work; Bill hires 5-7 as interns each year.

Bill may not be an average farmer, but when he talks to the public he is very clear that he’s a spokesman for the whole modern farming community. He regularly hosts scientists, industry representatives, and visitors from 47 different countries. Our tour group included Dr. Graeme Quick, an agricultural engineer visiting from Australia.

Bill grows corn, in fact, he grows A LOT of corn—5,000-7,000 acres of his own, as well as 5,000 acres of seed corn for Monsanto. He uses the latest technology to assure that he’s using resources wisely.

The manure from his feedlot provides all the potassium and phosphate his fields need, and about 25% of the nitrogen. It’s spread using a GPS-equipped tractor that monitors where the manure’s already been spread and ensures that the proper amount is everywhere in the field before planting.
Bill uses special equipment to “read” the amount of additional nitrogen needed at every spot in the field while the corn is growing, so that he only applies additional nitrogen where it’s needed. This prevents excess from leaching from the field into the water supply. Bill explained that, although this equipment cost $45,000, he paid for it in ½ a season with the reduction in applied fertilizer.
Several scientists from the University of Iowa are conducting a research project with Bill to monitor the levels of nutrients in his fields as a function of rainfall and other factors. Bill also works with industry to try out new materials that may decrease the evaporation of nitrogen compounds from the manure and thus decrease the need for additional nitrogen fertilizer.
Bill collects about half of the cornstalks from his fields to use as bedding for his cattle, as a component of the cattle feed, and to decrease the amount of nitrogen that binds to the cornstalks still in the field.

Lincolnway Energy ethanol plant

Much of Bill’s corn crop is used to manufacture ethanol. Nearby Lincolnway Energy is one of many ethanol plants in Iowa, sprinkled about the countryside in areas of corn production. Corn is purchased through the nearby farmers’ cooperative, and the plant is located on a direct rail line for easy shipping of the ethanol and other products.

The ethanol plant was built in direct response to President Bush’s call to reduce our dependence on foreign oil following the 9-11 attack. It is owned by 937 individuals as a limited liability corporation, and was designed to be particularly environmentally friendly. Currently, it’s powered by coal, but was designed to burn any solid fuel, including garbage, corn cobs and stalks, construction debris, tires, etc. once the EPA grants the appropriate permits.

From the 20 million bushels of corn it uses each year, the ethanol plant produces four main products:

Ethanol comes from the starch in the corn kernels. It’s distilled, the last of the water is removed, and a small amount of gasoline is added to make it undrinkable.
The carbon dioxide from the fermentation process is recovered and sold. Two local uses are to flash freeze pizza toppings at a local manufacturer, and to provide the bubbles for the local soft drink bottling plant.
The oil is spun off from the remaining corn mash. It is used in hog or cattle feed, or to make biodiesel.
The rest of the corn, at this point called distillers’ grains, consists mainly of protein and cellulose, and accounts for about 1/3 of the corn grains. It makes a very good component of animal feed, and is sold back to livestock producers in the US and internationally.

Bill likened this use of corn to “cracking” crude oil to produce gasoline, diesel fuel, asphalt, etc. He thinks it’s a waste to feed cattle straight corn, when that corn could be used more fully by making it into ethanol and other co-products.

If Bill doesn’t feed his cattle straight corn, what do they eat? It’s a combination of ingredients – distillers’ grains from the ethanol plant, soybean hulls, shredded cornstalks, corn syrup, sugar beet mash, straw, bean straw, corn oil, etc. (all waste from other products), plus a small amount of corn. Since the cost, nutritional quality, and availability of all of these products varies, he has a computer program that tells him how much of each to mix to get the least expensive food mix that contains the best combination of cellulose, starch, protein, vitamins and minerals to get the greatest gain and conversion of feed. It turns out that this feed is closer to the cow’s natural diet of grass than corn is, with more cellulose and less starch, and is easier for the cow to digest. No more liver abscesses or digestive issues!

Traditional feed corn, corn in today's feed, today's complete ration

According to Bill, a farmer using traditional feeding methods would use about 75 bushels of corn to finish out a 1300 pound steer. With today’s methods, the farmer would use only 16-30 bushels of corn per steer. Augmenting the feed with co-products allows farmers to produce 13% more beef with 13% fewer animals, 30% less land, 14% less water, 9% less fossil fuel, and have an 18% decrease in emissions of methane, nitrous oxide, and carbon dioxide.

No, his cattle are not grass fed. Bill said that it would take his whole farm (5,000 acres) to raise 5,000 cows on grass, they’d only reach 900 lbs, and the cost of the meat would be more than most consumers want to pay.

We could have spent days learning about modern farming methods from Bill, but we had to leave for an afternoon appointment at the Iowa Farm Bureau Federation, just outside of Des Moines, to interview economist (and farmer) Dave Miller, Director of Research and Commodity Services.

Dave Miller

One of the major questions we had for Dave was how the production of ethanol has influenced the cost of food in this country. We’d heard that the cost of feed corn rose from about $2 to over $7 in the time that the production of ethanol ramped up. Did diverting some corn to ethanol production cause the rise in corn prices? Dave says no, that the US increased its corn production more than enough to supply the ethanol plants, when the recovered distillers’ grains are factored in. Specifically, corn production increased from about 10 billion bushels to more than 13 billion bushels. Of that, about 4.5 billion bushels are used to produce ethanol, from which about 1.5 billion bushels of feed are recovered.

Dave sees the cause of the price rise to be a large increase in the demand for US corn worldwide due to droughts in Russia and Australia and production problems in South America. Dave believes that corn could be grown economically for about $5/bushel today, and if the worldwide production of grains increases again, the price of corn could drop to that level.

Some say that we should use cellulose as the starting material for ethanol production, not starch from corn. Currently, this technology is still in development. Dave pointed out that to the extent that it would mean growing, say, switchgrass on fields that are currently used for corn, it would be counter-productive. If, however, the source of the cellulose were corn stalks, wood waste (sawdust, bark, small limbs, etc), or switchgrass grown in areas that cannot be used for producing other crops, it would increase our capacity to produce ethanol and leave more corn for export.

What place do farm subsidies have in the cost of our food? Right now, surprisingly little, according to Dave. Farmers who take part in the subsidy program for corn receive approximately $20/acre in subsidies, while the revenue for their corn crop is more than $1200/acre. Thus, the elimination of subsidies for corn would have little impact on the cost of corn. The subsidies are higher for cotton ($40/acre) and rice ($60/acre), so eliminating subsidies for these crops may influence their cost or availability more than it would for corn.

In sum, we were pleasantly surprised to learn about the technologically advanced and environmentally responsible modern farming practices that Bill Couser showed us. We were reassured that ethanol production is not the cause of price increases in corn, but instead is consistent with improved diets for cattle.

At the end of our interview with Dave, when we asked what he’d like to see changed in the US food system, he instead described its good features. He has traveled all over the world examining food systems in other countries and found the US food system to be unparalleled in safety, efficiency, productivity, and relative low cost to the consumer.

Nebraskans Bike for Hunger

2011-09-05T19:12:00.001-04:00

Bill Ritter

Rev. Bill Ritter, Senior Pastor at First United Methodist Church in Columbus, Nebraska, is tall, blond, and trim. You might see him arriving at church or traveling to visit his parishioners on his bicycle, for Bill is also an avid cyclist. When not attending to his pastoral duties, Bill may be bicycling around the vast agricultural fields of Nebraska, sometimes participating in multi-day organized recreational rides such as the Bicycle Ride Across Nebraska (BRAN).

If this were June 25-29, 2011, however, you’d see Bill riding in the event he started 16 years ago and still directs – the Nebraska United Methodist Bike Ride for Hunger (NUMB).

The idea for NUMB grew from at least 3 separate experiences:

Bill and his cycling friend, Greg Bakewell, numb with rainy, 37-degree weather during one multi-day bicycle event, took shelter in a hog barn and talked about how a bicycle ride could be conducted to better care for cyclists.
David Jefferson, then chair of the Hunger Committee of the Nebraska Conference of the United Methodist Church, expressed his frustration to Bill that the church had such great programs in place to help those who are hungry, but they were under-publicized and under-funded.
Bill heard a talk in which the speaker said that every time we take a breath, someone dies of hunger. Bill told us, “Biking is kind of a meditative activity. You’re very aware of your breath. Here I was biking along in the middle of abundant corn fields and cattle, and every time I took a breath, someone died of hunger! Jesus said, ‘For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat.’ [Matthew 25:35] I knew I had to do something to help.”

So Bill enlisted the help of Greg and told David he wanted to start NUMB to raise funds for hunger. Since the first ride in 1996, NUMB has been sponsored by the Nebraska Conference of the United Methodist Church; it is now listed as an ongoing project of the Risk-Taking Mission and Justice Team.

Each year’s ride is laid out by Greg (now the official NUMB Route Director) in a large loop among 4 towns roughly 65 miles from each other. NUMB 2011 was located in the western panhandle of Nebraska. There, the area around the North Platte River is known as the “Valley of the Nile.” Hence, NUMB 2011 took on an Egyptian theme.

Cyclists apply for NUMB with Regina Bergman, NUMB Registrar, and are accepted on a first-come, first serve basis up to the maximum number that Bill feels maintains the intimacy of a single community and is manageable for his team of volunteers. In the first year, 36 cyclists from Nebraska took part in NUMB. In 2011, 157 cyclists from at least 10 states participated.

Cyclists each pay a registration fee of $50, which covers all the costs of the ride, such as insurance and renting the truck to transport personal tents and gear. Cyclists also pledge to raise at least another $100 in private sponsorships, all of which is donated to hunger relief.

Briana Ritter, Regina Bergman, Greg Bakewell

Each registrant is told about the rigors of NUMB and how to train so they’ll be most likely to have an enjoyable ride. Each registrant also indicates the type of bicycle they intend to use. This allows Bill to make sure that NUMB’s mobile bike shop will have all necessary repair parts. It also allows him to gently suggest an upgrade if the bike is unlikely to be suitable for this event.

At the start of NUMB, cyclists gather in the first town on Friday night and Saturday. They cycle to the next towns Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday, and return to the starting town Wednesday.

To make sure cyclists have water, food, and opportunities for short breaks along their routes, Kathy and Wayne Minikus, SAG (Support and Gear) Directors, find good stopping points about each 10 miles along the route and volunteers to staff them. These volunteers also keep track of who passes each SAG site and don’t leave until the last cyclist has passed.

Meanwhile, teams of volunteers have been working on all the other tasks needed to house, feed, entertain, and care for all the NUMB cyclists. Bill recruits sites (typically churches) in each community that will arrange for meals, a large field in which the cyclists can pitch their tents, bathrooms and showers, and an evening meeting hall. Nina Clark, NUMB Social Director, plans entertainment for each evening.

Each day, Bill is among the last to depart – he stays long enough to make sure the NUMB volunteers have fully picked up the grounds so the town “can’t tell they’ve been there.” Then he sets out. On the final day of the ride, he again departs last, but with his 3 grown children ahead of him taking turns as wind breaks, he attempts to catch up and pass each other NUMB rider so he can personally thank them for riding and contributing to hunger relief this year.

Where do the NUMB funds go? It’s important to Bill that the funds support hunger relief in 3 different ways: Hand-out, hand-up, and advocacy. Specifically, of the funds raised:

¼ goes to the two food banks serving Nebraska, the Food Bank for the Heartland in Omaha, and the Food Bank of Lincoln for food relief through food pantries and feeding programs.
¼ goes to Heifer International for its work dealing with root causes of hunger by helping individuals and communities in the US and around the world raise their own animals and become self-sufficient.
¼ goes to an UMCOR (United Methodist Committee on Relief) Nigerian Agriculture Development Program to help women battle malnutrition through sustainable agricultural practices.
¼ goes to Bread for the World, a Christian organization that lobbies US government elected and appointed officials on behalf of hungry people in our country and the world.

Initially, Bill thought NUMB might raise something like $10,000. But publicity around NUMB has been enthusiastic, NUMB riders have worked hard to raise funds, and supporters have been generous.

So far, the funds raised by NUMB total $519,000!

That sounds like a lot of money, but Bill’s goals have risen. Now he’d like to see NUMB raise $1M before he turns the reins over to others.

We think NUMB can do it! If you’d like participate next year, the dates are June 23-27, 2012.

NUMB 2011 Riders

Nurturing Laramie’s Local Food System

2011-08-31T00:46:00.002-04:00

Firehole Canyon, WY

Wyoming is our least populous state. As we tented at Firehole Canyon and crossed southern Wyoming on Interstate 80, we saw vast views of sparsely-populated, high, wind-swept, dry country.

How do things grow here?

Imagine our delight when we arrived in Laramie to find the LaBonte Community Garden, the most beautiful and lush community garden we’ve yet encountered. Wandering on the freshly wood-chip covered paths through the garden, as many Laramie residents do each day, we saw about 16 neat plots of various sizes. There were even 2 crescent-shaped plots arranged outside a beautiful mature tree. A large L-shaped portion housed the Children’s Garden, complete with butterfly garden and small greenhouse.

LaBonte Community Garden, Laramie, WY

The garden was proud with a huge variety of produce from asparagus to zucchini, and just about everything in between. We saw beans, beets, broccoli, and Brussels sprouts; cabbage, carrots, chard, corn, and cucumbers; kale, lettuce, mustard greens, onions, peas, potatoes, tomatoes, squash, strawberries, sunflowers, and a few things we couldn’t identify precisely, although it was very clear that they weren’t weeds. Oh, and there were plenty of flowers, too.

Gayle Woodsum soon arrived to tell us the story of this garden. Gayle is a community organizer who heads a project called Feeding Laramie Valley. This project is a loose coalition of groups involved in the lively sustainable foods movement in Laramie and the surrounding Albany County. Laramie Local Foods hosts an interesting set of workshops and resources for people interested in eating local, growing their own food, and creating a sustainable local food system, and Laramie Mainstreet hosts the Laramie Farmers Market.

Gayle Woodsum

But starting the LaBonte Outdoor Learning Center and Community Garden last summer required a large effort from many sources. Laramie Rivers Conservation District education coordinator Trish Penny, who runs outdoor learning classes for children at the park in the summer, wanted a full-fledged teaching garden. Trish worked with the Laramie Parks and Recreation Department and the Laramie City Council to obtain permission to locate the garden in this city park and to work out all the details of garden size and layout, plot steward agreements, and legal releases.

Once the garden was approved, funding from the city, local businesses, and grants enabled fencing, a shed, and a small greenhouse to be constructed. The Laramie Garden Club provided top soil, and the University of Wyoming’s Student Farm ACRES provided compost. Dozens of volunteers came together to rip sod and lay the new soil. The Wyoming State Forestry Department provided apple, plum and cherry trees. The Laramie Beautification Committee provided an ADA accessible pathway through the garden.

Gardening in Laramie is challenging. The growing season is very short (only 51 days), the rainfall is scarce, and the temperature shifts are extreme due to high altitude (7200 feet). We were told that experienced gardeners here say, “Every year gardening in Laramie is an experiment.” At the LaBonte Garden, mentors help newer gardeners plant and tend their plots successfully.

Feeding Laramie Valley coordinates many other projects in addition to the LaBonte Community Garden. Gayle told us about helping to establish several other gardens, including a “production garden” and a community garden at the First United Methodist Church. Feeding Laramie Valley also makes sure that excess produce from these gardens and the Farmers’ Market is distributed to food pantries, shelters, and the senior center. Gayle’s role is to loosely coordinate all of these projects, to advocate for sustainable local food wherever she can, and to gather stories about what works and doesn’t work so well in building a strong community food system.

Will this energetic local food movement be enough to make significant improvements in the quality of food in Laramie, to ensure the ability of the community to feed itself, and to provide access to food for all, regardless of their economic situation? How can we all learn from their successes and challenges in order to better support this move toward healthy food for all?

Interestingly, there’s a research project sponsored by the USDA’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture asking just such questions. Dr. Christine M. Porter, Assistant Professor of Public Health at the University of Wyoming, is principal investigator on a 5-year, $5M grant entitled, “Food Dignity: Action Research on Engaging Food Insecure Communities and Universities In Building Sustainable Community Food Systems.”

Dr. Porter and her research associates are partnering with 5 very different communities, each of which will be a case study in efforts to improve their community food systems. Feeding Laramie Valley is one. The others are

The Whole Community Project of Cornell Cooperative Extension, Tompkins County NY. This project focuses on providing healthy food and active play for children.
East New York Farms! of United Community Centers in Brooklyn, NY. This project is based on an urban farm that is promoting local food justice and economic development.
Blue Mountain Associates, Inc. of Wind River Reservation, WY. This organization provides health and human services to the Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho living there.
Dig Deep Farms & Produce of Alameda County, CA. This farm is a project of the Deputy Sheriffs’ Activities League, meant to provide fresh affordable produce and also to foster a healthier community with more paid employment and less violence.

Dr. Christine Porter

Each site will receive a small amount of money ($30,000 over 3 years) to pass along to the community in the form of mini-grants to support new gardens or other initiatives important to growing their sustainable food system. Some of the funding will also pay for a half-time community organizer who will document the case studies by interviewing and conducting focus groups to gather the stories about successes and challenges. Representatives from all the sites, as well as the partnering universities and other organizations will meet at least once a year to share their experiences and learn from each other.

Dr. Porter describes her approach as “community-based participatory action research.” At the same time as this grant is supporting each of the partner communities to build healthy, local sustainable food systems, the Food Dignity team is documenting the progress. The results will help inform these and other community food system efforts and demonstrate how dovernment and academic institutions can best support communities in this work.

We think Dr. Porter's approach will go a long way toward inspiring just and healthy access to food for all.

Create Common Good

2011-08-26T23:06:00.000-04:00

Last week in Oregon we learned about the importance of ending hunger before it begins, through increased job opportunities and training. This week, we visited Create Common Good in Boise, Idaho, which is doing just that for a particularly vulnerable population – refugees.

Show, don't tell

According to the UN definition, you are a refugee if you are unable to return to your country because of persecution or a well-founded fear of persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion. Only about 1% of those in refugee camps are resettled into a host country, and then typically only after many, many years. If selected for resettlement to the US, you are assigned to one of 10 voluntary refugee resettlement agencies, each of which places refugees close to one or more of about 40 cities across the country. That agency is responsible for finding you a place to live, finding a health care provider for you, and arranging for other support services such as English classes and training classes. The US government provides financial support to states for this process. However, within 8 months, you are expected to be self-sufficient! That’s a tall order, and many refugees need additional help.

Tara Russell, CEO (Chief Experience Officer) and founder of Create Common Good, explained that refugees come to the US with a huge range of backgrounds. Some were professionals in their home countries, have resources and connections in this country, and know English. These refugees usually adapt quickly, and have a support network to help in times of trouble. But on the other end of the curve are those who have few skills that translate easily to this culture. They may not know any English. They may not know how to read or write (in any language) or use numbers, and may have a second-grade education or less. They may not know how to interact with others in employment situations. And they may have been severely traumatized by their past life experiences. These are the refugees that Create Common Good targets with their programs.

Create Common Good’s programs are divided into four areas:

Train
This is the heart of the program. Their job skill and language training courses work on job-specific simulations in which the instructors show how to do the actual tasks that would be expected in specific jobs, along with site visits to employer partners in the area to try them out. Tara said, “We believe in show, don’t tell, which has been shown to be the most effective way for our clients to learn.” Therefore, all classes teach by showing and working alongside the instructor, teaching the English words appropriate to the job as they go along, and then reinforcing the skills and language as the clients practice. For example, if a group were working on janitorial skills, the instructor would show the participants how they’d be expected to mop a room, but would also teach them the words “mop,” “pail,” “detergent.” The clients would mop the room and practice “this is my mop, this is my pail” with the teachers as they worked. They might then go to a worksite to try out their new skills. Also included are social and job skills, such as showing up on time every day, suitably dressed, making eye contact, and interacting appropriately in the workplace. As clients learn, their confidence and resilience build, which helps in other areas of their lives.

Create Common Good’s teaching approach is very systematic, so they can track what each client has learned. Classes have a maximum of 12 students and 2-4 instructors, and were developed in-house to fit their clients’ needs. As clients progress, the instructors determine where they excel and what jobs would best fit them. They take students to interviews, and are able to say things like “In 8 weeks, she’s gone from being able to do only this, to now being able to do these new things. Just think what she’ll know after a few weeks of working here!”

Everyone in the organization rejoices each time another client gets a job.

Grow

Devi Kharel, Head Farmer

Washing fava beans we'd just harvested

Create Common Good operates a beautiful organic farm on 5 acres of land donated by Eastwind Community Church. This provides another venue to help refugees with training and paid work opportunities.

We spent a morning at the farm, where Devi Kharel, Head Farmer, an agricultural expert and refugee from Bhutan, put us to work harvesting cilantro and parsley, and helping others harvest fava beans and mustard greens. Trainees were harvesting tomatoes, red, white and purple potatoes, basil, and other fresh produce. All produce was washed and prepared for delivery. Today, some went to CSA members (people who’ve bought shares of each week’s fresh produce from the farm) and some was sold at a stand at Dunia Marketplace.

All sales and deliveries are handled by Tyler Smith, Director of Farm Sales, Food Culture and Outreach, with the assistance of one of the trainees working on the farm. Other produce from the farm is sold to a wholesale partner and local restaurants, used in Stir and Create programs (see below), given to those in need including the refugees in the programs, and donated to the Idaho Food Bank and other partner agencies.

Tyler Smith, Director of Farm Sales, and assistant
deliver baby bok choy to a customer

Create
Create is the newest of Create Common Good’s programs. Its goal is to create products to sell, providing training and job opportunities for refugees. The current focus is on what Create Common Good has at hand, which is food. Last fall, they made a variety of products such as pickled beets, hash brown potatoes, pureed pumpkin, and vinaigrettes made with herbs from the farm. Now they’re refining their offerings to be more culturally-infused, including artisan foods such as kasundi and mustard-green pesto.

Create Common Good is hoping to expand to broader local and regional markets in order to provide additional employment opportunities. To reach a large enough size to make these efforts viable, they would like to expand to a commercial kitchen.

Stir
The fourth area of Create Common Good’s training programs is culinary training. Tara took us to The Cathedral of the Rockies First United Methodist Churchhttp://dev.cathedraloftherockies.org/cotr/ , where we entered the large kitchen that they’ve made available for Create Common Good to use full time at no charge. There we met Create Common Good’s Executive Chef, Brent Southcombe, and Apprentice Chef, Awot Haile, a refugee from Eritrea. What a great pair these two make! Brent is an award-winning chef from Australia who heard about Create Common Good at a church meeting just when he was feeling called to reach out and train immigrants in culinary skills. He was able, through the efforts of Create Common Good and volunteer legal help, to move to Boise in short order this past spring. He’s running the culinary program to train refugees. They’ve had 3 classes so far, and have a 75% placement rate for their graduates.

Brent Southcombe, Executive Chef (left)
Awot Haile, Apprentice Chef
Tara Russell, Chief Experience Officer

To help raise funds, they cater special events. And on most Wednesdays they put on an international dinner inspired by the food cultures of the refugees in the training programs. They use food from the Create Common Good farm as often as possible.

What difference does Create Common Good make? In the words of Tara, “We believe that economics is often the first domino that leads to holistic transformation in the other areas – more kids in school, domestic violence decreasing, and emotional and mental health improving. Employment brings dignity, security, peace of mind, and safety to the family, so we see a lot of other great things happening, once there is a stable job that is building a runway to self-sufficiency."

Create Common Good is definitely helping refugees make this transition!

Improving Local Food Systems -- Mosier, OR, Farmers' Market

2011-08-23T13:54:00.000-04:00

From Partners for a Hunger-Free Oregon, we heard about a great example of an organization that is cultivating a strong regional food system. The Gorge Grown Food Network states on their website “We envision a healthy, self-sufficient Columbia River Gorge where our food is produced with integrity and is valued, abundant, and accessible to all.”

How do you go about promoting both the supply side and the consumer side of local eating? One way is to promote local farmers’ markets. But small communities can struggle to attract a critical mass of vendors that will bring enough customers to support the market. So the Food Network bought a truck, outfitted it with a refrigerator, tables, and other equipment, and created George, the Mobile Farmers’ Market! Each week, the driver buys produce and other products from local farmers and producers at a discounted rate to fill the truck. She then takes George to 4 different small market sites over the weekend to augment the offerings by local vendors and add enough variety of produce to attract the local residents. Once a farmers’ market is self-sustaining with its own local farmers, the goal is for the mobile truck to move on to other towns that need its support.

One of the mobile market sites is in the small town of Mosier (population 460). We visited to see how their market is promoting community and healthy, local eating.

The Mosier Farmers’ Market is held on Sunday afternoon, from 4 to 7 PM. We arrived early to help set up in the parking lot of the 10 Speed East Coffee Shop and the adjacent vacant gas station lot, where the market is held. The merchants started arriving and setting up their displays and canopies about 3 PM. Then the local fire truck arrived to block off the street between the two parking lots and filled a small pool with water for kids to cool off in.

We met Suzi Conklin who explained that this is the first year they’ve had a farmer’s market. She and some friends had taken a study course from the Northwest Earth Institute called “Menu for the Future” and decided that Mosier needed a farmers’ market. They investigated the neighboring Hood River Farmers’ market, talked with the managers there, learned about the Gorge Grown Food Network and the mobile farmers’ market, and started planning. Thus, the Mosier Farmers’ Market came about. The first market day was July 3, 2011.

When the market was all set up, it was a bustling and busy sight:

There were about 10 fruit and vegetable vendors. The most common vegetables were tomatoes, green peppers and summer squash, but we also saw eggplant, hot peppers, cucumbers, potatoes (red, yellow, blue). Fruits for sale included blueberries, strawberries, peaches, and melons. Theo, the son of one of the vendors was selling “natural bird feeders” (sunflower heads).

There were other food items, too. Various vendors offered honey, jams, preserves, pickled beets, baked goods, eggs, pork and beef. One of the vegetable vendors was making vegetable juice smoothies.
The mobile farmers’ market truck and its stand offered some items others didn’t have, such as sweet corn, cherries, bread, kale and shallots, as well as many of the vegetables that the other vendors had. The driver appeared to know all the other farmers and was quick to refer customers to them.

Additional booths included the Seniors of Mosier Valley, who were selling lawn ornaments, weather vanes and raffle tickets for a quilt to help purchase a new refrigerator. The local volunteer fire department was selling t-shirts and sweatshirts and recruiting for additional volunteer fire fighters. The mayor had a table to sell her hand-made jewelry. Another woman was selling candles, plants, cutting boards, and glass ornaments. One young girl, with her mother’s help, had a few games for the kids and was also selling water and muffins to raise funds to go on the 6th-grade school class trip to England.
The information booth, manned by one of the organizers, gave out information about the market, sold some posters and some consignment items such as granola and small numbers of red, yellow and purple cherry tomatoes. They gave away house plants in exchange for donations for the school garden.

As you’d expect, there was much buying and selling going on. But there was other commerce, cooperation, and community-building happening, as well. A local grocer arranged to pick up a flat of tomatoes from one of the vendors the next day to sell in his store. Vendors informed their customers of other farmers’ markets and stands where their produce was available. Vendors also referred customers to other vendors if they didn’t have what the customer wanted, and one vendor told us that she didn’t bring certain items to this market in order to give others a chance to sell theirs. Customers chatted and caught up on the news with each other. There was live music provided by a guitar and drummer combo. A local circus performer entertained the crowd by magically handling balls. This inspired a young boy to run home and return to perform with hula hoops. Other kids played in the water and danced to the music. There was even an “Ask Your Farmer” session based on the Dating Game.

We were told that five years ago, only 1% of the produce consumed by people in the Columbia River Gorge was produced locally. This vibrant new Mosier Farmers’ Market is already improving its local community food system and helping reach the goal set by the Gorge Grown Food Network of 20% local produce by the year 2020.

The Power of a Plan – Partners for a Hunger-Free Oregon

2011-08-23T02:19:00.001-04:00

Picture a hot, sunny Saturday in August. Picture festive canopies and tables set up in a large corner of a Fred Meyer store parking lot in East Portland, OR. This is Portland Monthly magazine’s “Beer ‘n’ Burgers” fund-raiser, where generous patrons pay $20 to sample and vote on hamburgers and beer from local vendors. And picture us helping by augmenting the beer and burgers with water, soda, and cookies, and by encouraging people to vote before they exit.

Why are we doing this when we’re supposed to be studying hunger in America? Well, we’re working alongside the staff of the organization that we had visited the day before and who will receive the funds raised today -- Partners for a Hunger-Free Oregon.

Patti Whitney-Wise, Executive Director (right)
and Jessica Chanay, Deputy Director

We’d heard that Oregon has a particularly forward-thinking, state-wide approach to ending hunger. The Oregon Hunger Task Force was formed by the Oregon state legislature to advise on issues related to hunger and to advocate on behalf of Oregonians at risk of hunger. Partners for a Hunger-Free Oregon is their non-profit support organization, dedicated to ending hunger in Oregon.

To learn more about Oregon’s approach, we met with Patti Whitney-Wise, Executive Director of Partners for a Hunger-Free Oregon, Jessica Chanay, Deputy Director, and Nancy Weed, SNAP Outreach Coordinator.

Patti and Jessica explained some of the history. In 1986, Hands Across America, a publicity and fund-raising event meant to highlight the problems of hunger and homelessness in America, shocked Oregonians when they learned that their state had high rates of hunger. In response, the state legislature created the Oregon Hunger Task Force in 1989, the first body of its kind in the nation. Members included a broad coalition of lawmakers, state agencies, and non-profit organizations.

The initial work of the task force fostered many successes, such as highlighting the problem of hunger in the state and improving the emergency food system. However, in 2000, Oregon was ranked as the state with the highest percentage of its citizens experiencing hunger, according to a new measuring tool that measured food insecurity and hunger in all states. Clearly something more was needed.

As the Task Force worked to expand Food Stamps and summer food for children, they created an initial 5-year strategic plan, Act to End Hunger. As of 2009, progress had been achieved on 30 of its 40 specific recommendations, and the percent of hungry Oregonians had declined relative to other states. According to USDA statistics, in 2003-2005, Oregon had greatly decreased the number of its residents experiencing very low food security, now ranking 22nd.

Then the latest recession hit, and Oregon was more strongly affected than other states. The rates of very low food security for the years 2006-2008 once again placed Oregon as the second worst overall. Pained but undaunted, Partners for a Hunger-Free Oregon, with the assistance of a grant from Northwest Health Foundation, built on the earlier plan, incorporated large amounts of new input from people across the state, and created Ending Hunger before it Begins – Oregon’s Call to Action 2010 - 2015.

Patti said, “Make a plan and it will happen.” She firmly believes that having a well-founded plan is a powerful tool to guide action and make positive change. We are very impressed by the clear focus on root causes of hunger and the specific recommendations and highlighted strategies included in the plan. Here are the three top-level goals.

Goal 1: Increase economic stability for people, communities, and the state.

This first goal most clearly addresses the root causes of hunger. As Patti says, “Hunger is an income issue.” When people have sufficient income, they can feed their families and also accrue savings to help them weather tough times. The same is true at the state and federal levels.

The plan includes specific strategies such as expanding the earned income tax credit so that Oregonians making less than the federal poverty level would have more income to feed their families, expanding affordable healthcare and childcare, and preserving TANF (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families).

In addition, to make the state more fiscally resilient, the plan calls for actions such as repeal of the Oregon kicker law, and allowing the state an adequate rainy day fund so that important services can be preserved during difficult times.

Goal 2: Cultivate a strong regional food system in Oregon.

It’s ironic that a hungry state with a large agricultural component keeps little of that food for itself. Farmers often struggle economically and many areas lack access to healthy, affordable food. People with limited means are often forced to choose foods based on cost rather than nutritional value. So this second goal includes recommendations to better balance the food system and make healthy, locally grown produce more available to everyone, including those who are food insecure.

Examples of strategies to improve the regional food system include improving the viability of small grocery stores in underserved urban and rural areas, expanding community and school gardens, and increasing funds for voucher programs that allow WIC participants and seniors to obtain affordable produce at farm stands and farmers’ markets. (See the next posting in this blog for another example.)

Goal 3: Improve the food assistance safety net.

In the short term, people who are hungry need to obtain food. For some, this is a temporary circumstance until they can get back on their feet again. For others, such as seniors living on a low fixed income, it is a persistent need. The strategies under this goal offer ways to ensure that everyone has access to the services they need.

Nancy Weed,
SNAP Outreach Coordinator

Nancy Weed told us about a great example in this category. In 2000, only about 56% of Oregonians who were eligible for SNAP (food stamps) actually received that benefit. The Oregon Food Bank and Oregon Hunger Task Force, in focus groups with clients and through visits to local food stamp offices, found that there were many barriers to participation. Sometimes applicants had to wait up to 3 hours or arrive at 7:00 AM. Some applicants had misinformation about their eligibility, considered the benefit “welfare,” or were daunted by the 32-page application packet.

Through a partnership with the Department of Human Services, systematic improvements have been put in place (e.g., scheduled appointments, same-day service, 2-page application, targeted information for seniors) so that today the participation in SNAP is above 80% of those eligible, according to the USDA. This means not only that more people were able to purchase the food they needed, but also that Oregon now receives an increase of over $1B per year in federal funds, a significant stimulus to the local economy.

We came away from our visit with Partners for a Hunger-Free Oregon feeling hopeful that meaningful change will actually occur. Why the optimism?

Partners for a Hunger-Free Oregon and the Oregon Hunger Task Force are collaborative, dedicated, and deeply experienced in sorting through what works and what doesn’t work. They keep going regardless of setbacks, adjusting the plan and approach to be more and more effective, more and more focused on root causes.

Their approach brings partnership among ALL stakeholders, from those who are hungry themselves to politicians, service agencies, ecumenical groups, social scientists, healthcare insurers, foundations – anyone and everyone who can help leverage positive change.

Partners for a Hunger-Free Oregon uses its own staff of 10 to work in areas where the need and the potential impact are high, but areas that other organizations are not covering. Currently, that means that Patti and Jessica do a lot of lobbying and coalition-building at the state level based on the goals and recommendations in Ending Hunger Before it Begins, and others work on specific strategies such as bringing better nutrition services to children and seniors.

Finally, the website is a rich source of thoughtful, practical, and clearly-presented information, freely available to anyone who’d like to help eliminate hunger in their community.

Thank you, Oregon, for showing the way!

SeaShare -- Leveraging the Generosity of the Seafood Industry

2011-08-17T17:30:00.002-04:00

In our visits to food banks and food pantries, we’ve noticed that the supply of food available for distribution to hungry Americans is often not what you’d call a balanced diet. There is typically enough shelf-stable, processed food such as cereal and pasta, canned fruits and vegetables, and dried beans. But often sorely lacking are fresh produce and high-quality, nutritious meat and fish. These foods are difficult for the supplementary food system to provide because they tend to be expensive, to require special storage and timely distribution, and to be available only in seasonal cycles.

We’ve reported earlier on numerous efforts to bring more fresh produce into the emergency food supply, but what about fish?

Jim Harmon and Mary Harmon
SeaShare

To find out, we traveled to Seattle, WA, the major commercial processing location for salmon, pollock, and halibut caught in the seas off the coast of Alaska. From Seattle, we boarded a ferry for the short ride to Bainbridge Island and climbed the hill to the small offices of SeaShare, where we had a lively conversation with Jim Harmon, Executive Director, and Mary Harmon, Business Manager.

SeaShare is the only non-profit organization dedicated to getting seafood into the emergency food network. It began in 1993 with a successful effort to amend the fishing rules so that fish inadvertently caught along with the target species could be distributed through hunger-relief agencies rather than being tossed back into the ocean. [This Federal Register page includes details of the Prohibited Species Donation Program.]

SeaShare has grown far beyond salvaging inadvertently caught fish. Today they facilitate large donations of seafood from commercial fisheries and arrange for appropriate processing, packaging, shipping, storage, and distribution to food banks through the Feeding America network.

Here’s one example, quoted from their website:

“… in our canned salmon program, SeaShare received donations of salmon from several salmon fishermen and seafood processors. These processors donated the salmon processing and canning at a reduced rate to SeaShare, the cans were supplied by a can company, freight companies shipped the canned salmon to the lower 48, label suppliers provided special SeaShare labels, labeling and inspection companies checked the cans and labeled them, and local warehouses stored them until they could be distributed. Our financial support helped to pay for those services that we could not obtain for free, which were donated at a substantially discounted rate.”

Other donations may require a different set of steps. For example, manufacturing fish patties from blocks of pollock requires breading and frozen distribution.

What makes SeaShare’s approach so impressive to us is the coalitions they put together to leverage the generosity of over 130 companies in the seafood industry. SeaShare captures the donation as close to the fish nets as possible, stringing together donations and reduced costs at every step of the processing necessary to provide Feeding America with appropriately packaged, healthy seafood. This approach means that SeaShare can produce a final donation that no single company could do on its own – high-quality seafood for an average of just 30 cents a pound. They’re on target to supply 1.5 million pounds of seafood this year alone.

But it's not easy. Jim and Mary described some of the challenges SeaShare faces:

Many people are not used to eating fish. They may eat canned tuna, but they are less familiar with salmon and other types of highly nutritious U.S. seafood. It’s very difficult to change people’s eating habits. To help, SeaShare prints recipes on their cans of salmon, distributes a fabulous salmon cookbook, and conducts fish preparation seminars and demos with celebrity chefs.
Funding is an on-going concern. We find it amazing that just 2 people (one of whom, Mary, works half-time) and an energetic board of directors can engage the seafood industry to make such generous donations each year. But that still means they have to raise the 30 cents a pound to cover their costs. While most non-profits receive much of their funding from individuals and foundations, SeaShare has limited public face and has typically relied mostly on monetary donations from within the same seafood companies that support them with donations of fish and processing. Broadening their financial base is an upcoming priority for SeaShare.
Finally, SeaShare finds that donations of seafood may not be appropriately valued by food banks. We agree. Food banks typically measure their success in pounds of food distributed per person in poverty. Their inventory tracking systems are not yet sophisticated enough to measure nutritional adequacy of the food they distribute. That means that at some level, a pound of salmon and a pound of potatoes have equal value. And it also means that supplemental food providers may not be doing as much as they could to help improve the health and nutrition status of hungry Americans.

As Jim says, “There are lots of societal problems that you can’t solve until people have the right food to think clearly, to work well, and to make better choices.”

We think SeaShare is a great example of a small organization leveraging a whole industry to improve the nutrition of hungry Americans.

Ensuring that No One in Alaska Goes Hungry

2011-07-24T23:24:00.000-04:00

Alaska is a grand and beautiful state, with mountain range after stunning mountain range! Its land area is huge compared to the size of the Lower 48. The population of Alaska is the 4th lowest of any state, at 710,231 people. That’s only 1.2 people per square mile, compared to the US average of 87.4.

Travel here is a challenge. There are roads, as long as you want to arrive from the Alaska Highway and drive around Anchorage, Fairbanks, or a few other places. About 80% of Alaskans live on the road system, or in Juneau, Kodiak Island, or other places served by ferries. But the remaining 20% live in the rural west or north, where there is no interconnected road system. The small villages provide conveniences such as schools, a store, a post office, a generator for electricity, and an airstrip.

Both overall cost of living and food are pricey in Alaska. A limited growing season and large areas of mountains and tundra mean that local agriculture is scarce. Most food is transported here, and the harder it is to reach an area, the more expensive groceries are. According to the University of Alaska Fairbanks 2010 food cost survey, food in all Alaska locations was more expensive than in Portland, OR, where it cost $106.66 per week to feed a family of four adequate nutrition at the lowest possible cost. Of the communities listed in Alaska, food costs were lowest in Fairbanks at $129.87 per week and highest in Bethel (where everything is shipped in by air) at $272.77 per week. Costs are even higher in the more remote villages.

Food insecurity rates in rural Alaska can rise as high as 30.4%. But wait! Aren’t Alaskans able to rely on subsistence hunting and fishing to meet their dietary needs? No. In 1999, rural Alaskans only acquired 35% of their food from subsistence hunting and fishing. It’s very important to ensure that for the “western” portion of their diets, they have access to healthy foods instead of just the highly-processed and over-sweetened food that tends to be available in small stores.

From left to right, Food Bank of Alaska's Mariko Churchill, Shipping Manager, Susannah Morgan, Executive Director,
Jim Mackenzie, Director of Development and Communication, and Robin Stilwell, Director of Advocacy

We were particularly interested in learning how supplemental food reaches people who need it in all parts of Alaska, so we visited the Food Bank of Alaska. We talked with Susannah Morgan, Executive Director, Jim Mackenzie, Director of Development and Communication, Mariko Churchill, Shipping Manager, and Robin Stilwell, Director of Advocacy, to learn how they’ve solved the complex challenges they face.

The Food Bank of Alaska is located in Anchorage, a logical placement since more than 60% of Alaska’s population lives nearby. Smaller partner food banks serve areas around Juneau, Fairbanks, Soldotna, and Kodiak, so altogether about 80% of the population of Alaska is located relatively near a food bank that can be used by local food pantries, soup kitchens, and shelters to obtain and distribute food to those in need.

But getting food to the rural villages is more of a challenge. In most cases, it needs to be delivered by air. Luckily, there’s a system that was put in place specifically for Alaska, called Alaska Bypass Mail, (See Chapter 8 in Intra-Alaska Mail Service by Air, USPS, 2000). Shipments of over 1,000 pounds can be sent to rural post offices for about $0.40 per pound. As Mariko explained, when a shipment is ready, she calls the post office, and the post office tells her which airline will take it and at what time. She delivers the shipment directly to that air carrier, bypassing the post office completely. Bypass shipping costs are much less than regular air freight rates or parcel post, but still much higher than the $0.07 that most food banks in the Lower 48 pay for truck shipping. For shipments that cannot go by Bypass Mail, Mariko maintains a large spreadsheet to keep track of what carriers can deliver shelf-stable, chilled, or frozen food to each agency and village.

Another complication in rural shipping is that IRS rules require that only 501(c)(3) non-profit or religious organizations can distribute donated food. Why is that an issue? Well, in rural Alaska, often the regional or village Alaska Native Corporation would be the most appropriate or only organization capable of managing food distribution. But, these native corporations are for-profit corporations created as part of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act in 1971. Therefore, instead of food donated or collected through food drives, all the supplemental food sent to most rural Alaskan villages is government-funded USDA food.

The Food Bank of Alaska runs three USDA commodity programs and two USDA child feeding programs for the state of Alaska:

The Emergency Food Assistance Program (TEFAP) for low-income Americans. Commodity foods come to the Food Bank and are given out to agencies in quantities dependent on the number of people in poverty that they serve.
Commodities Supplemental Food Program (CSFP) for seniors, post-partum women and children to age 6. The food bank assembles 1600 boxes per month containing cereal, juice, canned vegetables, canned fruits, peanut butter or dried beans, canned meat, pasta or rice, evaporated milk, and powdered milk. These boxes are only sent out to agencies where they can be trucked, and to Kodiak and Wrangell, where they have negotiated free shipping.
Food Distribution Program on Indian Reservations (FDPIR). Even though Native Alaskans don’t live on reservations, they may be eligible to choose between SNAP (food stamps) and this program designed for Native Americans who live great distances from a store. FDPIR is seen as a larger component of the family’s diet and includes larger quantities and more variety (perhaps 60 items) than the other commodity programs. Nevertheless, FDPIR is the smallest of the government programs because, as Susannah explained, in small villages that do have access to a reasonable store, SNAP provides a much better option – not only does it allow the client choice of foods to purchase, but it also supports the store and helps the local economy.
Child and Adult Care Feeding Program (CACFP). This program reimburses day care, after school, and recreational programs for food they provide to people in need. CACFP will also be growing, since the US Child Nutrition Act authorized payment for dinners at child care sites, and the increased reimbursement rate makes it financially feasible to ship food to rural Alaska locations.

Summer Food Service Program (SFSP), which reimburses programs for either lunch or dinner and breakfast or snack for eligible children or sites during the summer. According to Robin, SFSP is a proud recent addition and the fastest growing program run by the Food Bank of Alaska. The food bank is currently supplying summer lunches to 70 sites. For local sites, they contract with various vendors to supply freshly made lunches. For rural sites, they provide shelf-stable, bag lunches from JA Food Systems that meet all USDA requirements and can simply be handed out to each child.

Before an agency can receive food from any of the above programs, it must agree to follow the USDA guidelines for record-keeping. This isn’t a problem in the more populated areas, since the agencies tend to have stable staff who can take on this task. However, in the more rural areas where the agencies are very small and often run by one dedicated volunteer who may not be stay very long, the paperwork becomes more of a burden. Therefore, the Food Bank of Alaska does almost all the administrative work itself and only requires the sites to keep track of how many meals they serve or how many commodities they hand out.

In all, last year the Food Bank of Alaska provided about 6 million pounds of food to food-insecure Alaskans. This year, according to Jim, they’re on track to provide 6.5 million. That sounds like a lot, but according to Susannah, that’s only about half the amount required to provide adequate supplemental food for those in need in Alaska.

Beyond acquiring and distributing enough supplemental food, perhaps the biggest challenge is supplying fresh produce. The Food Bank of Alaska has tackled this issue for neighborhoods in Anchorage with their Mobile Food Pantry. Five days a week, the pantry takes produce out to low income communities. Produce that would go bad if held in the warehouse for another day can be on the table of a hungry person instead.

Susannah’s dream is to have a mobile food pantry with wings so some of that produce could reach sites off the road system.

Anybody got an extra airplane?

PEAS

2011-07-07T17:09:00.004-04:00

Approach Missoula, Montana, from the east and you experience the thrill of watching the mountains emerge in the west as you cross the high, open plains. This thriving city of about 67,000 on the banks of the Clark Fork River is the home of the University of Montana. From their campus, travel 2.5 miles or so north into the beautiful Rattlesnake Valley. See lovely level fields ringed by even lovelier mountains.

Notice the small “PEAS Farm" sign. Enter the parking lot beside the little straw-bale barn and see the rich fields, two to the north and two to the south, filled with lettuce, greens, strawberries, and radishes ready to harvest, and with all manner of other plants (squash, pumpkin, corn, etc.) lustily growing in preparation for a later harvest. If it were the morning that we were there, you might notice us working alongside a dozen or more young men and women, weeding these 10 acres of organically-farmed fields. You would feel their enthusiasm, their sense of community, and their vision for a healthier way to feed America and the world. PEAS stands for “Program in Ecological Agriculture and Society,” a program of study within the University’s Environmental Studies Department.

Josh Slotnick and Jason Mandala

We spoke with Josh Slotnick, Lecturer for Program in Ecological Agriculture and Society, and PEAS Farm founder and Director. Josh told us that the idea for the PEAS Farm (and the other farms under the umbrella of Garden City Harvest) came in 1996, when a coalition of far-thinking Missoulians came together to address a broad set of intersecting needs:

Some were anticipating the effects of the Republican Contract with America, specifically the changes in the welfare laws that limited who could receive government assistance and for how long. This would vastly increase the number of people in need of emergency food assistance. Could that food be healthy and include adequate fresh seasonal produce?
Simultaneously, others were seeing a need to teach students at all levels, from pre-school through graduate school, about gardening and healthy eating. Do we know where our food comes from, what's healthy, and how to produce it?
And still others were alarmed by statistics showing that local farming could not currently feed the community. More than 85% of the food dollars spent in the state of Montana go for food produced and trucked from elsewhere, and the average age of farmers is increasing (as of 2007, the average age of a farmer in Montana is 58). Could these trends be reversed and local farming again be seen as a community resource, bringing food security and better health to everyone?

All these needs are addressed at the PEAS Farm.

Interns operate the farm throughout the year, learning to farm organically, and taking that knowledge with them when they leave the University. Of the interns we worked with, at least one was actively looking to begin his own farm, one was hoping to take over his father’s farm, others mentioned careers in soil science or international sustainable agriculture, and all were at least destined to be acutely aware of what they eat and where it comes from.

In addition, interns learn the value of working together on humble tasks, solving problems as a team, and serving their community. Some of the produce is sold as shares in the farm’s Community-Supported Agriculture program or mobile farmer’s markets. Some is used each day by two interns who prepare a hearty lunch for the crew. The remainder is donated directly to the Missoula Food Bank) and the Poverello Center, which distribute it free of charge to those in need.

It’s not just the interns who demonstrate the priority that the PEAS Farm gives to education. The Farm also operates an extensive education program for kids in preschool through high school. Jason Mandala, Community Education Director, said that last year the Farm brought over 2500 children here for field trips. Many children are amazed to find out where their food comes from before it gets to the grocery stores. Jason lets the kids pick and taste whatever is ripe; he excites them about healthy eating and says he’s more successful than most parents are at getting their kids to eat vegetables. He told us one story about a kid coming back to the Farm for a second trip and asking hopefully, “Are we going to eat kale today?” Parents tell him, “We’re now eating this [fresh produce item] because our child said she wanted it.” And Josh said that he overheard a girl at the farmer’s market telling her mother, “If you have a bad day, eat kale.”

Will the PEAS farm help end hunger in America? Josh thinks it’s a piece of the puzzle, but that much more is needed. We need communities in which everyone can earn a living. And we need education and cultural change. "You can eat well on little money. But you can’t do it on highly processed, cheap food."

South Dakota Feeds Kids in the Summer

2011-07-01T19:00:00.003-04:00

During the school year, most children have a reliable source of lunch through the National School Lunch Program. In fiscal year 2010 over 20 million children received those lunches free of charge or at reduced rates because their family’s income is low. That’s over 65% of all meals served under the National School Lunch Program.

But what do those 20 million children do during the summer when school is out? Many are at risk of hunger. Families struggle to stretch their food dollars and food pantries often report increased demand during the summer months. One program meant to fill the summer gap is the Summer Food Service Program, established by congress in 1975.

Julie McCord, South Dakota
Child and Adult Nutrition Services

How does it work?

To find out, we interviewed Julie McCord, who manages all of the state's summer feeding programs through Child and Adult Nutrition Services, South Dakota Department of Education. Here are the highlights of this national program:

A site may qualify for the Summer Food Service Program (or related programs such as the National School Lunch Program’s Seamless Summer Option) if at least half the children they expect to serve are eligible for free or reduced-price school meals (family income below 185% of the poverty line). This means that “closed” programs, such as day camps or school programs for which children register, qualify based on the eligibility of the individual children. “Open” programs, in which any child ages 1-18 can come to eat, qualify based on the eligibility statistics in their geographic area.
Once the site is eligible, all of the children can eat for free. This greatly simplifies the bookkeeping for program directors and allows children who might just miss the eligibility criterion to eat for free.
Sites can choose to serve breakfast, morning snack, lunch, afternoon snack, or dinner (but not both lunch and dinner, for which the reimbursement rates are higher).
The USDA regulations for staff training, food quality and safety, meal plan options, and rules such as the meal components that all children must be served are very similar to those in place for the National School Lunch Program.

Pearl Haux prepares lunch

The Summer Food Service Program we visited is located at the Mobridge-Pollock School in Mobridge SD (population 3465). This beautiful new facility educates students from upper elementary through high school, all approximately 700 of whom are fed during the school year by Food Supervisor Pearl Haux and her staff. During the summer, Pearl continues to feed breakfast and lunch, to all children in the community who come. Adults can also eat here by paying the approximate cost of the meal.

Pearl said that it’s very hard to predict the number who will come – this year lunch has been served to between about 90 and 160. The day we were there, lunch was served to 127 children and 12 adults (including us!) Pearl estimated that she sees about 400 different children over the course of the summer.

We really liked this program, and here are some of the reasons:

This is a community program. The school superintendent believes that the community was generous in building this beautiful school, so the school should give back to the community. In addition to breakfast and lunch, the school hosts open gym for kids and various camps such as a wrestling camp. Kids from those programs and the nearby town pool and practice fields also eat here.
The school is located in a pedestrian-friendly neighborhood, so most kids appeared to walk over for lunch. We talked with one set of 6 kids, older ones babysitting younger ones, who told us they ate here most days and were walking over to Grandma’s house after lunch. Parents or daycare providers came with some of the younger kids.
Pearl knows the children she feeds, knows what they like, and truly loves feeding them well. The day we were there, the menu was soft tacos filled with beef and a variety of toppings that the kids could add themselves, corn, watermelon, and skim milk. We thought it was delicious, and so did the kids, though they told us that their favorite meal was what Pearl calls “super nachos.” Pearl had attended training the previous week on the new USDA nutrition guidelines so she could begin implementing them before they're required in 2012.
This program runs for the entire summer, unlike many that do not, due to financial or staffing limitations. In SD, only 46% of the summer food service programs this year plan to operate for the entire summer.
The availability of the program and the menus are well-advertised in town. Kids told us they checked the menus on the local cable TV station or in the newspaper.

Probably the biggest problem with summer food service programs is that there are not nearly enough to meet the need. Julie said that when school is in session, more than 56,000 South Dakota children receive free or reduced-price meals through the National School Lunch Program. During the summer of 2010, only about 10,000 children were fed.

This summer, there are 115 locations for summer feeding in South Dakota, operated by 66 sponsors – 35 sponsors operating Summer Food Service Programs are schools, Boys and Girls Clubs, YMCAs, and other local agencies; 31 sponsors are schools that are using the Seamless Summer option to continue their regular National School Lunch Program for some or all of the summer.

In each of the last few years, Julie has succeeded in increasing the number of Summer Food Service Programs operating in South Dakota. Each winter, she identifies areas that would qualify and contacts schools and other organizations to try to recruit them to sponsor summer food service programs. Sponsors may be most any school or governmental or non-profit organization. She asks food pantries to help identify local organizations that might be suitable sponsors. And she helps all applicants through the lengthy application and program planning process, including offering training in the details of the program for any applicant.

Nevertheless, more sites are needed if all hungry kids are to be fed during the summer. What are the obstacles?

Cost. Many organizations and schools that would be eligible can’t afford to offer summer food. USDA does reimburse at a congressionally-set rate per meal, but that reimbursement rarely covers the entire cost of the program. Even if the reimbursement covers food and labor costs, it may not be sufficient to cover additional costs, such as utilities, facilities rental, or transporting children to the meal or meals to the children.
Staff. Sometimes qualified food service workers are difficult to find. Regular staff may not want to continue working through the summer, and other potential staff may lack the training or readiness to follow USDA rules.
Facilities. Meals don’t have to be hot or prepared in professional kitchens, but even so, sometimes appropriate, food-safe facilities are not available in a community. For example, in some small communities, there is no school; the children attend boarding schools or are bused to school during the school year, but are home during the summer. If a school kitchen is not an option, Julie looks for another site that meets the requirements. It might be a church, a community center, a Boys and Girls Club, or a tribal building. But often these facilities in poor communities are in disrepair, have water or sewer issues, or are otherwise unsafe for preparing and serving food to children. Julie told us about one program sponsor that is busing kids to another facility until it can bring its own facility up to code.

There’s no federal money available to help with expenses such as facility repair. But we have heard that other hunger relief organizations, such as Share Our Strength and ConAgra Foundation, may be trying to help in this area.

It’s disappointing that more children aren’t being reached with the Summer Food Service Program. Apparently, the USDA agrees. In addition to encouraging more use of the program, they’re considering another idea, adding additional money to a family’s SNAP or WIC benefits in the summer to cover their increased expenses for school children’s meals.

We think that the Summer Food Service Program offers a very good program for feeding kids. Pearl agrees. She said she’d actually like to see the National School Lunch Program run more like Summer Food Service Program. “Many of the middle class families in Mobridge are really hurting, but they make too much money to qualify for free or reduced price lunches (or other benefits like SNAP and heating assistance). So I wish that I could serve all students breakfast and lunch during the school year, just like I do in the summer.”

Ruth Meiers Hospitality House

2011-06-30T19:58:00.001-04:00

While we were in Bismarck, we volunteered at the Ruth Meiers Hospitality House, which serves the homeless and those at risk of becoming homeless.

We toured the offices and outreach facility with Julie Huwe, and then helped Dale Romans prepare and serve supper to the residents of the men’s shelter. The menu was chicken quarters topped with pasta sauce and cheese, bread stuffing, creamed corn, and iced tea. It was easy to prepare, leaving us time to chat with some of the residents before dinner. The crowd was small, most watching TV and talking with each other as they enjoyed their dinners. We served about 15 of the 21 current residents and put a few meals into the refrigerator for late-comers.

Dale Romans

Ruth Meiers Hospitality House is a homeless shelter. It has two emergency facilities, one a men’s shelter and one a women and children’s shelter. Last year, all the beds were full for 276 of the 365 nights, and they housed 131 different men, women and children at different times. Hospitality House also has several transitional housing facilities for single men and women, with various entry and resident criteria, but all with on-site support staff. Residents are expected to progress toward permanent housing and to work towards gaining employment and/or income. Staff, including case managers, job service representatives, and an addiction/mental health counselor, help residents address their needs.

But Ruth Meiers Hospitality House is much more than just a shelter.

It is the “24/7 Single Point of Entry” to services for those that are homeless or at risk of becoming homeless in the Bismarck area. Here, clients in need can come to one place for all services rather than being referred to a number of different agencies.
It’s a place to obtain food. They house a food pantry, open 5 days/week. Like many other food pantries, it often suffers from a lack of some of the products they want to distribute. The food pantry has a refrigerator for storing perishables (when we visited, it contained only eggs, donated by a local farmer) and a freezer which held frozen meat, mostly donated by Walmart and other local supermarkets. They also sometimes receive meat from Sportsmen Against Hunger. Other protein sources and fast meals were in very short supply – see the empty shelves in this photo. Clients may use the food pantry once/month, and get about 20 lbs of food. There is also a “bread shelf” in the lobby, where anyone can come and pick up three packages of bread and rolls, collected daily from local bakeries and supermarkets by volunteers.

Julie Huwe showing us the food pantry at the
Ruth Meiers Hospitality House

The Stone Soup Kitchen, in existence since 1994, provides a free noon meal to homeless and low-income individuals in the community on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday. The meals are prepared and served by volunteers, and they have a waiting list for people who want to help!

This little shelter, run by compassionate people and home to so many other services, seemed to us uniquely fitted to meeting the needs of homeless and struggling people in Bismarck. We’re glad to have helped out in 1 small way.

What Does 7.8% Mean in North Dakota?

2011-06-30T18:42:00.001-04:00

Feeding America's Map the Meal Gap

See that largest light area on Feeding America’s Map the Meal Gap? That would be the state of North Dakota, which Feeding America estimates as having the lowest food insecurity rate in the nation – 7.8%. This is a very low rate! The next lowest is New Hampshire, with a rate of 10.0%, and the national average is 16.6%.

What does a state look like that has the lowest food insecurity rate? We went to North Dakota to find out. We expected to find little need for food assistance. Instead we found innovative state-wide programs facing special challenges in feeding hungry North Dakotans.

Melissa Sobolik,
Great Plains Food Bank

We began in Fargo, ND, where we interviewed Melissa Sobolik, Director of Member and Client Services at Great Plains Food Bank, the food bank that supplies all of North Dakota and one county of Minnesota with much of its emergency food, including TEFAP commodities. Then we traveled to Bismarck, the state capital, and talked with Arlene Dura, Director of Food Assistance Programs (including SNAP) for the North Dakota Department of Human Services.

We certainly heard about the challenges of reaching the population of North Dakota with services: North Dakota is largely rural, people here take great pride in their self-reliance, and currently, flooding is at disastrous levels.

Rural
The population of North Dakota is 672,591. Only 2 states have fewer residents (Vermont and Wyoming). About 39% of North Dakotans live in the 4 biggest cities, Fargo, Bismarck, Grand Forks, and Minot, but 2 whole counties have less than 800 residents each, and another 3 have populations between 800 and 2000. Some people need to drive 60 miles just to get to the nearest grocery store or social service office. The average distance clients drive to a food pantry is 48 miles.

What techniques are being used to reach this far-flung populace?

Arlene Dura, North Dakota
Department of Human Services

Arlene told us that there are county social services offices in 51 of the 53 counties (those two very sparsely populated counties are combined with a neighbor), and at least 7 counties staff satellite offices to better reach those in need. Several of these satellites are on the state’s 3 Indian reservations.

The county offices make the application process as efficient as possible. Each eligibility worker handles applications for all federal programs – SNAP, Medicaid, TANF, Child Care Assistance, Basic Care, and LIHEAP fuel assistance. In August, North Dakota added an on-line application process, which saves a client at least one trip to the county office. So far, they’ve received more than 2400 applications via computer. Applications are automatically routed to the correct county office, and someone in that office must follow up within one day. For expedited service (extreme need), applicants will have their benefits within 3 days, instead of the federally mandated 7 days. In addition, in cases of hardship (such as disability or lack of transportation), social service workers can conduct a phone interview instead of a face-to-face interview.

The Great Plains Food Bank is also specialized to supply programs and services to low-density rural areas.   For example, they will deliver to all pantries, not requiring any to come to their warehouse to pick up food. In 16 areas without adequate food pantries, they run mobile food pantries. They prepare 40-lb boxes of food, load about 800 boxes onto a semi, and go to a pre-arranged and advertised site. Clients line up in their vehicles, and workers try to provide one box of food for each person in the household. Melissa told us about one mobile food pantry where 500 cars were in line when the truck arrived, and 1400 people showed up. They had to ration the food that day, and next quarter, they may send 2 semis out to that location. At least 10 communities are on the waiting list for these mobile pantries.

Self-sufficiency
The SNAP participation rate in North Dakota in 2008 was 67%. How can more people actually receive the benefits to which they are entitled?

Melissa told us about the Great Plains Food Bank’s new outreach efforts. In partnership with the state, the food bank employs 3 SNAP outreach workers, who have visited every one of their 278 partner agencies to explain SNAP to those coming for service. These agencies include food pantries, senior programs, meal programs, and others.

The outreach workers found that there are many barriers to participation in SNAP. One of the main barriers is “Prairie Pride;” many North Dakotans choose not to admit that they are food insecure, preferring to just “make do.”   Other barriers are transportation, the distance to the social services office, and misconceptions about the programs (for example, that you can’t own a car, can’t have any assets, need to be fingerprinted, or shouldn’t take food assistance because someone else might need it more). It often takes several low-key visits to establish a relationship with a potential client, explain the SNAP program, dispel these misconceptions, and pre-screen clients for eligibility.  Outreach workers then do whatever’s necessary to help clients apply, including sometimes visiting their homes, helping to determine what paperwork will be needed, and delivering paperwork to the social services office.

North Dakota State Capitol in Bismarck, ND

Flooding
This year, North Dakota is experiencing an additional huge challenge – flooding, which is causing widespread damage in 3 major cities on 3 different rivers. Minot had just been declared a federal disaster area and has been authorized for individual assistance to those affected.

The response from the Department of Social Services was swift. Plans were in place ahead of time so that the day after the official disaster declarations were made, the plans could be submitted to the regional USDA office. The state used disaster overlay maps to identify all SNAP recipients affected by the flooding, and will give them an automatic replacement of their June SNAP grant, supplemented to the maximum amount allowed for their household size. They are also ready to offer emergency SNAP benefits to anyone who lost their job because of the flooding, with a shorter application process, and taking into account the extra costs such as emergency housing, and granting an immediate interview.

The Great Plains Food Bank is likewise implementing their disaster response plans, sending in extra food, as well as staffing an outreach office to help affected residents apply for SNAP benefits. They’re working very closely with the social services office to coordinate these plans.

7.8%?
So, after our visit to North Dakota, what do we think accounts for the low reported rates of food insecurity there?

First, although North Dakotans are not rich (their 2008-9 level of poverty and median income place them close to the national average), their unemployment rate is by far the lowest in the nation at 3.2%. Not only does this mean that more North Dakotans have regular income, but also that fewer are in the crisis adjustment stages of coping with job loss and learning to live on a lower budget.

Second, rates of food insecurity are partially determined by a US Census Bureau survey that asks questions about skipping meals, having too little money to afford balanced meals, and other things indicating that a household is at risk of hunger. Answers to these questions might be slightly biased on the low side due to North Dakotans’ traditional reluctance to admit hardship. They also are likely lower due to the fact that North Dakotans are blessed with an emergency food system that is highly tuned to meet their particular needs.

(Acknowledgment: Special thanks to Julia Brown at Feeding America, who helped us make sense of food insecurity measurement methods and what they mean.)

Ruby’s Pantry – Another Way to Stretch Your Food Dollar

2011-06-23T20:59:00.000-04:00

Packing Rolls for Distribution
at Ruby's Pantry

Where can you get about $75-100 of groceries for a donation of $15? We found one way when we volunteered for a day with Ruby’s Pantry in Cloquet, MN.

Ruby’s Pantry is one outreach program of a 501(c)(3) evangelical Christian organization called Home and Away Ministries, Inc. Ruby’s Pantry states its mission like this: "To procure and distribute corporate surplus food and goods to help fight poverty, hunger and disease in rural communities in the United States for those with low resources and in crisis through churches, food shelves and other local civic organizations."

All food distributed by Ruby’s Pantry has been donated to the central warehouse in North Branch, MN. From there it goes out to rural areas and small communities, mostly in northeastern Minnesota and northwestern Wisconsin, where 29 local churches or church groups hold Ruby’s Pantry distribution events, typically once a month.

We arrived at the Armory in Cloquet on the 4th Wednesday of June at 8:30 AM in a rainstorm with heavy winds. About 30 people were already crowded into the lobby waiting for the doors to open at 10:30. So that additional people wouldn’t have to wait outside in the rain, volunteers opened the doors as soon as there were chairs set up for them, began registration early, and announced to those who registered that distribution would start at 10:30 instead of 11:00. There are no qualifications for receiving food at Ruby’s Pantry, but each person is asked to register by name, make a donation of $15, and receive a number indicating their place in line to receive food.

Chris Egelkraut & Richard Moeding

Meanwhile, about 50 volunteers were busy preparing all the food for distribution. We signed in, got volunteer name tags, and joined in. Carolyn helped transfer small cubes of frozen scrambled eggs into gallon baggies. Betsy helped create bags of 15 frozen cheese rolls each. When those jobs were done, we helped load the two long lines of tables with all the food to be given out that day.

All the portions and setup were kept smoothly running by a host church representative, Pastor Rex Clyde, as well as two people from Ruby’s Pantry – operations manager Chris Egelkraut and truck driver Richard Moeding.

The food distributed differs each time, depending on what Ruby's Pantry has received in donations. Here’s what each person received the day we were there:

1 package of frozen barbecued beef ribs
2 packages of frozen chicken breast meat
1 bag of stuffing (larger than the supermarket size)
1 restaurant-sized can of vegetables such as peas, baked beans, beans, red kidney beans
1 bag of frozen scrambled eggs
2 loaves of cranberry walnut bread
1 bag of 15 frozen cheese rolls
3 cases of yogurt, each containing 12 Yoplait Splitz
6 cellophane tubes of Thin Mint Girl Scout cookies, equivalent to 3 boxes of cookies
32 ounces of whipping cream
6 pints of sweet tea
Choice of 1 miscellaneous item (e.g., a grab bag of 10 small items, or 1 large item such as a large bottle of cooking oil)

Registering (top) and Setting Up (bottom)

CIP Helpers

Volunteers who had worked for a few hours setting everything up went through the line first, followed by all the customers in numerical order. Each person pushed a shopping cart (lent for the day by a local grocery store) down one side or the other of the distribution area. Volunteers handed out each item, and the customers placed them into their own tubs or bags in the shopping carts. At the end they were helped out to their vehicles by nine inmates from the CIP program, Minnesota’s Challenge Incarceration Program, which includes a community service component. Most customers seemed very pleased by the food they received.

About 700 people have registered for the Cloquet Ruby’s Pantry so far this year. As is about typical, 202 people received food the day we were there, and about 8 new customers were turned away at the end of the morning when there were no more shares available.

One thing that impressed us about Ruby’s Pantry is the large reliance on good-hearted volunteers and donations. All the food is donated, all the on-site labor is done by volunteers and the CIP inmates, the Armory rental fee is waived for charitable organizations, and local stores donate bags and lend shopping carts. Some of the donation dollars go back to Ruby’s Pantry to help pay for transportation, and the remainder stays with the local sponsoring organization, which uses it for other charitable purposes.

Volunteers serving at Ruby's Pantry

We also appreciated that this program requires no qualifications to participate other than the expected donation. That factor appeared to us to foster a sense of dignity among all participants. There was also an eagerness to volunteer (almost all volunteers were also customers), and we heard from several volunteers that they were giving the food they got to a daughter or grandchild who was in tough circumstances.

All in all, Ruby’s Pantry had the feel of a community coming together to provide affordable food for everyone in need.

WIC Works

2011-06-23T12:59:00.001-04:00

In fiscal year 2010, the USDA spent approximately $94.8B on congressionally mandated food and nutrition assistance programs. The bulk (72%) went to SNAP (food stamps), followed by School Lunch (11%). The WIC program accounted for approximately 7% of the expenditures. WIC served 9.2 million people per month in 2010.

What is WIC? WIC is the common name for the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children. Its mission is “To safeguard the health of low-income women, infants, and children up to age 5 who are at nutrition risk by providing nutritious foods to supplement diets, information on healthy eating, and referrals to health care.”

But wait. Isn’t this what SNAP is for? Not exactly. Compared to SNAP:

WIC serves a much more tightly-defined population – just low-income, nutritionally at risk:
- Pregnant women
- Breastfeeding women (up to infant’s 1st birthday)
- Nonbreastfeeding postpartum women (up to 6 months after the birth of an infant or after pregnancy ends)
- Infants (up to 1st birthday). WIC serves 45-50 % of all infants born in the United States.
- Children up to their 5th birthday.
WIC is NOT an entitlement program. States receive a specific amount of money and can only enroll participants until their funding runs out.
All WIC services are tailored to the client’s health and nutritional status. WIC requires nutrition education, health monitoring, and regular appointments with WIC nurses at specific sites.
WIC vouchers supplement the client’s diet and may only be used for specific amounts of WIC-authorized foods.

These last two features of WIC are the reason community nutritionist David Holben at the University of Ohio said that he prefers the WIC model for supplemental food programs.

Ever since meeting Professor Holben, we’ve looked forward to visiting and learning about WIC from those who administer the program at the local level. We got our chance in Duluth, MN, where we met with Public Health Nurse Supervisor Luzette Samargia.

Luzette has been part of the WIC program since about 1978 when it was first introduced in this part of Minnesota. As part of her duties, Luzette now manages the County WIC program for the Department of Public Health and Human Services in St. Louis County, Minnesota’s largest county, which stretches from Duluth and Lake Superior in the south, through the Iron Range (Hibbing and Virginia), to the Canadian border in the north.

Luzette manages about 27 public health nurses and 3 dieticians, who as part of their jobs are highly trained to provide WIC health checks, breastfeeding encouragement, nutrition counseling for mothers and their young children, and appropriate WIC food vouchers. They do extensive outreach in community forums, hospitals, and newspapers to ensure that WIC reaches as many of those eligible as possible. Currently, about 4500 women, infants, and children receive WIC services in St. Louis County. And when a woman or child is no longer eligible for WIC, they ensure that any continuing needs are met by following up with regular home visits or by referring the client to other services.

When a pregnant woman or mother of young children wants WIC services, she typically calls the public health office and is screened for eligibility. The Minnesota Department of Health also has a simple on-line tool for assessing eligibility. Then she comes in to one of 4 WIC locations around the county. There she and her infants or young children meet with a public health nurse, who does the routine health checks, including height, weight, and routine blood work for children over age 6 months. The nurse assesses the family’s nutritional risks and needs and provides tailored nutrition counseling, using a variety of materials developed specifically for use by WIC mothers. Then the mother receives vouchers for WIC foods and learns about the process for using them. The WIC mother signs the vouchers once when she receives them.

One section of Minnesota's WIC Shopping Guide

She takes the WIC Shopping Guide with her to the store. This guide helps her to find the WIC-approved items that can be purchased with the voucher. For example, pictured here is the section on fresh vegetables.

At the register, she separates the WIC foods from other items she may be purchasing with SNAP benefits or with her own cash. The cashier checks the WIC items against the voucher, asks the woman to sign the voucher again, and keeps it for processing by the store. This somewhat complex process will be simplified within a few years, as the USDA is mandating that all states move to the use of electronic benefits cards for WIC by 2020.

Does WIC work? Luzette felt strongly that her WIC program has positive effects on those it serves. National studies are somewhat mixed (see The WIC Program: Background, Trends, and Economic Issues, 2009 Edition). But studies generally agree that WIC has positive impacts on healthy infants, such as mean birthweights, which also leads to savings in Medicaid costs.

WIC has generally not been found to significantly change food patterns of participants or to reduce the incidence of obesity. Thus, WIC programs are increasing their focus on nutrition education. And in 2009 the WIC nutrition advice and foods available with WIC vouchers were completely updated in accordance with current USDA guidelines. For example, WIC vouchers may now be used for fresh fruits and vegetables, more whole-grain products are required, and only milk with 2 percent or lower fat content is authorized for women and children age 2 and older.

Another reported issue with WIC is that WIC mothers may be less likely than non-WIC mothers to breastfeed their babies. It’s not clear whether this difference is due to a sampling bias (WIC mothers may differ from non-WIC mothers in other ways related to the choice of whether to breastfeed) or whether the WIC program actually causes more mothers to choose bottle feeding due to factors such as WIC subsidies for infant formula.

But we are glad to see that locally, regionally, and nationally, WIC programs are stepping up efforts to increase breastfeeding. In St. Louis County, certified lactation specialists are available in each office and more public health nurses are becoming certified. All WIC mothers are given advice about appropriately advancing their infant’s diet. The new Minnesota WIC Shopping Guide offers simple reasons for breastfeeding and strong encouragement, including a reference to La Leche League. Women who are fully breastfeeding receive larger portions of WIC foods and also receive vouchers for canned tuna and salmon. And at the federal level, when Congress reauthorized WIC as part of the Healthy, Hunger-free Kids Act of 2010, the bill included additional incentives for states to more strongly encourage breastfeeding.

In short, we believe that WIC is evolving to be a very good model for providing need-based and outcome-based, supplemental nutritional assistance.

Growing Power, an Inspiring Farm in Milwaukee, WI

2011-06-19T22:50:00.000-04:00

Will Allen

Former pro basketball player Will Allen has a vision – helping to provide equal access to healthy, high-quality, safe and affordable food for people in all communities. He’s providing a model to revise our whole food system.

In today’s big industrial food system, many of our vegetables are grown on a few hundred square miles of farmland in California, picked before it’s ripe, shipped for days using precious fossil fuel, then stored in warehouses and sent to supermarkets, where the vegetables can sit for many more days. This process robs vegetables of nutrients and taste.

Growing Power Community Food Center, Milwaukee, WI

By contrast, Will Allen envisions a system where food is grown locally, even in the winter, harvested at its peak, used within 1-2 days of being harvested, and available at a fair price for everyone, even those living in grocery store deserts in the inner city. How does he hope to bring that vision to fruition? To find out, we visited and spent a day volunteering at the Growing Power Community Food Center, the urban farm started by Will Allen on two acres in one of the poorer neighborhoods of Milwaukee.

We were very impressed by just how cleverly the Community Food Center grows large amounts of produce in very little space. In 6 greenhouses and 10 “hoop houses” (metal hoops with polyethylene stretched over them), this farm grows sprouts (we tasted 4” high pea sprouts) and baby greens in every available spot. Flats of soil are “overseeded” and when the mass of leaves reaches 4-6” high, in 12-14 days, workers “shave” them, wash the harvested greens twice, spin them, and package them. Other vegetables we saw in flats included tomatoes, squash, cucumbers, peppers, kale, cabbage, broccoli, and various herbs, some of which were destined for sale or for use in other garden projects around the city.

Jacqueline explains aquaponics

Also in the greenhouses are several aquaponics systems. Tilapia and yellow perch grow in 80 foot-long fish runs on the lowest level. The water is pumped up into two tiers of slightly tilted gravel beds. As the water flows through these upper beds, the nitrites from the fish waste are converted to nitrates by bacteria on the rocks, and then plants use the nitrates as fertilizer. Some levels contain pots of various food plants sitting in the gravel beds, and other levels contain watercress growing directly in the gravel. The purified water flows back into the fish runs, thus making a closed loop system. The fish are fed three times/day and reach marketable size in 9-15 months (depending on the type of fish). Fish are sold live to restaurants and the public. And the tomatoes we helped pot and place on the top tier will provide tomatoes for area residents well into the winter.

Kids learning how worms make soil

Growing Power creates its own rich soil. First, compost is created by mixing farm plant waste, manure, food scraps from grocery stores and food preparers, wood chips from the city, and beer mash from a local brewery, and allowing it to mature for about a year. Second, the compost is put in bins with red wriggler worms for 4 months. And finally, the worm castings are harvested and mixed with coconut husk fibers to improve the soil’s wicking properties.

The compost (before the worms get it) gets so hot (up to 180 degrees) that Growing Power piles it along the outside of the hoop houses in the winter to heat them. This allows them to grow produce year-round with little if any supplemental heat.

The Growing Power Community Food Center also raises animals. There are beehives for pollination, honey, and teaching. There are turkeys, ducks and chickens for eggs, and goats to teach milking and cheese making.

Some of Growing Power's beehives

Everything on the farm is used and reused. In addition to composting all organic waste, they use some of the compost to make compost tea for fertilizing their plants. They use sunlight for growing, and they also have solar electric and solar hot water panels to provide some of their energy needs. They collect rainwater for the fish runs and watering. They use pots and flats until they fall apart, and even the slugs we cleaned out of the slug traps were fed to the chickens.

The produce that the farm grows is supplied to local residents in many ways – sold in their small store individually or through “market baskets” that contain enough produce for a family of 4 for a week, sold on contracts to local schools and restaurants, and donated to the local food bank.

The Community Food Center also provides training and a wide variety of jobs for people in the area. Interns come from all over the US to work for the summer. School children and adults learn about growing food and Growing Power methods through hands-on experiences and weekend workshops.

Growing Power is much more than the Community Food Center farm and national headquarters that we saw in Milwaukee. There are many other sites that are part of, or supported by, Growing Power, including several other urban sites in the Chicago area and several other growing spaces from small demonstration gardens to more spacious farm plots.

Altogether, Growing Power reported that in 2010 they grew enough food to feed 12,000 people, including more than $500,000 worth of crops and 100,000 fish. They hosted over 15,000 visitors and 3,500 volunteers, and they trained 1000 beginning farmers and over 1000 youths.

Will Allen and Growing Power challenge our current assumptions about how and where to grow the food we eat. We found the approach to be ecologically responsible, surprisingly effective for northern climates, and potentially a route to making more nutritious food available to underserved areas.

The Salvation Army -- Mobile Outreach to Hungry and Homeless

2011-06-16T18:44:00.000-04:00

Claudia Rowland,
Divisional Social Services Director

Most Americans know The Salvation Army through those famous red kettles into which bell ringers encourage us to place our money at Christmastime. A tremendous amount of good flows from these and other funds – in 2008 over 30 million Americans received help from The Salvation Army.

But The Salvation Army is not fundamentally a social service organization – it is a worldwide evangelical Christian denomination, founded about 1865 in London and “dedicated to bringing people into a meaningful relationship with God through Christ.” For soldiers in The Salvation Army, “Christianity is synonymous with service.”

To learn more, specifically about the role The Salvation Army plays in feeding hungry Americans, we visited the Chicago Metropolitan Division. Claudia Rowland, Divisional Social Services Director, gave us an overview. In addition to disaster services and volunteer programs, most services of The Salvation Army are offered through Corps Community Centers. In the Chicago area 30 centers provide traditional church ministries integrated with a very large number of direct social services. Among the services at each center is a food pantry that distributes food to anyone in need. Food comes through direct donations, FEMA, and the Greater Chicago Food Depository. The Salvation Army also runs the Golden Diners Service that feeds over 4,000 seniors in the western suburbs of Chicago.

The Salvation Army houses about 1,000 people a day in its 5 Chicago-area residences, people in need of a place to stay and more. In spite of this, and efforts by the City of Chicago and other social service agencies, hunger, homelessness, and addiction remain in wide-spread pockets throughout Chicago. According to Ms. Rowland, The Salvation Army decided that rather than constructing another building, their best chance to help these individuals was to reach out to them where they were already congregating.

Captain Nancy Powers and Christine B. Henry

Thus, in 2008, Captain Nancy Powers, Director of the Chicago Harbor Light Center, began the Mobile Outreach program. Christine B. Henry, now Director of Homeless Services, was its first case worker.

Mobile Outreach is similar to Mobile Feeding, a program of The Salvation Army that delivers hot meals to people at about 25 locations a day throughout Chicago. But Mobile Outreach is more – rather than quickly moving from site to site, it remains for up to 2 hours at each of 5 sites, 5 days a week. Sites are chosen to be close to those in need, but are sometimes adjusted based on safety concerns relayed by town officials or police.

In addition to providing hot food and a chance for those served to know that they are not forgotten, Mobile Outreach includes full case management for anyone who wants it. The Mobile Outreach truck incudes a small private office area for case workers to meet with individuals who would like further services. Anyone who is ready to move to residential or treatment programs can be transported there immediately in the “chaser” van.

Who are the people served by Mobile Outreach? Captain Powers shared some general statistics and trends with us. Although the largest percentage (about 45%) are between the ages of 31 and 50, more teens and seniors are now coming for services. The teens may have been put out of their homes due to drug use or misbehavior, and the seniors may be unable to pay for food as well as rent and medications. About 61% are single men, 17% women with child(ren), 16% single women, and the remainder men or couples with child(ren). About 89% are African American. Nearly ¾ have no income. About 24% are homeless, 35% are living in emergency housing, and 21% are living with relatives or friends. Many are ex-offenders, and many suffer from drug and/or alcohol abuse, mental illness, physical disability, and domestic violence.

Warren Peeler and Trina Poole

We volunteered for a day with Mobile Outreach. In the morning, driver BJ, food server Warren Peeler, and case worker Trina Poole made sure the truck (affectionately named “Ladle”) had all the bowls, cups, napkins, and other supplies it needed. Then they loaded the food:

5 large canisters of spicy vegetable soup that had been freshly prepared in the Harbor Light kitchen that morning
3 large cold drink dispensers (2 with fruit drink, 1 with water)
2 boxes of sliced bread of various types
1 box of apples

Our tour of duty lasted all day, with breaks between stops, and covered about 24 miles. We helped serve juice and bread, handed out apples to those who could eat them, and talked with many of the people who came for food. Here are a few things that impressed us:

Everyone seemed to appreciate the soup and to like how hearty and flavorful it was (even if they might have preferred chili-mac).
We served a huge range of people, approximating the statistics Captain Powers had shared with us.
Warren, who himself is a graduate of Harbor Light’s addiction recovery program, was masterful at keeping to the rules of safe food handling, recognizing and enthusiastically welcoming the people we served, and watching out for the orderliness of the operation and safety of the staff and clients.
Trina, who has her master’s degree in social work and prior experience working with people who are homeless, engaged folks in easy conversation, provided information about The Salvation Army’s services, as well as services from other agencies, and after private consultation, started one young man on the road to permanent housing and mental health services.

We completed our day extremely grateful that these wonderful people of The Salvation Army are ministering to the very poor with such compassion and such ready connection with the services they may need. Claudia Rowland, Nancy Powers, and Christine Henry all agreed that the biggest challenge facing The Salvation Army going forward is funding. In this economy, it is extremely difficult to come up with the money to continue valuable services such as those we saw in Chicago.

We know that we’ll be contributing generously to those red kettles and more.

Wheeler Mission Ministries -- Help for People without Homes

2011-06-11T15:31:00.000-04:00

How many people are homeless in the US? According to the US Department of Housing and Urban Development:

“On a single night in January 2009, there were an estimated 643,067 sheltered and unsheltered homeless people nationwide.” (page i)
“Nearly 1.56 million people used an emergency shelter or a transitional housing program during the 12-month period (October 1, 2008 through September 30, 2009).” (page iii)

People who are homeless represent about 5% of those seeking emergency food assistance in the US (Hunger in America 2010, page 66), but they face huge challenges when it comes to securing reliable, adequate, and healthy food for themselves and their families.

Facing Hunger in America’s summer 2011 trip began in Indianapolis, IN, where the most recent single-night count of people who are homeless found over 1500 individuals. To better understand services for these individuals, we visited Wheeler Mission Ministries.

Bethany Alvis

Founded in 1893, Wheeler Mission Ministries has a long and fascinating history. It is one of the 250+ Gospel Rescue Missions in the US and Canada, many of which also were founded over 100 years ago. Today, Wheeler Mission Ministries is a thoroughly modern social service agency focused on providing “Christ-centered programs and services for the homeless and those in need.”

Wheeler Mission Ministries is the largest organization of its kind in Indiana, with 120 employees and an annual budget of $6.5 million; 76% of the funding comes from individual donors and the remainder from foundations and grants. Wheeler receives no federal funding. Bethany Alvis, Community Outreach and Volunteer Coordinator for Wheeler Mission, described the various ministries -- men’s and women’s emergency services, residential programs, addiction recovery, and jobs programs, housed in Wheeler Mission’s eight separate centers in Indianapolis.

Wheeler Mission Ministries'
Center for Women and Children

We visited and volunteered at the Center for Women and Children, where Shawnna Rice, volunteer coordinator and case worker, gave us a tour of the beautiful facility. This 10-story former hotel had been purchased by Wheeler Mission Ministries in 1991, refurbished first as a community center, and recently as the home for most of the women’s programs. Five floors are used for housing for different programs, and the other floors contain a library, classrooms, a computer room, a job search center, lounge areas, showers, laundry, and offices. A rear wing contains the kitchen and dining area, with a full-sized gym above. A side wing houses mothers and their children, where each family unit has a bedroom, small sitting area and bathroom. The basement has a medical clinic as well as the child care center which has direct access to the playground.

Here, women who are homeless stay on a short-term emergency basis for up to 30 days, or longer if they are taking part in a program, such as Fresh Start or the Working Guest Program, to help them become independent and to acquire job and life skills they may need. Also, women seeking recovery from addictions begin the Higher Ground Addiction Recovery Program here before transferring to the long-term residence dedicated to that program. Children who live here either attend the on-site pre-school and daycare center or ride a school bus to the school they attended before their family became homeless.

Shawnna Rice

At the Center for Women and Children, we were impressed by the huge number of carefully tuned services nested within each of the programs, everything from health clinics and legal aid to child care and computer access. There are classes on conflict resolution, parenting, budgeting, physical fitness, nutrition, computer skills, GED preparation, business writing, and preparing for the workplace. Counseling helps with goal setting and emotional issues.

We don’t have detailed statistics, but to us it appeared that Wheeler Mission’s success rate is high. One figure we heard is that those who complete the addiction recovery program are four times less likely to return to substance abuse than the rate reported by other programs. In talking with guests and residents, we heard many stories of people successfully overcoming homelessness or other serious life difficulties. We were impressed by these hallmarks of the Wheeler Mission approach:

It is Christ-centered. All program participants are required to participate in Bible study and to attend a church of their choice. The addiction recovery programs are based on spiritual renewal.
It’s not just about shelter and food. The focus is on long-term, phased programs that are tailored to the needs and strengths of individual men and women. Wheeler Mission follows its people after they complete the programs, and many graduates are now interns, mentors, and employees.
Programs for men and women differ, based on what Wheeler Mission has learned works best for each. For example, women’s programs tend to be smaller, focused more on emotional, relationship, and self-esteem issues.
Rather than providing services on the street to people who are homeless, the focus is on providing services in the residential environment, where other services are more readily available and where opportunities to return to self-sufficiency are greater.

Pamela Ealy & Patricia Stafford

Our volunteering consisted of helping in the kitchen, where kitchen assistant Pamela Ealy and intern Patricia Stafford put us to work. Pamela and Patricia are both graduates of the Higher Ground program. Pamela also completed job training at Second Helpings, a food rescue organization that also runs a culinary school. Patricia is hoping to enter that program in a few weeks.

Kim Clanton, head of food service for the Center, told us that 90% of the meals are homemade. They use donated food, although she does need to buy some things from her small budget. Much of the produce and some prepared food comes from Second Helpings.

Serving dinner with fellow volunteers
Carol and Elizabeth

Our kitchen jobs included preparing two turkeys for roasting the next day, chopping vegetables for a salad bar for Saturday lunch, and assembling a punch-bowl cake. At dinner, we helped serve barbequed chicken breast, macaroni and cheese, green beans, and cake to about 60 people, children first. Most were residents, but a few were people who came in from the street. Portions were ample, and many people returned for seconds or thirds. Dining room cleanup and dish washing was handled by residents whose turn it was to perform this chore.

We wondered what Wheeler Mission Ministries would recommend that others (like you and I) should do to help those who are homeless. Here’s some of what Bethany said:

Acknowledge them – each is a human being, so make eye contact and say hello. If the situation is safe, engage in conversation.
Don’t give money – instead, encourage them to seek assistance at a local shelter or give tangible resources like socks, granola bars, fresh water, bus tickets, or gift certificates to fast-food restaurants.
Become an advocate – support local programs designed to assist people who are homeless.
Pray for them.

Sweet Charity?

2011-05-07T14:44:00.004-04:00

I recently read a thorough and insightful critique of hunger relief programs in the US – Sweet Charity? Emergency Food and the End of Entitlement, by Janet Poppendieck, Professor of Sociology at Hunter College, City University of New York. Even though it was published in 1999, I was struck by how closely this work mirrors the much less formal observations we have made so far in our Facing Hunger in America project. If change has occurred, it has only amplified the issues Poppendieck raises.

As part of her work, Poppendieck describes what she calls “the seven deadly ‘ins’” of the emergency food system in the US. These can be read both as issues that all workers in emergency food struggle to overcome and as fundamental indictments of the whole approach to providing food to hungry Americans. The ‘ins’ are:

Insufficiency – all food banks, pantries, food distribution programs, and feeding programs struggle to maintain and provide enough food to meet the ever-expanding need. What they can provide is far below what recipients need to sustain themselves and their family.
Inappropriateness – food that is handed out to people can never be as good a match to what people of different cultures, tastes, and cooking abilities want as if they were able to shop for themselves.
Nutritional Inadequacy – food available for hunger relief tends to be skewed to the unhealthy, heavy on fats, sweets, and processed foods, light on meats, vegetables, and fresh produce.
Instability – food donations, government surpluses, public and private funding, and volunteer hours are all highly variable and unreliable.
Inaccessibility – access to emergency food is not tuned to the needs of an area. Instead, hunger relief programs typically begin when someone is moved to provide one. Wealthy communities may provide duplicate services, while remote and poverty-stricken areas may have little to offer.
Inefficiency – hunger relief programs do the best they can and try to deliver their food efficiently. But it is fundamentally a duplicate system that only works because it is operated largely by volunteers.
Indignity – providing charitable food necessarily creates an “us vs. them” dynamic.

After describing how attached we (as individuals, providers, corporations, and government) have become to the charitable food system, Poppendieck reflects, “… we must consider the possibility that emergency food actually contributes to the problem it tries to solve.” (p. 295) Even if we effectively mitigate all the ‘ins,’ we will not have created an effective way to provide healthy, affordable food to all. Instead, we will have institutionalized the inequality between providers and recipients, and we will have convinced ourselves and our children that providing food this way is an adequate response to the problem.

So what should we be doing? I wish Poppendieck had provided more discussion and a fuller set of examples. But her basic argument is that we must shift the balance from charity toward advocacy, from working to provide food to working to provide a just society.

“We need to imagine and then create a movement that will reduce poverty by helping us all, a movement that will integrate rather than segregate poor people, that will cast them in the role of our fellow workers for the greater good rather than grateful recipients of our exertions on their behalf.” (p. 316)

Do you know of effective programs focused on advocacy and grass-roots actions for a more equitable society? Please share!

Rethinking Walmart

2011-03-26T18:16:00.001-04:00

We admit it – we are among those who haven’t always had a positive impression of Walmart.

We worry about reports of this retail giant putting local stores out of business and engaging in questionable employment and sourcing practices.

But recently, we’ve noticed headlines like these:

April 7, 2010: Feeding America Names Walmart and Sam’s Club Donor of the Year 2010
May 12, 2010: Wal-Mart Gives $2 Billion to Fight Hunger
November 15, 2010: Walmart Announces Holiday Campaign Focused on Fighting Hunger
January 20, 2011: Wal-Mart Unveils Plan To Make, Sell Healthier Foods
January 21, 2011: Walmart joins First Lady Michelle Obama's Let's Move campaign
February 25, 2011: Walmart makes good on hunger promise
March 25, 2011: Walmart Foundation Awards $5 Million to Fight Senior Hunger

Also, as we visited food banks and pantries in places such as Michigan, Delaware, Mississippi, and Texas, we observed large donations of fresh produce and other grocery items coming in from local Walmart stores. And we heard food bank personnel express deep appreciation for the refrigerated trucks donated by Walmart.

We decided to learn more by going to Bentonville, Arkansas, headquarters of Walmart and workplace of some 16,000 corporate employees. The unassuming home office, remodeled from a warehouse, contains a sea of office cubicles and seems heavily focused on meetings with suppliers. But it’s also the home of the Walmart Foundation, where we had an engaging and informative conversation with two of the people responsible for hunger-related charitable giving, Julie Gehrki, Senior Director, and Maeve Miccio, Manager.

Walmart Foundation's Maeve Miccio and Julie Gehrki

We learned that the Walmart Foundation is closely tied to the rest of the Walmart Corporation. Its 32 employees are “on loan” to the Foundation from Corporate Affairs, their budget is determined like that of any other Walmart department, and Foundation employees are privy to Walmart’s overall commitments and goals. Michael T. Duke, Walmart President and CEO, also chairs the board of the Walmart Foundation.

At Walmart, charitable giving occurs on many levels – individual donations such as payroll deductions and contributions based on the hours an employee works for a non-profit organization, store-controlled grants to local organizations, and state and national-level giving coordinated by the Walmart Foundation.

Julie credits Margaret McKenna, President of the Walmart Foundation since 2007, with leading the Foundation to a more forward-thinking and effective corporate-level philanthropic approach. The focus on hunger as the signature issue for Walmart Foundation emerged because it leverages Walmart’s core capabilities to:

close gaps in the emergency food system
increase access to nutritious foods
help people realize long-term solutions to hunger

Hunger is partly about food, and Walmart has lots of food! Walmart is the largest grocery retailer in the U.S. Walmart employees are concentrating on zero waste, so it makes sense to ensure that they know how to pull and donate produce and other food before it becomes out of date. Walmart developed a special bar-code system to scan out their donated food to ensure that it could be recalled from food banks in case of any product safety issues. Walmart also developed and gave to competitors and Feeding America a special fast-freeze process to extend the shelf-life of certain donated foods such as milk.

According to Julie, food donations totaled over 250 million pounds last year. Food bank directors have told her that they receive as much as 35% of their food from Walmart, that it’s higher quality food, and that it consists of more fresh produce, meat, and dairy products than they typically get from other sources.

Food banks are the main route through which donated food is distributed to those in need. Walmart’s warehouse and distribution system personnel can (and do) assist food banks in things like warehouse layout, handling of perishable food, and best shelving and cold storage solutions. And Walmart donated over 150 refrigerated trucks to food banks and Meals on Wheels.

But another reason the focus on hunger makes sense for the Walmart Foundation is that Walmart customers may be more likely than average to experience food insecurity. The average income of Walmart customers is below the national average. As Julie said, “Everything the Foundation does is to benefit low-income people. The people we serve are those who are also benefiting from social services at some point, so we take seriously the fact that all the programs we support move people up ladders toward self-sufficiency.”

Among the hunger-relief programs that have received cash donations (totaling over $500M in the last 2 years) from the Walmart Foundation are

Meals on Wheels
Share Our Strength for their Cooking Matters program
Summer feeding programs for children through the National Recreation and Park Association
Partners for Breakfast in the Classroom
Meals at Boys and Girls Clubs of America
Feeding America and many food banks, including the 5 winners of the recent facebook contest

Walmart has made a huge public commitment to nutrition, to reducing sodium and sugar, to purchasing local produce when possible, to increasing the availability of organic food, and to making healthy food more affordable. This will benefit all customers and increase the likelihood that people purchasing food on a tight budget will be able to serve nutritious meals.

It appears to us that Walmart has the power, intention, and momentum to truly reduce hunger in America.

How Hungry is YOUR County?

2011-03-24T22:16:00.000-04:00

Elaine Waxman, Feeding America's
Vice President for Research and Partnerships,
at the Map the Meal Gap press conference

Did you know that nationwide, over 50 million people aren't sure that they can obtain the food they need to maintain a healthy lifestyle?
Did you know that food insecurity exists in every county in the US, at rates from 5% to nearly 38% of residents.
How about that the 5 counties that grow the most food also are among the hungriest, with food insecurity rates of more than 20%?
How about that the cost of food per person per meal for the USDA’s thrifty food plan varies in different counties from $1.87 to $4.42?

These, and many other facts, come from an extensive new study called Map the Meal Gap 2011. This study by Feeding America was supported by the Howard G. Buffett Foundation and The Nielsen Company. Craig Gundersen of the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana was the lead researcher.

We attended the press conference via video today to hear the announcement of the results. The study’s aim is to provide regional data to help food banks and their member agencies determine how best to serve the clients in their areas. As Howard G. Buffett said at the press conference, “When you have bad information, you make bad decisions.” He wanted to help Feeding America have the best data possible, so those working on hunger relief could make good decisions.

From Feeding America's new study, Map the Meal Gap

The county food insecurity data for various income levels was estimated from state and county-wide unemployment, poverty, income levels and demographic data, along with state food insecurity data. The meal costs came from actual grocery store data in each county.

You can find YOUR state and county's food insecurity
rates on Feeding America's interactive map.

We find it really impressive that this huge set of data is available in such an easy-to use form. It will be a powerful tool for all hunger-relief organizations, community leaders, and concerned citizens to identify what types of programs would best serve the needs of their communities. Check it out to see where your county falls!

Oklahoma City Indian Clinic

2011-03-23T15:11:00.000-04:00

We have written before about the health issues often associated with food insecurity in America, issues such as obesity, diabetes, and heart disease. In addition to ensuring that healthy food is available through food banks, food pantries, and SNAP benefits, what should be done to stem the tide of these insidious conditions?

One population that has a very high incidence of these health problems is American Indians. American Indians in the US suffer from food insecurity and poverty at twice the rates of the general population. But American Indians suffer from disproportionately higher rates of obesity, diabetes, and other related health issues than would be predicted by socioeconomic status alone.

Why?

First, there is a genetic component – some tribes appear to be particularly susceptible to diabetes. For example, the Tohono O’odham tribe in Arizona is reported to have the highest rate of adult onset diabetes in the world, up to 70%. Other tribes have lower diabetes rates, but still higher than other ethnic groups.

A second factor is diet. Today, American Indians are not generally eating the traditional diet to which they had adapted. The Tohono O’odham tribe had no reported cases of diabetes in 1960, when they ate mostly traditional foods rather than a diet high in fat and calories.

In the 19th century, many American Indian tribes were forcibly removed from their ancestral lands and lost access to their traditional foods and methods of acquiring it. In the mid 1930’s, the US government created the commodity program to distribute excess food, and in 1949 the program was expanded to explicitly include American Indians. Today, the Food Distribution Program on Indian Reservations (FDPIR) provides commodity foods to low-income Native Americans and serves as an alternative to SNAP in areas of the country where access to grocery stores is limited.

Initially, commodity foods were high in fats and refined carbohydrates (e.g., white flour, lard, butter, cheese). Today, the commodities provided are healthier, but still higher in refined carbohydrates and fat than the ancestral American Indian diet. Partly in response to the available commodities, Indians developed new “traditional” foods, such as fry bread, that provided less than optimal nutrition.

Steve Barse, shown beside painting
by Thomas Poolaw, Kiowa/Delaware

The state of Oklahoma has the second largest number of American Indians in the country (8.6% of the state's population), and is the home of 39 Indian tribes. We visited the Oklahoma City Indian Clinic to learn about their nationally recognized approach to prevention of these health problems. Our host was Steve Barse, Community Liaison; and we also spoke with Diane Brown, Health Promotion and Disease Prevention Director, David Toahty, Chief Development Officer, and Hazel Lonewolf, Epidemiologist/ Quality Improvement Coordinator. Here is some of what we learned.

The clinic is open to any American Indian with a Certificate of Degree of Indian Blood. It has served patients from 220 of the nation’s 569 different Indian tribes. About 70% of their 16,000 patients have no health insurance, so most of the funding for the clinic comes from the Indian Health Service and grants. About 10% of their patients have diabetes, and 60-70% are overweight or obese.

Diane Brown serves veggies at Turtle Camp

In an effort to cut their rate of diabetes and obesity, the clinic offers a large number of wellness programs focused on disease prevention for both children and adults. One that especially caught our attention is Turtle Camp (Teaching Urbans Roads to Lifestyle and Exercise) – a diabetes prevention and wellness program for children ages 6-12.

We got a first-hand look at Turtle Camp, which was underway during the children’s spring break at a local camp facility just outside the city. There were about 52 children in attendance, all patients at the clinic. We helped one day to serve lunch, assess the children’s post-camp understanding, and observe their final fun activities.

One aspect of the nutrition education they’d received that really impressed us was the focus on “everyday” foods and “sometimes” foods. Healthy foods that should be eaten every day, such as fruits and vegetables, were contrasted with food that should only be eaten occasionally, such as cookies and French fries. During the post-camp evaluation, we felt that most kids grasped and could use this distinction. (See also the similar 3-part distinction of “Go, Slow, and Whoa” foods from the National Institutes of Health.)

Ropes Course at Turtle Camp (photo by Andii Tittle)

The staff uses Turtle Camp to “get in all the healthy living education they can.” For example, the camp curriculum also included education on resisting drugs, alcohol,and tobacco. The kids also have lots of time for physical activities. We watched them shoot arrows, trust each other on a low ropes course, and have the thrill of sliding along a low zip line. We also heard about canoeing and playing outdoor games. The kids were obviously having a wonderful time! To help reinforce Turtle Camp’s messages, the kids set at-home goals for themselves and parents receive recipes and cost information on the healthy food that the kids ate during the day.

Archery at Turtle Camp

Turtle Camp does seem to have a long-term positive effect. (See The IHS Primary Care Provider, Volume 30 Number 7, 2005, pages 180-181.) We were told that Turtle Camp kids are monitored and a reunion is held about 6 months later to see how they’re doing on the goals they set regarding activity and nutrition. Only a very small number of the kids who have been to Turtle Camp have developed diabetes as teens. Turtle Camp was among the programs that won an Indian Health Service National Health Promotion/Disease Prevention award for exceptional performance in 2009. (See American Indian Horizons, Spring 2009, page 11.)

In addition to Turtle Camp, the clinic offers a huge number of other facilities and programs focused on wellness for people of all ages. For example:

A large fitness center with treadmills, stair-steppers, weight equipment, fitness classes, and personal trainers. About 60 people/day use this center.
Get-SET – a 12-week exercise, weight-loss, and diabetes prevention program for adults
Moccasin Movers – an exercise program for elders
Project POWER (Providing Opportunities for Wellness, Exercise and Recreation) – a fitness program for youth and families
A separate WIC clinic for pregnant and breastfeeding mothers and their children up to the age of 5
Offering nutritious recipes
Lunch-time talks on preparing nutritious, inexpensive food, including recipes and the costs of preparation. Participation is usually 40-60 people/day.

The wellness center at the clinic also makes a special effort to improve the nutrition of all patients. To supplement the work of staff dieticians, the clinic hosts dietetics interns from the University of Oklahoma. We helped intern Jenny Graef distribute information at a National Nutrition Month display in the clinic lobby. We offered recipes for “Eating Well on a Budget” as well as handouts on local farmer’s markets, how to incorporate more exercise into your day, and tips on eating more fiber, fruits and vegetables.

These and other programs run by the clinic are having the desired effects. The clinic exceeded the goals for diabetes control set by the Oklahoma City Area Indian Health Service (as well as all but one of the other medical goals), and individual patients are lowering their risk for diabetes by controlling their weight and eating healthier food. (See American Indian Horizons, Fall 2010, pages 6- 7.)

Multi-media Image by Shan Goshorn

One more thing about the clinic that impressed us: it’s not just a full-service clinic. It’s an entire community, focused on the overall physical, behavioral, and spiritual well-being of its American Indian members. A powerful symbol of this holistic approach is that the clinic has five partner Native American artists whose work adorns the corridors of the clinic. (See American Indian Horizons, Fall 2010, pages 48-49.) Here’s an example we particularly liked, a work by Shan Goshorn, Eastern Band Cherokee.

As Steve Barse said in describing the broad approach of the Oklahoma City Indian Clinic, “5 fingers make a fist. The fist is more powerful than the fingers alone.”

SNAP Benefits and the San Antonio Food Bank

2011-03-17T18:33:00.002-04:00

SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly food stamps) is the main federal program to help feed people with limited income. But nationwide (as of 2008), only about 2/3 of those eligible actually receive SNAP benefits. In some states, the rate is even less.

San Antonio Food Bank

Why are rates low? Reasons include difficulty in filing applications, suspicion of the process (e.g., some states require very long applications and finger imaging), misinformation (such as assumptions that you can’t own a car and also receive benefits), stigma, and a reluctance to admit that you’re having difficulty putting food on the table for your family.

One state that has been working to overcome these impediments and to increase their SNAP rate is Texas. Partly due to the efforts of the San Antonio Food Bank, the rate in the 16 counties they serve has grown from about 1/3 in 2001 to nearly 3/4 today.

Why would a food bank be interested in increasing SNAP participation? As President and CEO Eric Cooper told us, increasing SNAP participation is a win-win-win proposition:

People experiencing food insecurity are better able to put nutritious food on their tables.
Food banks and other feeding programs have a smaller draw on their limited resource of private and government donated food – less fund raising and fewer appeals for food drives.
Eric Cooper, Yvonne Vaughan, Paco Velez
Communities experience an economic stimulus because SNAP benefits are spent immediately, providing income for the grocery stores and allowing SNAP recipients to spend other money on bills such as rent and utilities. Each dollar of SNAP benefits creates about $1.80 in economic benefits. The $9M that SNAP recipients received in 2001 in Bexar County (largest county in the San Antonio Food Bank’s service area) is today over $32M. That’s a pretty large economic stimulus!

But why should a food bank be assisting with SNAP applications? Shouldn’t the state agencies responsible for administering SNAP be doing this work? Well, states are experiencing tight budgets and are finding it difficult to handle the increases in SNAP applicants, so it’s very helpful to them to off-load some of the process to authorized agencies such as food banks. And food banks are already partnering with many agencies that provide services to the poor (the San Antonio Food Bank has 525 partner agencies), so it’s natural to assist these same individuals with SNAP benefits, too.

We visited the San Antonio Food Bank to learn how their SNAP outreach program works. There, we interviewed Eric Cooper, as well as Paco Velez, Executive Vice President of Services, Yvonne Vaughan, Director of Client Services, and Nancy Sanchez, Help Center Manager.

Nancy Sanchez (R) explains Help Center

For the San Antonio Food Bank, outreach is not just a bunch of flyers or advertisements. Instead, the service it provides for SNAP is analogous to the service a tax preparer provides for filing income tax returns – Make the process easy and ensure that each person receives the benefits to which they are entitled.

Outreach workers go to schools, medical facilities, corporations, and member agencies to inform school staff, medical professionals, and case workers how to refer potential SNAP recipients to the food bank. Then, these workers ask their clients if they’d like the food bank to help them apply for SNAP benefits. If the client agrees, the workers send the referral directly to the food bank help center, and the help center contacts the client directly to help them apply for SNAP and other benefits. The food bank has found this method much more effective than giving the client a flier and suggesting they call the food bank for assistance.
Anyone who calls the food bank for food is not only told where the nearest food pantry is to get immediate help, but is also interviewed and helped to apply for SNAP and other federal benefits such as Medicaid. Usually, the paperwork is filled out on the phone, then sent to the client to sign. They are also told what other information they need (ID, pay stubs, etc.) to bring or mail in to complete the application.

Agency Outreach Specialist,
Seth Villalobos with a SNAP client

Outreach workers also may interview clients directly at member agencies, either on a set schedule, or whenever there are several people who need benefits.
The food bank has recently been trained and authorized by the state of Texas to perform the required interview of the clients and issue them their Lone Star EBT card (not yet loaded with any benefits) so they don’t have to go to the Health and Human Services office at all. The food bank DOES NOT determine eligibility for benefits. Every application is submitted to the state for determination of benefits. When benefits are approved, they are loaded onto the Lone Star Card and the client is notified to activate their card with a phone call.

During our visit, we observed the help center in operation. We saw help staff filling out applications and making follow-up phone calls, all in a very competent, friendly and persuasive manner. Most staff speak both Spanish and English, and there is a three-way interpretation service if needed for other languages. The help staff handle about 6,000 calls per month. We also observed direct client interactions, both at the food bank and at an outreach center (the Salvation Army Women and Family Shelter). In two of the three interviews we observed, the interviewer identified additional benefits that the client might be eligible to receive.

All in all, the San Antonio Food Bank processes approximately 3,000 SNAP applications per month, which is likely up to 25% of the total for their 16-county service area.

We hope more organizations take up this sort of SNAP outreach approach and achieve the win-win-win that comes from getting authorized benefits to those in need.

Crescent City Farmers Market - Local Food for Everyone

2011-03-11T18:46:00.000-05:00

The national movement toward healthier, fresher, more local food has spurred a large resurgence of farmers markets. According to the USDA Agricultural Marketing Service, “as of mid-2010, there were 6,132 farmers markets operating throughout the U.S. This is a 16 percent increase from 2009.” Some 886 farmers markets even operate year-round in 47 states and the District of Columbia.

Are farmers markets for everyone?

Today that answer is no. Only about 13% of farmers markets are equipped to redeem SNAP benefits. This effectively leaves out the 1 in 7 Americans who receive SNAP (food stamp) benefits.

Why don’t all farmers markets accept SNAP? Well, for starters, “food stamps” are not paper stamps anymore. Since 2004, benefits are credited and debited electronically to the recipient’s EBT (electronic benefits transfer) card. EBT machines are costly, perhaps $800-$1500, plus annual operating fees. If a market decides to purchase one shared machine, then a market scrip or token system and a central staff to manage it are required.

Richard McCarthy

To help make nutritious farmers market food available to SNAP recipients, USDA Food and Nutrition Service has recommended that EBT machines be supplied to farmers markets that lack them today. President Obama agreed and included $4M funding for EBT machines in the 2012 budget. We, along with the Farmers Market Coalition hope this small but high-leverage line item remains.

In spite of the expense and red tape, more and more farmers markets have begun allowing customers to use their SNAP benefits to purchase food. To find out just how that works, we visited Richard McCarthy, Executive Director of marketumbrella.org, in New Orleans, LA.
Marketumbrella.org has an interesting history. Begun within the Twomey Center for Peace through Justice, it is regarded as a success story in fostering socially-inclusive economic development, especially for farmers and fishermen – “public markets for public good.” Now a separate 501(C)3 organization, marketumbrella.org offers a wealth of advice, measurement tools, and success stories for those interested in public markets.

Kelly Landrieu

Richard was one of those responsible for starting the Crescent City Farmers Market in 1995, and for re-starting it following the Katrina disaster. Today, marketumbrella.org operates the market 3 times a week in different locations in New Orleans. They were among the first markets to welcome EBT cards (in Louisiana, the cards are called “Louisiana Purchase” cards).

We visited the smallest and newest of the Crescent City Farmers Market locations on Thursday. It’s open from 3:00pm – 7:00pm. We even got to ring the opening bell!

Vendors at the Crescent City Markets accept cash or special round wooden tokens called “crescents.” Anyone who wants to make purchases with credit, debit, or EBT cards, buys crescents at the welcome table. Thus only a single wireless card reader services all the vendors.

At the welcome table, Kelly Landrieu, Markets Community Coordinator, showed us how it works. Kelly swipes the customer’s card in the wireless card reader, enters the amount they’d like, and when authorized gives the customer their crescents worth $1 or $5. The crescents for EBT customers are slightly different because SNAP benefits can only be used for unprepared food, not other items that might be available at the market such as ready-to-eat food, plants, or crafts. Customers then use the crescents just like cash. They never expire and can be used at any of the Crescent City Farmers Market locations. The day we were there, approximately half the crescents were bought with credit or debit cards and the other half with EBT cards.

The market we saw was vibrant, interactive, and fun. All were treated with equal friendliness and respect throughout the market. It was a community of neighbors. Shoppers ranged in age from about 4 months to about 90 years. Vendors, some of whom came into the city from as far as 2 hours away, chatted with each other and were eager to tell their stories and describe their food to customers.

We bought broccoli from two “WWOOFers” from the Oakland Organic Farm in Gurley, Louisiana, and shrimp from Pete & Clara’s Seafood, just beginning a Community Supported Fishery. We bought hydroponic tomatoes, home-made pesto, the last of this year’s citrus, a fresh baguette, unhomogenized milk, and Creole cream cheese. YUM!

Beyond providing an inclusive market full of healthy, local food and open to all customers, positive social change was a goal of the Crescent City Farmers Markets from the start. It didn’t happen by chance.

At first, farmers were fearful of making the long trip into New Orleans due to high crime rates and misperceptions about whether the market would be profitable for them. But marketumbrella.org persisted in recruiting vendors needed to make the market meet customers’ needs. Today the stalls are full and the 3 markets have an annual combined economic impact of nearly $10 million on its vendors, host neighborhood, and surrounding region.
At first, SNAP recipients were turned away because the systems weren’t in place to accept EBT cards. But, after working through the arduous process of becoming a certified EBT site, marketumbrella.org instituted “MarketMatch,” a privately-funded incentive program that for a limited time matches SNAP customers’ first $25 with double crescents when they use their EBT cards at the Market. The result was a huge increase in use of the market by SNAP customers, even when the incentive program was not in effect.
At first, older customers tended to find the market intimidating. But now, marketumbrella.org takes “Farmers Market Bingo” to senior centers, uses this fun game as a way to highlight what’s at the market, and then arranges “Meet Me at the Market” orientations so older customers will feel comfortable there.

Richard also told us that the markets have led to increasingly valued relationships between vendors and the whole range of customers. Shoppers are learning about new foods, eating in healthier ways. Neighborhoods have been rebranded as healthy and friendly communities.

People even come to the market just to meet other people!

Appendix: Does YOUR farmers market accept EBT cards? Here are two new resources to help farmers markets learn how to accept SNAP/EBT:

SNAP/EBT at your farmers market: Seven steps to success, Project for Public Spaces, 2010
Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (Snap) At Farmers Markets: A How-To Handbook, a joint publication by: USDA Agricultural Marketing Service, USDA Food and Nutrition Service, and Project for Public Spaces, Inc., 2010.

A Place of Grace in Jackson, MS

2011-03-08T00:05:00.000-05:00

Leslie Bingham

The Sunday we were in Jackson, Mississippi, we attended Sunday morning worship services at Galloway United Methodist Church, just a block from the state capitol building. This vibrant and generous congregation of about 2,000 is heavily committed to mission and outreach. So, in addition to an inspiring service led by co-pastors Rev. Dr. Connie Shelton and Rev. Dr. Joey Shelton, a lovely after-church luncheon, and a heavenly evening concert, we were invited to experience their day shelter to feed the homeless in their neighborhood. It’s called Grace Place.

Grace Place was founded 4 years ago. Located right in the church, it is open from 8:30-11:30 a.m. on weekday mornings. It serves a hot meal 4 mornings and “provides a place of rest and respite for those that call the streets their home.” On most mornings, about 70 guests are served. And in 2010, the grand total was 22,000 meals.

We arrived at about 8:00 and Leslie Bingham, Missions and Outreach Director, immediately put us to work setting tables. The kitchen staff (who also cook for other events at the church) and other volunteers and former guests had already been preparing the meal. When the doors opened, each guest signed in, went to the coffee room for a hot beverage, and then gathered in the dining room. Many of the guests chatted with other guests they knew and with the staff and volunteers.

When all were assembled, Leslie welcomed the guests, asked whether any guests were there for the first time (there were about 4), and explained the rules (such as to treat everyone, including the volunteers and staff, with respect). She also introduced us and asked us to say a few words about our project; we were pleased that the group vocalized appreciation. Then one of the guests offered a prayer and serving began, first women, then others table by table.

What a meal they received! – Chicken and rice casserole, green beans with bacon, baked sweet potatoes, and dinner rolls. When it was time for seconds, whatever food was left from the first serving was quickly given out, save for a few green beans and rolls.

What impressed us about Grace Place? As with most feeding programs, much more happens here than feeding. For example:

Staff help guests with issues such as transportation, clothes for job interviews, physical and mental healthcare, and getting into treatment for addiction. In addition, Galloway has a program they call “Transformation Trail” that provides income and job experience to one or two guests by hiring them as custodians or kitchen workers at the church.
Kaleb Thomson on the Roof
Grace Place is experimenting with a rooftop garden, currently managed by Kaleb Thomson, a senior social work major from Mississippi College who is doing a practicum at Grace Place.
One of the volunteers, Mark Wall, has been interviewing guests about their stories and taking professional portraits of them, a rare treat for guests. The pictures we saw posted on the wall at Grace Place, were truly captivating.
We heard many success stories, guests who had turned their lives around after experiencing the love and support of Grace Place.

Leslie has dreams of one day expanding to a full-fledged facility offering housing and even more services to those in need. But for now, Grace Place is focusing on what they do best – feeding people and providing a place for them to experience the love of Christ.

Mississippi Food Network -- Feeding Hungry Children in Mississippi

2011-03-05T22:08:00.001-05:00

In Mississippi, the reported rate of food insecurity in 2009 was 17.1%, higher than the national average of 14.7%. And among Mississippi households with children, especially those headed by single parents, rates were still higher, over 20%. (See the USDA’s report Household Food Security in the United States, 2009.) Food insecurity in children is heartbreaking – it can deny them the nutritious food they need to be healthy, to develop their minds and bodies, to learn in school, and to become productive adults.

Food insecurity is often associated with severe health problems, particularly obesity. According to the Centers for Disease control, the rate of obesity in Mississippi in 2009 was the worst of any state, 34.4%, compared to the national average of 26.7%.

Cassandra Guess with OrganWise Guy

The Mississippi Food Network, located in Jackson, MS, is the Feeding America food bank serving most of the state. In the last few years, it has been increasing its role in combatting hunger and obesity in Mississippi. We interviewed Cassandra Guess, Programs Director, about the creative programs she runs focusing on nutrition education and children.

CLUB Nutrition

Cassandra oversees the CLUB Nutrition program (Children Learning and Understanding Better Nutrition), which aims to teach kids about what they can do to keep their bodies strong and healthy. They use materials from the OrganWise Guys program, including a doll that has removable, cartoon-character body parts to talk about the roles of different foods in keeping bodies strong and healthy – enter Calci M. Bones, Madame Muscle, Hardy Heart, and many others.

Kids Café
In 2007, with a grant from Uncle Ben’s, and in 2008, with a grant from the Lincy Foundation, the Mississippi Food Network began feeding children at six Mississippi Boys and Girls Clubs. Once the initial grants expired, Cassandra couldn’t bear to tell the kids that they would no longer receive food, so she continued the programs by providing snacks through the USDA CACFP (Child and Adult Care Food Program), which reimburses $0.74 for each nutritious snack served. Currently, the Mississippi Food Network is supplying after-school snacks to 12 sites serving over 800 children.

Many programs would like to feed children a full meal after school or in the summer, but this is much harder, partly because many sites for children don’t have kitchen facilities. They can serve pre-packaged food, transport food to their site from a separate kitchen, or transport the kids to a location that prepares meals. Here, too, the Mississippi Food Network helps by providing food, helping to work out the logistics, and handling the details of CACFP.

BackPack Food

BackPack Program

When kids live in extreme poverty, they often have little access to nutritious food outside of school breakfast and school lunch programs. To help feed them on weekends, many food banks and other organizations provide needy children with child-friendly food to take home on the weekends. The Feeding America program is called the “BackPack Program.”

The Mississippi Food Network began its BackPack Program in 2008 by supplying packages of food to programs for children such as after-school programs, day shelters for homeless people, and Boys & Girls Clubs. In addition, some churches have funded the BackPack program for schools in their neighborhoods. The sites identify which children need weekend food, and the Food Network purchases the food using grant money and other donations. Currently, they’re supplying BackPack food to 9 sites and over 300 kids each week.

Food for the BackPack program is relatively expensive (about $3.65 per package) because, in addition to being nutritious and requiring no refrigeration, it must be easy for children to open and eat by themselves, with little or no preparation. The Mississippi Food Network purchases the packages of food they distribute from the Second Harvest Food Bank of Middle Tennessee. Each zip-loc bag contains 2 bowls of cereal, 1 cup of shelf-stable milk, 2 juice boxes, 2 fruit cups, and 2 entrees such as beef lasagna or chili, all packaged as individual servings.

Robrelle Murray

To get a first-hand experience with the BackPack program, we visited Operation: U.P.W.A.R.D. and met with Executive Director and founder Robrelle Murray.

A few years ago Robrelle started this program for kids who live in an extremely low-income neighborhood in Jackson. She said she got tired of other "Christians" complaining about the kids hanging around in this neighborhood where she grew up, but not helping because they were afraid to go there. So she started with a blanket on the lawn in a park, where she taught Bible lessons, played games, did craft projects, and gave food to kids who came. The program has now grown (with nearly no funding) to serving about 250 kids after school and on Monday evenings in its own building, which also houses a day care center for preschoolers.

Robrelle described how the various government assistance programs that are meant to help people actually can trap them in poverty. For example, each dollar a person earns at a job means their benefits (food stamps, rent subsidies, etc.) are cut, but their expenses (child care, transportation, etc.) rise way more than they can then afford, making them worse off than they were before getting a job. People then can’t pay their rent, which forces them onto the streets or into even more substandard housing, and often forces their children to change schools over and over again. Robrelle tries to be the stable and loving presence in these children’s lives.

In addition to providing a snack to kids after school, Robrelle participates in the BackPack Program. Each Friday, she picks up the packages from the Mississippi Food Network and adds them to the back packs of the kids at Operation: U.P.W.A.R.D. The Friday we helped, 47 children received BackPack packages for them to eat on the weekend. The smiles were infectious, and many had to be reminded not to open them right now.

Beth-El Farmworker Ministry

2011-03-03T12:28:00.000-05:00

According to the USDA, in 2006 there were approximately 1 million hired farmworkers in the U.S. Some work with livestock, some are migrant (traveling to work where crops are ripe), and some are seasonal (working only when the crops in their home location need tending). Farmworkers are “among the most economically disadvantaged working groups in the U.S.” and “poverty among farmworkers is more than double that of all wage and salary employees.” (USDA Profile of Hired Farmworkers, 2008, pages 1 and iv.)

What an irony that those who povide food for America's tables are so often hungry themselves. To learn about hunger among farmworkers, we visited Beth-El Farmworker Ministry, Inc., in Wimauma, Florida, just south of Tampa. Beth-El is a Presbyterian mission, founded in 1976. It also has locations in Immokalee, Arcadia, and Fort Meade.

Javier Izaguirre
Beth-El Operations Manager

Our visit to Beth-El was hosted by Javier Izaguirre, once a farmworker himself, and now Operations Manager ensuring that all the programs at Beth-El run smoothly. Javier told us his story, and through him we learned of the many hardships faced by farmworkers, hardships such as:

Working very long hours in conditions that are often extremely hot, pesticide laden, physically taxing, and dangerous
Very low and uncertain wages, typically based on number of items picked
No health or dental care, limited or no workmen’s compensation, no paid vacation or sick leave
Discrimination, leading to limited advancement opportunities
Stress on families due to frequent moving or absence of a parent
Interrupted schooling for children
Substandard and crowded housing
Risk of wage theft
Reports of modern-day slavery

And for those farmworkers who are undocumented, the situation is much worse. They live in fear of jail and deportation, they pay taxes such as Social Security that they can never recover, and many services available to other people living in poverty are unavailable to them.

Cosmetology Class

Beth-El’s mission is to “help farm workers achieve self-sufficiency through its open opportunities to worship, its extensive educational programs, and the many services it provides to meet basic needs.” Its programs include

Spanish-language worship services, Bible study, and vacation Bible school
A wide variety of adult education classes, such as English as a Second Language, General Educational Development degree (GED), Certified Nursing Assistant (CNA), and Cosmetology
Pro-bono legal services
Caseworkers to help with housing
Programs for children such as back to school preparation, field trips, and summer camp
Mission groups who work at the Mission or help restore housing
Addiction recovery programs such as AA
Food distribution

Also housed on the campus are Head Start program for children of migrant workers and a charter school for at-risk children operated by Redlands Christian Migrant Association.

Bagging

On Tuesdays from 9:00 to 2:00, Beth-El gives out food to those in the area that need it. Food is government surplus food (FEMA, TEFAP) obtained through the Cahill Food Bank, supplemented by other donations.

The day we helped, we arrived at 8:30. About 20 people were already in line. Many volunteers were in the “bag room,” where large racks held hundreds of bags that had been partially filled last week. Each held dried pinto beans, rice, and some held 2-5 cans of fruit and vegetables or other items such as crackers, corn meal, and tortillas. We helped complete the bags by adding 2 quarts of shelf-stable milk. As we worked, other volunteers were filling small bags of popcorn and coconut from larger bags, so we added those, too.

Signing in

9:00 came, and the doors were opened. Those who hadn’t yet registered this year, gave their information to a volunteer, who qualified them based on residency and USDA income guidelines and gave them a blue laminated card. Everyone showed their blue card, signed in, received a chip, and exchanged it at the door to the bag room for their bag of groceries. Each person who received groceries also was given a large bottle of dish detergent (donated by Matthew 25: Ministries).

Meanwhile, in the bag room, the prepared bags ran out and volunteers filling bags from scratch were barely able to keep up with the flow.

Who were the recipients of the food? We saw mostly relatively young Hispanic men and women, a great many with small children. We met a man asking if he could have meat and cereal, too, as he had nothing to feed his children. We met a woman raising her 7 grandchildren alone. We hope that these few staple items were a help to all the grateful folks who came.

All told, the crew of about 20 volunteers handed out close to 800 bags of food before the doors closed.

Angel Food Ministries

2011-02-28T11:39:00.000-05:00

Home of Angel Food Ministries

Good food is expensive. So what can be done to get more affordable, high-quality food to people who are trying to stretch their food budget?

Enter Angel Food Ministries. It creates boxes of wholesome food, offers those boxes for order at costs lower than at retail grocery stores, and delivers them once a month to 5383 host sites (mostly churches) in 45 states. When the food arrives, volunteers group the food into orders for customers to pick up.

Pastors Linda and Joe Wingo

Angel Food Ministries is a 501(c)(3) organization that began in 1994 as the ministry of Emmanuel Praise Church. Both were founded by and are the life work of the Wingo family: CEO and Pastor Joe Wingo, his wife Pastor Linda Wingo, and their son Pastor Wes Wingo. The church is located in the front part of the Angel Food Ministries warehouse. Right now, the two organizations are legally distinct entities, but Pastor Joe sees them as one ministry.

We visited the headquarters in Monroe, GA, interviewed Pastor Joe, and toured the facilities with Bobbi Warburton, Heather Waldo, and chief distribution officer Johnny Willis.

We found it fascinating to get an inside look at how Angel Food Ministries operates. The process begins about 3 months before delivery, when the menus are determined. Each month’s offerings are different. For March, there are 13 separate boxes that a customer can order. They range in price from $21 to $51, and include both general meal boxes and specialty boxes, such as an allergen-free box, an Easter box, and 3 boxes especially for kids. The menu committee considers all the food items to which they have access through their distributors and orders items that are as nutritious and high-quality as they can find and still stay within the budget for that particular box.

How to assemble a pallet load

Food arrives at the Monroe, GA, warehouse and is stored in their huge freezer (big enough to hold 120 truckloads of frozen food) and their similarly sized cold-storage area. The week before distribution begins, workers prepack boxes of frozen food items and boxes of fresh produce.

When we arrived, prepack was finished and that part of the warehouse was neat and quiet. But the loading area was a beehive of activity because it was time for specific orders to be assembled onto pallets and the trucks to be loaded. We saw boxes of frozen foods loaded into the trailer first; then a Styrofoam bulkhead was taped into place to keep the frozen food frozen. Next the boxes of fresh produce and eggs were loaded in such a way that they would stay cold without freezing. Last came the dry items, and canned items. This 3-part packing makes sure all items arrive in good shape.

"Bucket Brigade" unloading at the drop site

At the end of each trailer was a box of paperwork detailing the items that belonged at each drop site and at each host site. Early on Saturday morning, the trucks from Angel Food Ministries arrive at between 1 and 3 drop sites per truck. Each drop site then distributes to several different host sites. Volunteers from each host site unload the truck, transfer into their own vehicles the boxes needed to fulfill their orders, drive to their own site, and distribute the orders to their customers.

A customer getting his order

We “followed the truck” to a drop site in Edgewater, FL, helped unload the boxes for the 4 host sites there, and then continued to the host site at the Great Commission Church in Titusville, FL. Host site director Jill Brand said that this church really enjoys being an Angel Food Ministries site because it provides a valuable service to folks in their area. We helped distribute the orders to the customers who came in to pick them up. Done!

Fresh Fruit and Veggie Box

Angel Food Ministries food appeared to us to be of high quality and to arrive in excellent condition. All the customers we spoke with agreed, and we heard no complaints other than a few people who said they didn’t use all the fresh produce in time. At Angel Food Ministries, we heard that they have a rigorous quality control process, take customer feedback seriously, and are always attempting to improve their selections. They also regularly compare their prices with prices at discount grocery stores to ensure that they continue to offer lower cost quality food.

Therefore, we think the Angel Food Ministries model provides a great way to stretch your food dollar.

Angel Food Ministries also impressed us with their support of several other ministries and programs. For example:

Host sites, all of which are charitable organizations, receive a donation to their general fund from Angel Food Ministries of $1 per box sold. So far they’ve distributed over $32 million.
Many of the 250 part-time workers who prepack boxes and load trucks are from local men’s shelters and rehab programs. Workers who are ready to progress with their lives can be trained here in skills such as operating a fork lift, and some have gone on to permanent jobs with Angel Food Ministries.
In the past, Angel Food Ministries has not solicited donations and received only a tiny fraction of its funds that way. Last fall, however, they started "Sponsor A Soldier's Family," through which anyone can donate a box of food to a military family, to show gratitude for their service. They’ve established relationships with several military bases which select the families to receive the boxes. So far over 1,000 boxes have been sent. A similar program, called "No Child Goes Without," sends donated boxes of food to schools for distribution to children in need.
Angel Food Ministries is working to make it easier for people in need to apply for and use SNAP (food stamp) benefits. About ¼ of Angel Food Ministries customers use SNAP to buy Angel Food boxes, but they cannot order on-line like most customers. Host sites must place the orders on their behalf because the different benefit processing systems in place in each state don’t currently interoperate well enough to support online ordering. Angel Food Ministries is working with the USDA in an attempt to become a pilot program to allow SNAP recipients to place orders online. This seems like it should work well, since all products offered by Angel Food Ministries are food, and thus SNAP eligible. We hope this improvement for SNAP recipients will occur soon.

What is an Urban Garden?

2011-02-22T19:07:00.000-05:00

Ama Shambulia and R.G. Lyons

Before we came to the West End Urban Garden in Birmingham, AL, we thought an urban garden was simply a garden in an urban location. However, this garden is very much more. As garden program manager Ama Shambulia told us, “People in this community are hungry for much more than food. … Our garden will revitalize the West End community’s life blood, body, mind, and spirit.”

Five years ago, R.G. Lyons, fresh out of Seminary, bought a house and moved to the West End of Birmingham, where 97% of the residents are African American and 47% live below the poverty line. R.G. had been appointed to start a United Methodist church there. He began with programs for youth twice per week, and expanded from there to bible study classes for their parents and others. Now, the Community Church without Walls meets in small groups in one member’s home and in the rooms of Urban Ministry, a mission of the United Methodist Church, with which R.G. works closely.

R.G. buried the parents of three kids, due to complications from diseases such as diabetes and congestive heart failure, which brought home to him the consequences of the diet that many in the neighborhood eat. Non-nutritious food is cheap, but fruits and vegetables are expensive and not readily available. (Only one in four people in this neighborhood have a car, the public transportation system is one of the worst in the nation, and the small local grocery stores carry little produce.) R.G. said, “We always ask, what is the need in this community? And how can we empower people to fulfill that need?” There was an obvious need for more fresh produce and more knowledge of how to prepare it to provide healthy, tasty meals.

West End Urban Garden

So, R.G. and volunteers from the community started a garden near the Urban Ministry building on a couple of vacant lots that previously held burned-out houses. We helped in the garden one Saturday in mid-February. Even at this time of year, there are quite a few things growing in the gardens -- pansies, herbs, onions, and collard greens that had over-wintered.

The garden plots include two large ground-level beds, one very large raised bed, and about 18 smaller raised beds, some of which people in the neighborhood can rent. We also saw fruit trees (4 apple and 1 pear, espaliered to grow flat along wires), a row of blueberry bushes, and a row of blackberry canes. There’s a tidy garden shed to hold the tools, compost piles, and a greenhouse frame.

Myron Pierre

Ama keeps everything orderly and well-planned. She’s a master chef and master gardener. She runs the garden program, helps children in the Urban Kids program (run by Urban Ministry) to garden, holds informal classes at the garden to help people learn gardening skills, and shows gardeners how they can prepare what they produce in wholesome, tasty ways. Ama put us to work weeding, rejuvenating the pansies, fertilizing, and planting onions, beets and carrots. Many more vegetables will be added as the season progresses.

The garden manager, Myron Pierre, also was working hard in the garden, turning soil, mixing the compost, and planting. Another volunteer, Lindsay Whiteaker, is a junior at University of Alabama Birmingham. Last year she made a great film about the garden and still comes back often to help out.

While we were working, we saw a glimpse of what the garden means to some of those in the neighborhood. Olivia and her daughter April stopped by. April wanted to help, so she was put to work watering the collard greens and onions, while her mom talked to Ama. Later, another neighbor stopped by to see how things were growing. He was sent home with onion starts to add to his own garden. There’s a neighbor across the street who tells people not to pick the produce, and generally keeps an eye on the garden.

What happens to the produce? Some is given to the elderly and those truly in need, served at the Urban Ministry lunch program, or given to those who volunteer in the garden. But the goal is not for the produce to be free, because, in Ama’s words, “It’s not a free-for-all. That would create an unhealthy imbalance, and that’s not a very dignified way of interacting with people.” Therefore, much of the produce is sold to a local restaurant or offered at a small produce stand to the neighborhood residents.

Similarly, Ama and R.G. think it’s very important that those who work hard in the garden are paid for their efforts. Both Ama and Myron are paid staff. This summer, they will be hiring two high-school interns to help with the gardening.

April waters collards and onions

And what difference has the garden made in the community? You’ll notice from these pictures that there is no fence around the West End garden. This encourages community members to experience the growing process. And they do! Many members of the community stop and give encouragement to those working in the garden. They may find out a bit about gardening and get a taste of the foods growing there, but more importantly, they see the garden as their own community center. There are summer and harvest celebrations at the garden. On Easter, Community Church without Walls holds their service in the garden, surrounded by the beautiful sight of growing plants.

As R.G. says, the garden meets community needs “in a very holistic way. It’s a place to work and get exercise, to meditate, and to spend time together.” In other words, the West End garden is building community, not just growing food.

David Holben: A Community Nutritionist's Perspective on Hunger

2011-02-16T17:40:00.002-05:00

David Holben

Ohio is the 15th state in our Facing Hunger in America journey. At Ohio University in Athens, OH, we interviewed David H. Holben, PhD, RD, LD, and Professor of Food and Nutrition in the School of Applied Health Sciences and Wellness.

Dr. Holben teaches courses in dietetics, community nutrition, and research methods, and has co-authored (with Marie A. Boyle) the comprehensive textbook Community Nutrition in Action – an Entrepreneurial Approach. (5th edition, 2010, Belmont, CA: Wadsworth) We asked Dr. Holben to share with us how he thinks about hunger and the programs meant to alleviate it. Here’s a taste of what we learned.

Food insecurity is most often associated with poverty. In Canada, the term is “income-related food insecurity.” But Dr. Holben pointed out that not all people below the poverty line are food insecure. Some have developed self-sufficiency skills that keep them food secure -- at least until something happens, such as a job loss, illness, or an increase in the number of people they need to feed.

Food insecurity has very far-reaching physical and psychological health effects. Although not all the causal relationships are clear, food insecurity is highly correlated with factor such as

Increased levels of overweight, obesity, and type 2 diabetes, especially in women
Increased levels of depression and stress
Increased birth defects
Lower classroom performance and attendance in children
More discipline problems, counselor visits, and suicide attempts among children
Loss of family rituals such as holiday meals

The relationship between food insecurity and obesity may appear paradoxical, but Dr. Holben explained it like this. (See also Community Nutrition, page 331).

Food insecure families may stretch their food budget and keep from feeling hungry by purchasing foods that cost less, are higher in calories, and are less nutritious. Sometimes such foods (for example, ramen noodles, sweetened cereals, and soda) are more readily available to people living in poverty than are more healthful options (for example, fresh fruits and vegetables).
Food insecure families are likely to prefer foods that make them feel full, possibly sacrificing food quality for food quantity.
Cycling between times of adequate food and times with inadequate food, may lead people to overeat and gain weight when food is available (such as right after SNAP benefits are received). When adequate food is not available, the person’s body may become more efficient and resist losing weight. This cycling may be more extreme for mothers, who may provide food for their children at the expense of food for themselves. Remember the scene in the movie, Erin Brockovich, when she lies to her children and tells them that she’s already eaten?

Damaging effects of food insecurity like these make it imperative for our country’s overall well-being that we effectively address the issue of hunger in America.

So what are the programs that Dr. Holben prefers? When we asked him this question, he responded by comparing WIC (the USDA Food and Nutrition Service's Program for Women, Infants, and Children) with SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly Food Stamps). He prefers WIC because recipients qualify partly based on nutritional risk as determined by a healthcare professional, because only certain nutritious foods can be obtained with WIC support, and because WIC carefully measures outcomes such as iron levels and height and weight of the participants. By contrast, SNAP benefits are based mostly on financial need and can be used for all foods.

Dr. Holben said, “While I believe that people have the right to buy whatever food they want, I don’t agree that some of the foods allowed to be purchased with food stamps are appropriate. … If food stamps are meant to be a supplement to your food dollar, I think it would be OK to say you can’t buy foods such as pop with food stamps.”

One promising improvement to SNAP, called HIP (Health Incentive Pilot), is to be tested by the USDA in Hampden County, MA, beginning in December of 2011. HIP will test whether SNAP recipients increase their purchase of fresh produce if they receive a rebate on their SNAP card for 30% of the cost. If this pilot produces positive results, Dr. Holben hopes it will become a national program.

In addition to federal entitlement programs such as WIC and SNAP, Dr. Holben sees an extremely important role for smaller, more local community nutrition efforts. He demonstrates his belief in producing some of his own food by gardening and keeping bees and chickens. He’s also personally involved in a huge set of community projects such as:

Athens Community Food Initiatives
Organic gardening courses for Live Healthy Appalachia
ECOhio Garden—Everyone Can [in Ohio] Garden plants And Rake Dirt to Enhance Nutrition, a project to help individuals learn to garden, to improve their food access, and to enhance the nutrient density of their diets.
With student Lori Gromen, a project to plant fruit trees at community gathering places in Athens. We checked out about a dozen of the trees shown on the tree map and found them looking healthy and ready for spring to come! For more information see these articles in The Post and in Planet OHIO News.

Dr. Holben concluded our interview by saying, “I think America is very generous. It’s impressive how people do work tirelessly to feed people.”

Mennonite Mobile Meat Cannery

2011-02-12T15:33:00.000-05:00

The temperature was in the single digits the frosty morning when we drove to the Valley View Mennonite Church in Spartansburg, PA. Parked next to the church’s loading dock was the object of our visit, the Mennonite Mobile Meat Cannery. We had come to learn how this long-standing charity of the Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) operates, and to help with the day’s canning of turkey meat.

The history of the Mennonite mobile meat cannery began in 1946, when hungry Europeans needed high protein food relief. Today, MCC distributes over 500,000 28-oz cans of meat worldwide each year, all produced by volunteer workers at the 33 stops the mobile cannery makes in 13 states and 2 Canadian provinces. Four volunteer canner operators spend overlapping 2 year terms driving the canner to the sites and working with local volunteers to produce the canned meat. We met operator George Wieler, who was on duty the day we were there.

Chunking turkey prior to canning

We also met Albert Brenner and Susan Bell, who have been coordinating canning at the Spartansburg site for many years, and we spoke on the phone with John Hillegass, MCC Canning Coordinator. Albert showed us the canning process, all of which is done under USDA rules and with USDA inspectors frequently on-site:

Meat arrived at the canning site on a refrigerated truck. Spartansburg purchased boneless turkey thighs from Virginia Growers, and it arrived in 20-lb. bags on 1-ton pallets. (Earlier in the canner’s history, most meat was home-grown beef or pork. Now, about 85% of MCC meat is turkey. Reasons include that turkey is lower cost, acceptable in more countries worldwide, and easier and cleaner to can because they don’t have to drain off fat from the already lean turkey meat.)
Next, using a large meat grinder, 4 volunteers cut the turkey thighs into ¾” chunks. Each 60-lb batch of chunked meat was added to the large steam vat at the beginning of the canning line in the mobile cannery trailer.

Packing turkey chunks

Ten men operated the canning line. First, salt was added and two men used large paddles to pound and stir the meat until it reached a uniform 56 degrees F, warm enough to keep the meat from expanding too much and bursting the cans in the cooker. Then they placed a rack over the vat, loaded it with empty cans from the smaller truck you can see in the picture, and hand-filled each can to the proper weight. One or two men operated the lidding machine, and another put the sealed cans into a huge cylindrical metal basket.
When the basket was full (140 cans), George hoisted it into one of the 6 steam pressure canners, tightened the lid, and recorded when the canner reached 246 degrees F. Each lot remained in the canner for 2 hours and 10 minutes to cook and sterilize the meat. While all 6 canners were cooking, workers sterilized equipment, prepared for the next runs, and had a few minutes to take a break.

George hoistng cans into the steam canner

As each lot of cans was done cooking, George hoisted the basket out of the canner and into a cooling water bath for 15 minutes. The basket was then wheeled down to the church basement, where two lines of volunteers washed, rinsed, dried, and applied a label to each can. This is where we helped out.

Washing, rinsing, drying, labeling

Other volunteers ran each can under an inkjet printer to mark it with the date it was manufactured. They set aside one can from each lot to be incubated by the USDA to make sure the contents were sterile, then packed all remaining cans in 24-can cartons hand-labeled with the lot number and printed “Turkey Chunks” and “Humanitarian Aid.”

At most sites, this whole process is repeated 7 times a day, beginning at 6:00am and ending after midnight. We were told that Spartansburg expected to can a total of 29,000 pounds of meat in three days: 10,500 pounds on Tuesday and Wednesday, with the remainder and cleanup on Thursday. At the end of the 3-day canning event, all the boxes will be loaded onto a truck using a “bucket brigade” and sent to MCC in Akron, OH, for distribution throughout the world. Some cans go to the US, especially to disaster areas. But most go to places in great need of supplemental protein, such as Haiti, North Korea, and sites in eastern Europe and South America. MCC takes great care to distribute only to relief agencies that directly use the food to feed people in need.

Canned and ready to go

Susan explained the months and months of organizing it takes to sponsor a single 3-day canning event:

Raise the funds needed to rent the canner and to purchase the meat and supplies
Arrange for food to feed the workers
Arrange all the other accompanying activities, such as collecting donated soap and tying 33 comforters that groups had pieced earlier
Recruit and schedule all the volunteers

Overall, it takes about 40 volunteers at all times to run the canning operation, and often as many as 100 were present. Yet, nobody was barking orders. Everyone seemed to know their roles, to naturally pitch in, and to keep the whole process running in an efficient, relaxed, and good-natured way.

Who were all those volunteers? When we were there, many were different groups of Amish who had hired vans and drivers to bring them to Spartansburg. Others were Mennonites, either from this church or others in western Pennsylvania or nearby areas of New York or Ohio. Volunteers traveled from as much as 1-2 hours away.

Is the meat cannery cost-effective? We believe the answer is yes. As far as we could tell, the per can cost to the local organizing committees of this MCC meat approximates wholesale prices. Therefore, you might think MCC should just buy cans of meat to ship to those in need. However, could as much money be raised simply to purchase relief supplies? No. People donate both money and volunteer hours partly because their donation includes the direct hands-on experience of caring for other people in need.

Folks at the Spartansburg site and the Mennonite Central Committee impressed us with their clarity of purpose: “The meat cannery allows my hands to better the lives of others around the world.” “You show love through taking care of other people.” “Our number 1 priority is to serve God, and this is a special way to do that.”

Or, as their label says, “Food for relief in the name of Christ.”

Want to read a good book?

2011-01-27T22:02:00.000-05:00

To add to the three books we recommended in the summer, here are two more inspiring books we read recently. They’re sure to stretch your understanding of what it would take to create equitable access to healthy food in America.

Ehrenreich, Barbara. Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2001. We highly recommend this classic, which chronicles the author’s experiences supporting herself in 3 locations (Florida, Maine, and Minnesota) at low-wage jobs such as waitress, house cleaner, and big box retail salesperson. Work was exhausting, psychologically demeaning, and anxiety-ridden; it required her and her co-workers to eat poorly, neglect their health, live in substandard housing, and live only a car-repair’s distance away from homelessness. Ehrenreich’s powerful conclusion is this: that for those of us more comfortably-off “the appropriate emotion is shame—shame at our own dependency, in this case, on the underpaid labor of others. ... To be a member of the working poor is to be an anonymous donor, a nameless benefactor, to everyone else.” (page 221)

Winne, Mark. Closing the Food Gap: Resetting the Table in the Land of Plenty. Boston: Beacon Press, 2008. (You can read excerpts here: http://www.markwinne.com/excerpts-from-closing-the-food-gap/) This book is chock full of the author’s first-hand experiences and lessons learned from decades of work to improve community food systems, from community gardens, farmers’ markets, and community supported agriculture to the history of public responses to the problems of hunger and food-related disease. How can we eliminate the disparity between the abilities of rich and poor Americans to access healthy food? How can we arrive at a food system that is healthy, just, and sustainable for all? A few quotes will give you the flavor of Winne’s wisdom:

“I have come to believe that community gardens can help people fill the food gap only when they are motivated and encouraged to do the hard work that form the building blocks of community.” (Page 66)
“What could the effect of food banks be if all the energy that was put into soliciting and distributing wasted food was put into ending hunger and poverty? … Put all the emergency food volunteers, staff, and board members from across the country on buses to Washington, D.C., to tell Congress to end hunger, and you would have a convoy that would stretch from New York City to our nation’s capital.” (Page 77)
“The poor get diabetes; the rich get local and organic.” (Page 125)
“In a country reluctant to attack the root causes of poverty and redistribute wealth that is ultimately created by each of us, attacking hunger and food insecurity are the best routes available now. If nothing else, they will connect Americans to short-term solutions and, over time, to the long-term one—namely fighting poverty.” (Page 174)

If you've read these books, let us know what you think. Have you read other books offering solutions to the problem of hunger in America that you find particularly insightful?

Hunters for the Hungry (Tennessee Wildlife Federation)

2010-11-07T15:11:00.000-05:00

“Local Hunters Harvesting Local Deer to Feed Local People.”

That’s a motto of Tennessee Wildlife Federation’s program called Hunters for the Hungry.

Basically, Hunters for the Hungry provides a means for hunters to safely donate venison to charitable organizations that feed food insecure Americans.

According to National Rifle Association figures, there are Hunters for the Hungry, or similar organizations, in at least 44 states, with a total national yield for the 2009-2010 season of 2,603,263 pounds of Deer, Elk, Antelope, Moose, Pheasants and Waterfowl meat.

Matt Simcox and Chad Whittenburg

For an inside look at how a Hunters for the Hungry organization operates and what makes it successful, we visited the Tennessee Wildlife Federation offices in Nashville, TN. We met Director of Outreach Chad Whittenburg and Outreach Coordinator Matt Simcox.

Hunters for the Hungry was started in 1995 as a program of the state Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency. In 1998, it moved to the Tennessee Wildlife Federation, which is a state-wide nonprofit conservation organization. Chad coordinated the program from 2005 to 2008, when Matt was hired to coordinate it. Under their leadership, Hunters for the Hungry has grown steadily. In the 2009-2010 season, Tennessee hunters donated over 100,000 pounds of venison, enough for over 400,000 servings!

How does it work? Local chapters of the Tennessee Wildlife Federation and generous deer processors are key.

Hunters for the Hungry recruits certified deer processors to participate in the program. Each processor agrees to process a donated deer for $40 (much less than the usual rate). This year, 71 processors signed up, one or more in 55 of Tennessee’s 95 counties.
Hunters abide by all state regulations, property permits, season dates, and bag limits.
Local chapters of the Tennessee Wildlife Federation raise funds for Hunters for the Hungry. Those funds are used by their local processor to pay the processing fees for deer donated to Hunters for the Hungry. Once those funds run out, hunters may still donate a deer, but pay the $40 themselves.
Hunters may also donate a portion of the meat from a deer they’re having processed for their own use. This method accounts for about 1/3 of the venison donated to Hunters for the Hungry.
Each processor has a freezer dedicated to Hunters for the Hungry. Once the freezer is full, or when the locally-designated soup kitchen or pantry needs meat, a volunteer comes and transfers the frozen venison to the kitchen or pantry where it will be used to feed hungry people.

We visited Flowers’ Deer Processing, one of the first to join Hunters for the Hungry. We spoke with Jim Flowers, shown here with a chub of ground venison, the preferred packaging because it’s the easiest and most versatile for cooks to prepare.

Enough funds have been raised in this county to cover the processing of 119 deer. As this board shows, even though the hunting season was only open to bow hunters so far, 13 deer had already been donated. Flowers contributes even more to Hunters for the Hungry because they request that everyone who has a deer processed here donate at least one chub to the program.

We think that Hunters for the Hungry is a good program on many levels.

First, everyone has a role to play in alleviating hunger. This program encourages hunters, deer processors, and local wildlife federation members to directly help hunger relief organizations in their communities. Meat is expensive, and without venison, these pantries and feeding programs would need to find other ways to purchase it for their clients.

Second, harvesting deer beyond what individual hunters need to feed their own families helps to manage the burgeoning deer population. There is general agreement among conservationists, foresters, and wildlife management professionals that in the United States, deer herds have become dangerously large, damaging our forests and negatively impacting cultivated areas and crops because there are more deer than the land can healthily sustain.

Deer also are increasingly causing damage to vehicles and themselves on roads. According to State Farm Insurance, car collisions with deer have increased 21% in the last 5 years.

Third, and perhaps most importantly, hungry folks receive high-quality, lean meat, better than can be purchased in a store. Wild venison is delicious and nutritious. It is natural, free of artificial hormones, and lower in fat and calories than beef and pork. Nothing second-rate here! Hunters for the Hungry provides meat for food-insecure people that is higher quality than what most Americans eat.

Hunters for the Hungry is a win-win-win program.

Red Bird Farmers Project – Improving Nutrition and Food Security

2010-11-06T20:43:00.000-04:00

Nutritious food is often difficult to obtain by poor residents of remote communities in Appalachia. In Bell, Clay, and Leslie counties, KY, the result is high reliance on government assistance, as well as very high prevalence (top quartile nationally) of obesity, diabetes, and heart disease.

To help people of this area improve their nutrition and their ability to meet their own food needs, Red Bird Mission hosts the Red Bird Farmers Project. This project includes a farmer's market, jointly owned farm and food preparation equipment, and training classes. It also includes two major grants helping expand local food production.

The first is Heifer International. Red Bird Mission received a grant from Heifer to increase local livestock production. A group of about 25 farmers attended the required training to obtain animals. The training included such topics as space and fencing requirements for each type of animal, amending the fields to make them safe and healthy for the animals, caring for the animals, and budgeting to make sure you’ll make money raising the animals. Some of the farmers have even attended regional and national training. There they’ve networked with experienced farmers who are eager to answer questions for newer farmers.

The group decided to concentrate on chickens, goats, and cows. At the beginning, almost everyone wanted cows. But as the participants learned that not all land in the area can sustain cows without having to buy large amounts of supplemental feed, they came to realize that goats or chickens might be more appropriate.

Through Heifer, money was available for farm improvements like chicken houses and fencing, as well as to buy the animals. When one of the members of the group thought they were ready to purchase animals, more experienced people from the group inspected the farm to make sure the requirements for their desired animals were met. Only then could they get the money to buy their animals.

A Heifer project participant’s commitment doesn’t end when the animals arrive. Each farmer’s contract specifies that they must “pass on” equivalent animals to someone else in the group as soon as their animals have reproduced and they have them to provide.

Farming is a family business

The 3 ½ year Heifer grant is expiring at the end of this year, but the Farmer’s Project will continue the program. What won’t be provided, though, are funds to get the farms ready to house the animals. Now farmers will need to come up with this funding themselves.

We visited Rodney (pictured here with his father), who had obtained goats for his farm through the Heifer International grant. He also received funding for a hen house that he’d designed himself, and says works just the way he wanted it to. Rodney was definitely an animal lover, and his animals appeared to be healthy and well fed. He said his female goats were all pregnant.

Rodney has become quite an entrepreneur, not only raising goats and chickens, but also growing seedlings in the spring for local gardeners and running a feed and veterinary supply store for other local farmers so they all don’t have to drive the long distance to town. He raises hay for his animals, and sells about 4 dozen eggs per day from his chickens.

Stacia Carwell with
gardener Dwayne

The second major grant in the Farmers Program is Grow Appalachia, a program that encourages local production of vegetables. Grow Appalachia is funded by John Paul DeJoria, CEO and founder of John Paul Mitchell Systems, Inc. In partnership with Berea College, Grow Appalachia was managed at Red Bird Mission by Garden Project Coordinator Nancy Seaberg.

This was the first year of Grow Appalachia. About 29 people, families, or groups participated, many of them gardening for the first time. About 2/3 of the participants live on less than $700/mo. Others, like Dwayne (shown here with Stacia Carwell, Familiy Ministries Outreach Manager), were experienced gardeners who wanted to be a part of the program and served as resources for the less experienced members.

Grow Appalachia participants attended classes, and received locally grown seeds and plants. They received tools if they needed them, canners and jars at the preserving class, and fruit plants for a low price at the class on fruits.

All told, the participants in this first year of Grow Appalachia produced about 600 bushels of produce, and all of the participants want to continue next year!

Nancy Seaberg, gardener Sue, and rototiller Carolyn

Nancy put us to work rototilling to put one of the gardens to bed for the winter. This garden was at the senior apartments and had been divided into 5 plots. A few green pepper plants were still bearing in one corner, so we left that area untilled.

We also got a chance to talk to one of the gardeners. Sue was very happy with her garden. She had harvested lots of green beans, many of which were now in her freezer, and she had also shared a good portion of her produce. She is eager to garden next year, but wants her plot to be next to a friend’s plot. It turns out she likes hoeing, but not planting, and her friend likes planting but not hoeing.

We feel that Red Bird Farmers Project is a great example of the leverage Red Bird Mission achieves by partnering with other programs such as Grow Appalachia and Heifer International, bringing new opportunities for nutritious food and self-sufficiency to residents of the Red Bird area.

Red Bird Mission, serving the needs of Eastern Kentucky

2010-11-06T12:20:00.001-04:00

The Red Bird area of Kentucky is deep in the Appalachian Mountains, in Bell, Clay, and Leslie counties. The rugged mountains make for beautiful scenery, but also difficult transportation, little employment, and extreme poverty. While on average, about 17% of Kentuckians live below the federal poverty level, in these 3 counties, the poverty levels are far worse: 35%, 37%, and 29%. These 3 counties are all ranked in the top 20 poorest counties in the entire country.

How should we work to help ensure that residents here have food to eat, can meet their basic needs, and share in the opportunities afforded the rest of the country?

We can’t imagine a better solution than Red Bird Mission.

Red Bird Mission is located near the tiny post office of Beverly, KY. Founded with just a school in 1921, today it has grown to a full-service mission of the United Methodist Church, the only one of its kind in the U.S. It serves approximately 14,000 people each year.

The large main campus includes the mission school, clinics, offices for community outreach, a large work camp with dining hall and cabins, volunteer quarters, several residences for mission directors, a volunteer fire department, storage for building materials, and maintenance facilities for the buildings and the Mission’s 50 vehicles. A second campus houses a church and senior center.

We met with Director of Community Outreach Tracy Nolan (left), Development Manager Tonya Asher, Family Ministries Outreach Manager Stacia Carwell, and Garden Project Coordinator Nancy Seaberg.

Red Bird Mission programs and services cover all the areas you might think would be important to this community:

Education through the Red Bird Mission School for 160 students in grades K-12.
Health and Wellness including medical and dental clinics, a pharmacy, home care, and health education programs.
Economic Opportunity through a craft store for local artisans and the Community Store, which offers high-quality used clothing.

On the left you see Tonya next to donated clothing in the arrival area. Donations are then sorted, washed, and sold extremely inexpensively in the bright, clean store shown on the right. The Community Store is often a person's first introduction to the services of Red Bird Mission.

Work Camp for improvements to homes in the area. Each year, about 3000 volunteers (up to 120/week) repair over 200 homes and help improve living conditions for residents of the Red Bird area.
Community Outreach. We spent most of our visit learning about Community Outreach. We were particularly interested in programs helping Red Bird area residents become food secure through farming and gardening. We’ll describe those programs in the next blog posting.

But the full list of social services and community development programs is vast -- way too long to describe in detail here. The small staff (5 full-time, 8 part-time or occasional, and numerous volunteers) handle

Two volunteers filling Christmas boxes
with all new, donated toys, books,
clothing, linens, and personal care items
for about 500 children who otherwise
would have little or nothing at Christmas.

Community aid (e.g., food pantry and government commodities)
Services for seniors (e.g., transportation, senior center, and senior housing)
Services for pregnant women and children (e.g., home visits, preschool, and summer youth programs)
Services for families (e.g., adult education, transitional housing, and Christmas boxes).

Community Outreach staff work one-on-one with people who come to Red Bird Mission. They form close relationships. As a person is ready, they build a set of services to meet their individual needs, and encourage them to move away from crisis and hunger insecurity to self-sufficiency.

One thing that enables outreach services to reach more people is that many of the programs are not unique or invented by Red Bird Mission. Rather, Community Outreach seems masterful in partnering with helpful existing programs, tailoring them to meet local needs, and making them available at the mission through grants, providing the space, or just setting up the meetings. The Mission is the catalyst. Examples of programs in this category include USDA Commodities, GED adult education, Heifer International, and Family-to-Family.

Overall, our experiences at Red Bird Mission left us awed and inspired by the important work and Christian service we saw everywhere.

Mission staff members hold deep respect for the local culture. Many grew up here, graduated from Red Bird Mission School, and are currently raising families here. We heard over and over about strengths such as these: People here are very family oriented; they own their land; relatives and several generations are likely to reside near each other. People here take care of their own; even though there’s a very high homeless rate, you don’t see it because multiple generations and multiple families may live in one house. People here are very proud and resilient; they have a history of hunting, gardening, and canning, so they can survive tough circumstances.

Red Bird Mission also inspires dedicated volunteers. We met several folks who were living in the volunteer quarters with us or who were participating in the work camp while we were there. Person after person told us they had been coming for a week or more every year for 10 or 20 years or more. We met a volunteer who was currently serving as an aide at Red Bird Mission School for the entire year. We met another family who came for a year and are still there 38 years later.

Who knows, maybe we’ll meet you there one day, too.

Canstruction Asheville

2010-10-30T21:55:00.000-04:00

What happens when creative architects and school kids run a food drive? Canstruction!

On our way from SC to KY, we stopped at Pack Place in Asheville, NC, where the Canstruction competition was just getting started.

Thad Rhoden of Architectural Design Studio and this year’s Chairman explained the whole process to us, and we watched as seven teams of enthusiastic kids built fantastic creations from cans.

Canstruction is a national nonprofit organization sponsored by the American Institute of Architects (AIA). Each year, it holds competitions in which teams construct huge sculptures entirely out of cans. At the end of the event, all the cans are donated to local food banks to help feed hungry people in the community.

This entry was called "May Hunger Rest in Peas"

Canstruction Asheville, sponsored by the Asheville chapter of AIA, is different than many Canstruction events because the contestant are all teams of middle and high school students. Each team comes up with its own idea and implements it with the assistance of a teacher and 1 or more architects.

Canstruction projects take the students through the full building cycle:

Design: Entries must fit within an 8-foot cube, must be made of cans, must not deface the can in any way because it will be distributed to hungry families after the event.
Budget: This year, each team could order $1400 worth of cans as the materials for their project. Funds were raised by Canstruction from local corporate donors.
Schedule: Each team met a minimum of 6 times to plan their project and meet the Canstruction milestones.
Construction: Cans were delivered to Pack Place and all construction took place on October 30 before 5pm.

The team for this caramel apple urged people to “spread a
little sweetness by donating food to Manna Food Bank.”

Entries will be judged during the week and the winners announced next Saturday, November 6. Prizes will be awarded for:

Best meal (most balanced diet)
Structural ingenuity
Best use of labels
Juror’s favorite

This team said, "The wheels of the tractor are changing
direction, and in a similar way, we hope to turn the corner
on hunger in Buncombe County while HARVESTING HOPE
for all."

People’s choice (During the week, members of the public come and view the entries. They can vote for their favorite by leaving a can in the big bin next to it.)

This entry proclaimed: "Hunger has been
around for too long. ... It is time the hour
glass runs out."

These kids clearly learned a lot! We don’t know what the winning entries will be, but we do know that the “final” winners will be the hungry of western North Carolina. That’s because after next Saturday, all of the approximately 14,000 cans used in this Canstruction event, plus all the cans donated by folks to vote on each entry, will go to the local Manna FoodBank.

Meals on Wheels of Greenville County, SC

2010-10-29T16:56:00.000-04:00

According to a study conducted in 2009 by the Meals On Wheels Association of America, South Carolina is the state with the second highest risk of senior hunger in America.

Therefore, for our visit to South Carolina we decided to visit a program specifically targeting seniors. We chose Meals on Wheels of Greenville, which serves all of Greenville County, the most populous county in the state.

We met with Director of Volunteer Services Kerri Brison and Executive Director Liz Seman (pictured here), who included us in their busy day and gave us a full picture of how this great organization functions.

Meals on Wheels of Greenville:

Began in 1968.
Is entirely supported by community donations from private individuals and corporations. They take no money from the government or United Way, freeing them to set their own rules.
Serves about 1500 meals a day (M-F) to homebound clients who are referred by a physician or social service agency. Unlike many similar programs, here there are no charges for the meals and no financial qualifications to receive them. They “serve without judging.”
Runs with about 13 full-time and 17 part-time staff members, and about 2000 volunteers. The largest groups of volunteers are retirees, stay-at-home moms, and corporate volunteers. Corporate monetary donations have declined with the poor economy, but we were told that many area companies still commit to staffing certain routes; this allows employees to volunteer less frequently but relieves Meals on Wheels from the burden of scheduling the volunteers individually. Many volunteer work the line or drive the same route on the same day each week.
Sees their role as providing daily human contact for their clients, some of whom see nobody else all day. The volunteer who delivers the meal also chats with the client and if something seems amiss reports that to staff, who try to help by doing things like arranging for other services the client might need.

On our day at Meals on Wheels of Greenville, we worked on the line to pack all 1500 meals and we helped to deliver meals on two different routes.

How did it all work?

Packing meals was like being a cog in a well-oiled machine. Twelve volunteers worked on the line, six on each side: The first person scooped rice into the largest compartment of a divided aluminum tray and slid it along to the next, who added a piece of chicken breast. The 3rd and 4th people added broccoli and diced pears. The 5th and 6th put the lid on the dinner tray and clamped it shut. Kitchen staff kept the line supplied with food and moved the finished trays to heating cabinets to return them to proper temperatures.

It only took an hour and a half for our crew to pack all of the day’s 1500 meals! About 1350 of the meals were for today’s clients and 150 were frozen for clients who need extra meals for the evening or weekend, when Meals on Wheels doesn’t deliver.

Then it was time to deliver the meals. Meals on Wheels of Greenville maintains 112 delivery routes, each with an average of about 11 stops – whatever number keeps the total time to do the route under 1.5 hours so the food will arrive hot.

We were awed by the complexity of the process that must be required to maintain these routes and the deliveries on them:

New clients are added or existing clients removed.
Clients may not need a meal on a particular day.
Clients may need special meals – Meals on Wheels supplies standard meals (all of which are appropriate for diabetics), renal meals (for clients who need low sodium and low potassium), precut meals (for clients with difficulty cutting, such as those with arthritis), and pureed meals (for clients with dental problems, for example). In addition, clients can choose milk or juice.
Volunteer drivers become fiercely attached to the routes they drive, and the clients they get to know on those routes, so they don’t like their routes to be changed.

The first meals off the line were transferred to 4 trucks that take meals to drop-off sites (church parking lots) for about 20 routes that serve areas of the county far away from Greenville.

Volunteer drivers for the nearby routes arrived about 10:45 and picked up the updated list for their route. Each list showed which clients needed a meal that day, which type of meal, and which beverage. The route list also had directions on how to get to each client’s residence and information about the client such as how long it might take them to get to the door.

The drivers packed the cold drinks they’d need in their “cold” insulated container. They then went to the kitchen window where staff loaded their “hot” containers with meals of the proper type from the heating ovens. If they were also delivering a frozen meal, these were added to the “cold” container.

Sometimes, drivers bring other items to clients as well:

Donated bread
Peaches or other fruit
Cat or dog food (twice a month to clients with pets)
A card and special treat such as a small cake or sugar-free pie (diet appropriate) for clients celebrating a birthday

Finally, the drivers loaded the containers into their cars and headed out to deliver the meals and chat with the clients. Here are two pictures of the volunteers with whom we rode bringing Meals on Wheels to two grateful clients.

The Meals On Wheels Association of America is a loose association of non-profit organizations that share the goal of ending hunger among seniors in America. Member organizations vary widely in how they operate, but we can only hope that all are as effective in serving the needs of their clients as Meals on Wheels of Greenville.

Area Congregations in Ministry, Oxford, NC

2010-10-23T20:57:00.001-04:00

Friday, we visited ACIM (Area Congregations in Ministry), in Oxford, NC, which provides emergency assistance to people in need who live in Granville county. In addition to a food pantry that serves approximately 50 families per week, ACIM provides help with medical and utility bills, temporary shelter, and referrals to other services.

ACIM is supported by financial and food donations from local churches, businesses, other organizations, and individuals. It also gets funds from the government and United Way. In 2009, it helped 1516 families (3177 people) with food, and dispersed more than $98,000 to help people pay their bills.

ACIM is housed in a building that used to be a hosiery factory. They just moved to this location last spring from very cramped quarters downtown. After extensive cleaning and remodeling, they now have an entryway decorated with relics from the hosiery factory, a client intake and waiting area, a director’s office, and cubicles for privacy while interviewing the clients. On one side is the food pantry -- a large room with shelving, freezers, refrigerators, and food.

ACIM is open 3 mornings a week. When clients arrive, they sign in. If they’ve been there before, their file is obtained. If they haven’t, a file is created. Then they’re interviewed to determine what help they need.

Most of the requests for help can be handled by the volunteers who initially talk to the clients, but the requests for help paying bills seem to be handled by the able and experienced, Sue Hinman, pictured here on the left. Sue is the only paid ACIM employee, where she’s been the director for 10 years. We sat in as she handled 3 requests.

An elderly man who supports himself and his wife on $600/mo + $16 in food stamps came with a final notice electric bill for about $285 that needed to be paid by next Tuesday or else his power would be shut off. ACIM rules allow Sue to pay up to $200 once a year, but the man did not have the remaining $85. Sue asked the man to return Monday after she'd had a chance to search for additional funds at other agencies.
The second person, a woman, had asked for help before, and was turned down this time because she didn’t have the correct bill.
The third was a young man who had been helped before, several years earlier. He had a termination bill for his electricity. Sue gave him a voucher to help with most of this bill, but told him he must take the budgeting class before he could be helped again.

We liked the idea of the budgeting class. ACIM pays for the course through donations. Sue said it is taught by the extension service a few times a year. Each class has 4 evening sessions held in the ACIM building. It covers topics such as needs vs. wants, saving to pay upcoming bills, and budgeting. Apparently, when people first go, they feel like they have to be there and display a look of unreceptive defiance. But as the course continues, it makes sense and students learn something. Only 2 people have said they didn’t learn anything from it, and one of those has asked to come back and take it again.

After this, we helped in the food pantry. Clients can only obtain food assistance once each 3 months. The process is like this:

If a client needs food, an interviewer fills out a slip of paper with the number of people in the family, whether they are children, adults, or seniors, and whether they are to receive ACIM food, federal TEFAP (The Emergency Food Assistance Program, available to anyone who is receiving SNAP benefits), or both. In most cases, clients receive both.
Pantry workers fill boxes with food for the family, without knowing who is getting the food. Clients receive one of each item per family member; they have no choice on what foods they will be given. We noticed a few foods that were in larger packages (macaroni and rice, for example), and these packages were only given to large families.
After the boxes for a client are filled, one of the pantry workers helps the client load the food into their car.

Most of the food available at the pantry was shelf-stable items like canned or packaged goods. There were some fresh breads and sweets from local grocery stores. Meat from the local grocery stores (about to expire) had been frozen in their packages at the store, and was kept and distributed frozen at the food pantry.

There were no fresh fruits or vegetables when we were there, and we were told that little fresh produce was available. When ACIM does get produce, it’s usually quite old and needs to be sorted and used quickly. This isn’t practical for the ACIM pantry, so they usually give it to the local soup kitchen or set it outside for anyone to take.

The ACIM pantry has a different feel than some other pantries we’ve visited. The focus of the agency is clearly on helping people handle emergency needs and avoid financial emergencies in the future. It is not meant to help people with ongoing needs – for that, clients are referred to other federal or state assistance programs.

We were impressed by ACIM’s centralization of services. Because all the churches have gone together to support this one organization, individual churches don’t need to handle separate requests for aid, people in need have a single place to go for assistance, and the same rules apply to everyone.

Does our society tolerate hunger? Interview with Dr. Maureen Berner

2010-10-22T13:14:00.028-04:00

Do you know how many food pantries provide free groceries to hungry people in your area? We asked a few people how many they would guess served the 34 counties of Central and Eastern North Carolina (about 1/3 of the state). We got answers of 10, 25, 100, and 102. What do you think?

The real number is close to 500 food pantries. Nationally, according to Feeding America, the number is 33,500 pantries. Those of us who are fortunate enough to not need food assistance are often quite unaware of this large network of food banks and pantries working every day to help feed the over 49 million Americans who live in food insecure households (data from 2008).

How is the network of food pantries doing, and who are the clients?

For a better understanding, we interviewed Dr. Maureen Berner, Associate Professor of Public Administration and Government at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, NC. Dr. Berner and co-researchers, including Dr. Sharon Paynter, Assistant Professor of Political Science at East Carolina University, have studied those very questions.

We learned that most food pantries and feeding programs in this country were founded in the 1980’s, when welfare reform and other social trends led to more and more hungry Americans. Today, demand is continuing to rise. According to Berner, at one food bank in North Carolina, demand increased 76% in 2009; at others the increase was 30% to 70%. But supply only increased 20%.

Food pantries are most often affiliated with churches and staffed by incredibly dedicated, hard working, and caring volunteers. But Dr. Berner’s research points to several factors suggesting that pantries may not be well-positioned to meet the growing need. For example:

Most pantries have at most 1 paid or professional staff; 68% are run entirely by volunteers.
The boards of directors and volunteers (often older retirees) may not have the skills, training, or time to grow the pantry to meet increasing demand.
Donations of food and dollars tend to be unstable and recently have declined.
Pantries often occupy very small locations with little room to grow.
Pantries typically focus on shelf-stable foods, such as canned goods and packaged cereal. Most have limited facilities to handle fresh produce, bakery items, frozen foods, eggs, meat, milk products, and prepared foods – items that would help clients create a healthier, balanced diet.
Pantries sometimes offer other services, such as free clothes and referrals, but they may not see their mission as helping people reduce their food insecurity long-term with services such as job and housing assistance.

Who are the clients at food pantries? Not perhaps entirely those you’d expect. Many are employed and many receive some form of federal food assistance. In one study at a large food pantry in Iowa in 2004-2006, Berner reported that 26% of the clients were employed, and 39% of those coming to the pantry regularly also received aid from government programs such as food stamps and social security. Nationwide in 2009, Feeding America reported that 36% percent of the households served by their network had at least one person working, and 41% percent were receiving SNAP benefits, an increase of 64 percent over 2006.

Wouldn’t employment and federal benefits keep their recipients food secure? Clearly not.

A person working full-time at a minimum wage job ($7.25/hour) grosses about $15,000 a year, below the poverty line for all but households of 1 or 2.

The federal poverty level is way too low for most Americans to meet their basic needs for housing, utilities, food, and other expenses. The government recognizes this, too, so for programs like WIC and School Lunch, clients may qualify if their income is below 185% of the federal poverty level. Other programs use levels such as 175% or 200% of the federal poverty line.

We’ve also heard many stories of the punishing effect of getting a job – other benefits, such as SNAP, are reduced so much that the person’s situation actually becomes worse.

Pantries are doing what they can to meet the need for food for hungry Americans. But there is an interesting disconnect. Many pantries are set up to provide short-term help for people experiencing temporary emergencies. But Berner’s research shows that most clients at food pantries have a years-long relationship with the pantry as part of meeting their ongoing, systemic need for food.

As Berner writes, “If we wish to maintain the government responsibility to alleviate hunger in our country, benefits for eligible citizens must be increased or food assistance nonprofits need more government support. Otherwise we should face the fact that as an undeclared public policy, our society tolerates hunger.”

Gleaning with the Society of St. Andrew

2010-10-17T16:05:00.000-04:00

Everyone knows that a healthy diet includes ample fresh fruit and vegetables. But providing fresh produce to feed the hungry in this country is very difficult. Why?

Much fresh produce requires harvesting right when it’s ripe, needs special storage conditions, and needs to be used within days of being harvested. Food banks, food pantries, USDA commodities programs, and feeding programs have limited ability to store and distribute fresh produce. For example, many food pantries are open only once a week, so if produce becomes available on a Tuesday they may not be able to keep it until the pantry opens again the following Monday.

But at the same time, depending on the crop, an estimated 12% to 40% of fresh fruits and vegetables produced in the U.S. are wasted every year. Why?

Some produce is unsold from wholesalers, grocery stores, and farmer’s markets.
We Americans are fussy about what we accept at grocery stores. So produce that is oddly-shaped, oddly-colored, surface blemished, too big, or too small is routinely rejected by growers, harvesters, packing facilities, and grocers.
Harvesters (both human and mechanical) leave some additional percentage of the crop in a field, due to it being overlooked, dropped from trees, or simply more than the crew can handle in the time available.
Crop success is unpredictable, so sometimes there is an excess of certain items. Prices may drop so far that it isn’t worth the farmer’s expenses to pick it. These excess crops are routinely dumped in landfills or plowed under by growers so the field is available for use the next season.
Sometimes whole truck-loads of produce are rejected by the receiving grocery store for reasons such as lack of proper bar-coding or it being slightly over-ripe when it arrives.

Enter the Society of St. Andrew, a nation-wide nonprofit organization that’s working "to bridge the hunger gap between 96 billion pounds of food wasted every year in this country, and the nearly 40 million Americans who live in poverty." Volunteers glean nutritious produce that would otherwise be wasted and give it away free of charge to organizations that will use it to feed hungry Americans.

Gleaning is a very, very old practice, even mentioned in the book of Deuteronomy: "When you gather the grapes of your vineyard, do not glean what is left; it shall be for the alien, the orphan, and the widow." (Deuteronomy 24: 21 NRSV)

We visited the Society of St. Andrew’s headquarters in Big Island, Virginia, where we met with Executive Director Mike Waldmann (left) and Communication Director Mike Hickcox. We learned that the Society of St. Andrew was founded in 1979 by two Methodist ministers who wanted to do something about hunger and Americans’ wasteful lifestyle. (Read about their history.)

Today, the Society of St. Andrew gleans produce in 22 states and delivers to all lower 48 states and Washington DC. They operate no warehouses and no formal distribution system. Instead, they rely on regional directors, who organize gleaning events with their huge list of 878 local growers and other food sources, and volunteer gleaners, who capture and deliver the produce to local organizations that can use it while it is still fresh. In 2009, 34,624 volunteers gleaned a total of over 26,500,000 pounds of food and delivered it to 3,400 nonprofit hunger-relief organizations.

Gleaning is a great way for all sorts of groups – school groups, church groups, kids, mixed-age groups – to help end hunger in America. Little or no expertise is required – after all, we volunteered as apple gleaners! Our group consisted of 9 other adults, including Virginia Gleaning Program Director Sarah Ramey (on the right).

Mr. Gross had generously allowed us to glean in one of his Bedford, VA, orchards. When we arrived, it looked as though we would find few apples. But as we looked more closely, we found lots and lots of good apples on the ground and in a few trees that had been skipped. By the end of about 90 minutes, our group had filled 60 bags of apples, or about 720 pounds – that’s enough for about 2160 servings of apples!

We went along with Sarah to deliver 58 of these bags of apples to the Salvation Army in Lynchburg, VA, one of the few agencies that’s available to receive fresh produce on the weekend. The other 2 bags were destined for 2 local shelters.

Check out their website for information on other great programs run by the Society of St. Andrew, such as the Potato and Produce Project and Harvest of Hope.

Manna Meal – Feeding the Hungry in Charleston, WV

2010-10-11T11:04:00.001-04:00

Manna Meal is the largest feeding program we’ve visited so far, and quite a program it is! It began in 1978 with a few people fed at a table in the kitchen of St. John’s Episcopal Church in downtown Charleston, WV.

Today, Manna Meal serves breakfast to about 125 people and lunch to about 225 people 365 days a year.

We met all four full-time staff members. From right to left, they are Director Jean Simpson, Assistant Director Sandy Perrine, Outreach Coordinator Rhondell Miller, and Lead Cook Raj Pongsugree. They are assisted by 4 part-time staff and about 130 volunteers a week. Many of the volunteers have been coming at a regular time once a week for up to 20 years.

Running Manna Meal is not like catering meals for a large group. Here, only about ¼ of the food served is purchased (mostly funded by private donations). The remaining ¾ comes from donors such as grocery stores, hospitals, restaurants, bakeries, catered civic functions, the farmer’s market, individual people’s gardens, and Manna Meal’s own garden. Much of the donated food is dishes already prepared or items no longer salable in stores.

Each day’s menu is rapidly planned based on food that happens to come in. One day they might get a donation of several boxes of nearly over-ripe fruit, 40 dozen eggs, and 50 pizzas, so there will be fruit salad and pizza for lunch that day and scrambled eggs for breakfast the next day. Still, guests are offered hearty, well-balanced meals.

On our day volunteering at Manna Meal, breakfast consisted of sausage patties, potatoes, muffins, bread, cereal, milk, bananas, and coffee. Lunch was pork tenderloin, bread, scalloped potatoes, tossed salad, baked apples with dried cherries, dessert (pastries, cookies, brownies), and beverage (orange juice, water, coffee).

We helped serve breakfast and lunch, and in between we prepared salad for 200. The kitchen (due to be renovated this November) was a very busy place. While we were making salad, others were cleaning and cooking potatoes, checking on apples in the oven, slicing pork, filling orange juice glasses, cutting desserts, preparing the rolling carts used to deliver food to the dining room, and dealing with a pair of copier salespeople who’d come to try to donate a copier. The hubbub increased when the volunteer servers arrived, greeted everyone in the kitchen, found their aprons and sanitary gloves, and lined up to deliver the food carts.

Manna Meal seemed to us to be especially in tune with the needs of their patrons.

Everyone who comes is fed – there are no requirements to register or qualify, only to behave in a non-disruptive way.
Food prepared is tuned to the likes and needs of the patrons. For example, we were instructed to cut the salad into small pieces to make it easier to eat for those with dental problems. While Manna Meal can’t prepare multiple choices for one meal, they assist those with diabetes or other health conditions in choosing what to eat of the ample meal offered.
Anything Manna Meal can’t use is given away to patrons. In addition to bread and other fresh food, they give away clothing and other donated items.
Manna Meal coordinates with a huge number of other organizations in Charleston. One such organization is Covenant House, which provides services such as laundry, medical assistance, help with rent and utility payments, a food pantry located just a block away from Manna Meal, and vouchers for clothing, household goods, and furniture. We also heard about other churches’ dinner programs, men’s shelters, women’s shelters, and a veterans’ outreach program. Nurses and mental health workers come during lunch a couple of times a week to assist Manna Meal patrons. Occasionally, a transitional housing person comes, too. Some of this coordination occurs through Kanawha Valley Collective, a group of organizations focused on addressing social problems such as poverty and homelessness.

The patrons of Manna Meal fit all descriptions -- black, white, Hispanic, children to elderly, men and women, mobile to wheel-chair bound, homeless or housed, unemployed or employed or even full-time students. At any one meal, there are usually about 75% men and just a few children. Probably about half have mental health issues, some of which are only apparent over time. Many have substance abuse problems. Many are people trying to get back on their feet after being incarcerated or losing their housing. Some are there for most every meal, while others come only occasionally, or leave for an extended time and return years later. Many know each other well, greet others, and talk over their meal. Some come in their work clothes -- security workers, store employees, nurses’ aides, for example. These jobs just don’t pay well enough for them to pay their bills and eat, too. About half are probably getting SNAP benefits, but they aren’t enough to make it through the month.

As Assistant Director Sandy said, “People who come are stereotyped way too much. Many are working, doing what they can, and it’s just not enough.” In Charleston, it's Manna Meal ensuring that the hungry can eat.

Feeding the Hungry in the Rain

2010-10-05T22:36:00.004-04:00

It takes a dedicated team to brave all kinds of weather to feed the hungry. We were grateful to serve with such a group last Thursday, when the remnants of a hurricane were delivering rain to Wilmington, DE. A small team from Cornerstone United Methodist Church in Bear DE prepares soup and sandwiches, drives them to Wilmington, and feeds anyone who comes to Christina Park at 6 PM every Thursday evening. They started several years ago, when four men from Cornerstone hatched the idea over breakfast. They’ve been serving supper every week since, except once when the roads were shut down because of a snowstorm.

It’s a pretty simple operation. All it needs is a truck, some tables and chairs, a folding canopy, a few coolers (with sandwiches and cold water), bags of cookies, spoons, napkins, bowls, and a large propane burner and soup kettle. The team of about six volunteers usually sets up all the tables and chairs, and leads informal Bible study as people sit and enjoy their supper. Last week, because of the rain, they only set up a couple of serving tables under the canopy.

When we arrived a half-hour early, guests had already begun assembling in the park. By the end of the serving hour, about 25 people had been served. This was fewer than normal because it was early in the month (close to the time that SSI checks come in) and because many regular guests had already gone to the shelters, which had opened early to provide refuge from the storm. Most guests were men, but there were women, young children, and teenagers, too.

All of the guests appeared to need and be grateful for the food provided. Many appeared to be homeless, and some took extra food to share with those camped near them. Some of the guests have housing, but, as one guest told us, cannot pay the rent and utilities and still have enough money left to eat.

We were humbled by the grace and consistency with which this team served from their Thursday soup truck and the fact that they do far, far more than just offer soup and sandwiches to those in need. Once a month, they offer bags of toiletries. In the winter, they bring coats and hats. They get to know the folks who come, help with finding housing or other services, and freely offer prayer and good fellowship.

SNAP Education at the Food Bank of Delaware

2010-10-05T11:24:00.000-04:00

Getting enough food is one thing; knowing how to use it to provide a healthy diet for yourself and your family is quite another. As the food bank says, “To stretch food dollars, SNAP participants often choose foods that are low-cost and calorie-dense with a lower nutrient content. Poor dietary choices lack variety and can lead to overweight/obesity.”

Beverly Jackey and Lisa Harkins, the two energetic and creative community nutritionists employed at the Food Bank of Delaware, help people make healthy food choices within their budgets, through a set of SNAP-Ed programs for adults and children. They run 12-15 classes per month, and reach well over 1,000 separate people in a year.

For example, Beverly (left) and Lisa developed a new Kid CHEF program using a grant from Walmart. Kid CHEF targets kids between 8 and 12 years old. One dietician teaches each class of up to 12 kids. Classes meet for 5 hour-long sessions, one to prepare an easy dish (e.g., veggie wraps, fruit smoothies) from each food group that make up the USDA’s My Pyramid for kids. Each kid receives a bag of kitchen tools(a chef’s hat and apron, a whisk, a wooden spoon, a rubber scraper, measuring cups and spoons, and a pot holder) to use for the class and to take home.

Adult classes are structured differently, with fewer, longer classes. The nutritionists bring everything they need with them, so they don’t even need a kitchen. Sometimes they can run hands-on classes, but other times they can only do demos because of class size or available space.

Both the adult SNAP-Ed classes and the Kid CHEF classes are very popular. Courses are often taught at agencies that are among the 440 food bank partners, places like boys and girls clubs, summer feeding programs, after school care programs, community centers, shelters, etc. But Beverly and Lisa teach classes anywhere, to almost any number of students. One time, they held a class in a mobile home, with 30-40 people in attendance!

The USDA provides great resources to support nutrition education. Check out MyPyramid.gov to see materials such as posters, multimedia presentations, and interactive tools. The food bank uses these materials in their SNAP-Ed courses and also provides many of them as handouts for partner agencies to pick up when they come for food and distribute to their clients at pantries and shelters.

The USDA also supports SNAP-Ed through funds available to state university cooperative extension services. The Food Bank of Delaware subcontracts with the University of Delaware for half of the costs of providing their SNAP-Ed courses. In return, the SNAP-Ed courses must comply with USDA regulations, such as following the USDA dietary recommendations and ensuring that at least half the class participants are eligible for SNAP benefits.

Finally, in the center of the picture you’ll see a bag of groceries. It illustrates the groceries that the minimum SNAP benefit of $16 will buy. Meant to help convince SNAP-eligible people to apply for benefits when they think it’s too much trouble, it also shows how, with good choices, even $16 can help provide healthy meals for you and your family.