Food Surpluses for Braddock Food Pantries

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Daniel Little

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May 6, 2020, 11:59:19 AM5/6/20
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Hi, folks!

My name is Daniel Little and I am the director of involveMINT.io

I am working with a collaborative in Braddock that is helping deliver food from local agencies to elderly, disabled, and isolated residents. Most of the agencies we are talking to have said they don’t have enough food being donated to keep up with the need in the community.

At the same time, we have read in the paper that some farms are facing surpluses because various markets have dried up during the lockdown. We would like to connect these farmers with the local social service agencies to donate excess food. We have ChangeMakers (dedicated volunteers) that can transport donations to the sites.

Do any of you have excess food at this time or know other famers who might? Thanks so much for contributing to the community.

Sincerely,

Daniel Little

Lori Diefenbacher

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May 6, 2020, 2:37:30 PM5/6/20
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Hi Daniel, 
I am the Produce & Agricultural Programs Coordinator at Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank.  We work with dozens of local farms in our 11-county region surrounding Pittsburgh to source fresh produce to distribute through our network of 300+ pantries throughout the growing season.  
I would be happy to connect you to some local farmers, however, you are not seeing our local farms on the news right now reporting surplus.  Those farms are in FL & GA.  Our local farmers will not have surplus until Late June, early July.  
There are many ways the Food Bank can help you get food.  Last year we sourced and distributed over 8 million pounds of just fresh produce, not to mention shelf stable, grocery items.  
Please feel free to give me a call or shoot me an email ldiefe...@pittsburghfoodbank.org  412-745-6533.  
Lori Diefenbacher

Jean Nick

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May 6, 2020, 2:45:41 PM5/6/20
to PASA Community Board, Lori Diefenbacher
eggs and milk are in surplus on some PA farms. Any way to connect those farms?

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Gregory Boulos

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May 6, 2020, 5:06:44 PM5/6/20
to Jean Nick, PASA Community Board, Lori Diefenbacher
Im only chiming in to mention that many of the farm products that are being wasted are because of middle infrastructure. Communities need to solve for the failure in that infrastructure and figure out how to store breakdown and distribute bulk commodities. Farmers aren't wasting their investments for fun. The processors and packagers are where the bottleneck is happening. 

My heart goes out to those farmers who are having to destroy their ready-to-harvest crops.  Euthanizing beef and pork, dumping milk... Farmers are running on such tight margins and no one is talking about the major economic investments that the farm's made in those 'surplus' crops.  Everyone is worried about reopening hair salons instead of sustaining the essential 'basic human need' businesses.

Anyway ... Many farms don't package their products, they ship bulk.  Such as bottled milk - so farms that are dumping milk probably don't bottle their own milk... That's why they are dumping it.  To use that milk, we would need refrigerated transport and packaging capabilities for say 1000 gallons of fluid milk per farm per day. 

This discussion thread is specifically for hungry people... so all this work will be free to the end consumer... on a daily basis because the central bottling plant isn't running.  Same goes for processing beef and pork when slaughterhouses close.   If the farmers have bulk commodities to give away, then the communities and pantries need to work out how to receive a tanker and break it down into household units.  5 gallon water containers of milk might be in our near future if more of the food system breaks down. 

Milkmen and small regional bottlers used to handle this infrastructure.  We've seen some farms who do bottle their own milk, dump their milk because there is a problem getting new bottles!  A literal bottleneck. 

Just food for thought.  There are many hidden factors (subsidies) for why and how our food system sustained itself with its volume of excess and waste.  Resilience, redundancy and adaptability are unfortunately not factors in linear supply chains like ours. 

Hopefully we can continue discussing how to begin integrating our own middle infrastructure  to help stabilize and transform the harvests into stable, usable products, especially for those of us in need and finding ourselves on hard times. 

How can we work together to support our community food systems to ensure that the farmers economically survive to continue growing food in 2021? Especially, if they have to dump or give it all away in 2020?  Please don't plan for giveaways.  Plan for building a safety net and helping keep the farmers in business.

Lastly, every food bank and pantry customer should plant a garden and start raising chickens and/or meat rabbits this year. Growing our own food is by far the cheapest way to get vegetables and proteins.  And the folks at the most risk must become part of the solution. 

We can't solve our problem with the same thinking we used when we created them.  - Einstein


Greg



rub...@verizon.net

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May 6, 2020, 7:27:08 PM5/6/20
to Gregory Boulos, Jean Nick, PASA Community Board, Lori Diefenbacher

Well put, Greg. Thank you for taking the time to put all that together. I’ll just add two things.

 

First, our customers need to understand that food is a sector as political as energy or healthcare. The structure of the US ag system –what is produced, how it’s produced, who are the winners and who are the losers--  is largely determined by the US Farm Bill, a near-Trillion-dollar piece of federal legislation that is voted on by individuals we elect. This is also true, to a lesser degree, on the state level. If people want a different food system, centered on ecosystem sustainability and regional systems, they need to tell their elected representatives that, loud and clear, and not only during a pandemic.

 

Second:

A truly grassroots group sprang into life in mid-March, Cooperative Gardens Commission, which provides networks for sharing materials and information to enable people start to produce their own food, anywhere in the US. It was initiated by Nate Kleinman, a seed saver who is also the co-founder and a farmer of the Experimental Farm Network. Considering the time of year, the first task was distributing seeds. Nate and others were able to amass donated high-quality seeds from some excellent sources (Johnny’s, Southern Exposure, etc) and there’s a bookstore in downtown Philadelphia that’s closed due to pandemic, where volunteers sort through the hundreds of requests for seeds, fulfill their orders, and mail them out. There are now entire regions of Indiana, New Jersey, and other areas that are organizing to create cooperative gardens.

 

If anyone reading this is interested in offering expertise in growing food, please contact www.coopgardens.org, #CoopGardens, @coopgardens (Instagram or Facebook), or cooperati...@gmail.com.

 

They are using the brilliant slogan “A Plot to Save the World.”

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rub...@verizon.net

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May 6, 2020, 7:40:46 PM5/6/20
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Daniel, have you sent a similar inquiry to the Pennsylvania Farmers Union?

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Daniel Little

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May 7, 2020, 8:28:53 PM5/7/20
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I have not, do you have their contact info?

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Daniel Little

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May 7, 2020, 8:36:53 PM5/7/20
to PASA Community Board, gbo...@urbanhomesteaders.com, jma...@yahoo.com, ldiefe...@pittsburghfoodbank.org
Lori,
Looking forward to connecting. Is there an easy way for Pantries to make requests from the Food Bank, and can community residents ship food to the food pantries ad hoc or is this something that has to be completed internally by the Food Bank?

Greg and Phyllis, 
Thank you for your insights. 

Greg- Hello founder of the YINZER. We've met before actually -when I was just starting local currency systems (back when we were called TimeTender in 2014).

Fun fact, we are actually building at a local currency in Braddock and Hazelwood right now, and this project is part of that impetus. We would love to get some local farmers participating in our local currency to help develop local supply chains and build local resilience (so these breakdowns don't happen in the future). And I am happy to entertain these discussions on how this might work - we are slating to release the newest digital currency app in August and it's going to have some pretty robust capabilities. Happy to have a conversation outside of this one if you'd like. 

Dan

Please feel free to give me a call or shoot me an email ldiefenbacher@pittsburghfoodbank.org  412-745-6533.  

Lori Diefenbacher

On Wednesday, May 6, 2020 at 11:59:19 AM UTC-4, Daniel Little wrote:

Hi, folks!

My name is Daniel Little and I am the director of involveMINT.io


I am working with a collaborative in Braddock that is helping deliver food from local agencies to elderly, disabled, and isolated residents. Most of the agencies we are talking to have said they don’t have enough food being donated to keep up with the need in the community.

At the same time, we have read in the paper that some farms are facing surpluses because various markets have dried up during the lockdown. We would like to connect these farmers with the local social service agencies to donate excess food. We have ChangeMakers (dedicated volunteers) that can transport donations to the sites.

Do any of you have excess food at this time or know other famers who might? Thanks so much for contributing to the community.

Sincerely,

Daniel Little

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