It's time to get growing!
Hunger-Free Minnesota encourages growers of all sizes, from multi-acre farms to backyard gardens, to plant extra produce for Minnesota’s hungry citizens and donate it to local food bank, food shelves and meal programs.
You can watch Hunger-Free Minnesota Chief Campaign Officer Ellie Lucas visit with Cargill’s Denise Essel at Cargill’s employee gardens at its Wayzata headquarters. All of the produce grown during the summer at these gardens is donated to Second Harvest Heartland (food bank), ICA (food shelf) and Open Arms (meal program). Click here to watch “Talking about Agricultural Donation,” first broadcast on FOX 9 Sunday News on May 20, 2012.
To get the full story about agricultural surplus donation, you can read the news release “Hunger-Free Minnesota Asks Growers and Public to Plan Now for Agricultural Surplus Donation”.
To get ideas about how you can help, read “Ag Surplus — How to Get Involved.”
The ways we win
Fighting hunger is a daily battle, and victories must be celebrated. Hunger-Free Minnesota announces a new video series highlighting triumphs large and small in the relentless fight to close the missing meal gap.
Kid Zone Garden Video
There’s nothing better than having four-year-olds explain agricultural surplus donation to you.
Cargill Giving Garden Video
Cargill’s employees spend the summer in the (company) garden and donate 100 percent of the produce. Last year, it was the equivalent of 2,500 meals.
Twin Cities food shelves are diversifying
MARIA ELENA BACA , Star Tribune
Monday, May 28, 2012
Grants make it possible to add culturally specific foods and better serve immigrant and elderly clients.
Imagine turning to a food shelf for help feeding yourself of your family, only to find it stocked with unrecognizable cans and boxes. At many local charities, some clients — immigrant and elderly residents in particular — have left empty-handed because the available food was unfamiliar or unpalatable.
Others were dropping in but not returning, for the same reason.
In response to the area's increasingly diverse population and the still-strong need for help, 17 Twin Cities food shelves have broadened their ethnic food offerings under an initiative by the Emergency Foodshelf Network.
The effort to offer food packages including such items as fufu flour, maggi, bamboo shoots and maseca is the first of its kind by a food bank in Minnesota. Using grants totaling $55,000 from the Otto Bremer Foundation and Minnesota Philanthropy Partners, the network has more than doubled the volume of its culturally specific offerings, from 700 packages each month to 1,700.
"As the immigrant population in our state continues to grow, there's a real need for foods these populations are accustomed to cooking with," said Lori Kratchmer, executive director of the Emergency Foodshelf Network.
The food bank, based in New Hope, already had been using a Hennepin County grant to provide East African foods; those and West African cultural foods were available at five partner food shelves. Now, African, Southeast Asian and Hispanic clients at an additional 12 metro locations can pick up foods from their own cultures.
At member agency Keystone Community Services in St. Paul, more than 30... Continue Reading
Helping Provide an Apple a Day
Vince McCoy, Food Resource Coordinator
Channel One
Channel One Food Bank and Food Shelf in Rochester know the power of fresh produce. Their Glean Team members collect leftover crops from farmers’ fields after they have been harvested for commercial use. Last year, the Glean Team brought in over 100,000 pounds of produce that the food bank and food shelf were then able to distribute...Read More
If you or someone you know can’t afford enough food, click on the plate to go to the Minnesota Food HelpLine or call 1-888-711-1151.
It's the Hunger-Free Minnesota Action Plan in action! The SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) Awareness Campaign has launched. You can see it here.
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