A Day in the Life...

Food Donations Coordinator, Gaye Sgamboti, spent a busy day visiting all four PriceRite stores in Foodshare’s service area to thank them for their participation in the Retail Pick-Up Program. Combined, the Wethersfield, West Hartford, Windsor and New Britain stores donated 125,912 meals worth of food in 2013. These donations are delivered weekly to partner charitable programs within just a few miles of each store, which means that each store is helping right in their own neighborhood. In addition to food donations, PriceRite participates in Foodshare’s Convoy of Caring and Food Industry Council. 

Thank you for being such wonderful partners in the fight against hunger.

Varney Farm Volunteers Needed!

We are looking for 20-25 volunteers (over the age of 18), who can help to prepare the fields for planting. If you are interested in this opportunity, please email Edna Bailey at ebailey@foodshare.org.

Learn more about Foodshare's Gardens & Farms, and check out this great video about Varney Farm:

 

 

TENNESSEE LEGISLATURE FORMS NUTRITION CAUCUS

A bi-partisan team of state legislators launched The Tennessee Nutrition Caucus late last month.  Part of the impetus to create the caucus is the current status of Tennessee's children and overall population.  According to Feeding America, 25.1% of Tennessee's children and 17.6% of the state's general population are unaware of where they will find their next meal. The group’s long-term goal is to provide an appropriate forum to find solutions to malnutrition – legislative, public, private and volunteer – like reducing unemployment through healthier lifestyles, eliminating food deserts, encouraging urban gardening, harvests for the hungry, and community education events.

 

Source:  Council of State Governments, 4/10/14, Nutrition Caucus

TED Talk: The Way we think about charity is dead wrong

Tranquil Menagerie 4H Club Walking Against Hunger!

We have so many amazing Walk teams and from time to time we like to show off the amazing work they are doing for Foodshare and our community!  Take, for example, the Tranquil Menagerie 4H Club.  Team captain, Jennifer Davis, had this to say of her amazing group:

"We have been walking as a team since 2012 (this will be our 3rd year) and have grown in numbers every year we have participated!  We began walking because we do a lot of community service through 4H and had been volunteering with Foodshare for a number of years (sorting produce, participating in the Hunger 101 project and the Hog Run). We wanted to continue to support Foodshare.  We encourage others in our club to join by sharing our experiences from previous years.  The kids share how fun it is as well as what a good thing it is to do.  We usually try and publish an article in our 4H newsletter letting others know what we are doing with our community service.  4H is a community of young people that promotes leadership, citizenship and life skills.  It's about developing mastery, generosity, independence and belonging which I think goes well with the Foodshare concept."

Well done Jennifer and the whole Tranquil Menagerie 4H Club!  To support their Walk efforts, click here.

FOOD INSECURITY GROWS AMONG BOSTON’S CHILDREN

Over the past decade, the number of families with young children in Boston who are food insecure has increased significantly. In a sample of more than 5,000 families with children under age four receiving care at Boston Medical Center, Children’s HealthWatch found a 77% increase in the proportion of food-insecure families between 2006 and 2012.  Food insecurity now affects about 35% of such households in the city. Children’s HealthWatch research has shown that when Boston families are food insecure, their young children are more likely to be in poor health and at risk for developmental delays, and mothers are more likely to struggle with both their physical and mental health.

 

Source: Children’s HealthWatch, 4/14, Boston Food Insecurity

Iowa turns down food aid

Recently the Iowa legislature voted down a proposal to support food banks.  Check out this public radio story and the words of a state legislator who works at a charitable food program.

ELIGIBLE SENIORS MISSING OUT ON SNAP BENEFITS

While 80% of SNAP-eligible people received benefits in 2011, according to a Mathematica Policy Research study, only 39% of Americans over 60 participated in the program – with 5.2 million seniors missing out on nutrition assistance. Some are too proud about taking ‘handouts’; some feel that taking SNAP benefits robs others of assistance, especially young children, while others find the application process daunting, despite the government’s steps to simplify the process. The average benefit for someone over age 60 who lives alone is $119 a month, and $176 for a two-person household, according to Mathematica.

 

Source: New York Times, 3/28/14, Seniors & SNAP

"The Invisible Child"

Have you read this powerful series in the New York Times?

Foodshare staff takes part in the Walk Against Hunger

The Walk Against Hunger is just one week from today!

The staff at Foodshare has created their own Walk team!  Working together, they hope to achieve the goal of $15,000 to help feed our hungry neighbors in greater Hartford! 

If you cannot come out to walk with us, will you show your support by making a donation today - simply select the walker you would like to support from the list now available online.

Together we can bring an end to hunger!

SNAP RECIPIENTS FEEL STIGMA

Even as SNAP enrollment has surged in the past five years, the program and its participants are still haunted by stigmas and misconceptions, according to outreach coordinators from Alabama, Mississippi and Texas. Among the major stigmas associated with SNAP, according to one Texas coordinator, is the perception of Snap as a welfare program; she wants people to realize it is a nutrition assistance program. One of the biggest misconceptions, an outreach coordinator in Alabama said, is that people who don't work and who are trying to abuse the system use SNAP. Even if someone is eligible for benefits, he or she might not want to be thought of as one of those folks and may feel uncomfortable using their EBT card in a store, because someone could think they're one of those people who commit fraud.

 

Source: The Guardian, 4/17/14, SNAP Stigma

PRODUCE PRICES SET TO RISE

The cost of fresh produce is poised to jump in the coming months due to the 3-year drought in California, which shows no signs of abating.  An Arizona State University study found a head of lettuce could increase in price as much as 62 cents to $2.44; avocado prices could rise 35 cents to $1.60 each; and tomatoes could cost 45 cents more at $2.84 per pound. The price increases may already be happening. Grocery prices rose by 0.5% for the second-straight month in March, according to the Labor Department’s most recent consumer-price index. It was the largest two-month gain in the food-at-home category since 2011. Fruit and vegetable prices rose 0.9% last month, after a 1.1% gain in February. Meat and dairy prices are also increasing.

 

Source: Wall Street Journal, 4/17/14, Food Prices

Big Thanks for Big Y

A note from Paula Siebers, our Food Sourcing Manager:

Yesterday I had the opportunity to present Craig Thomson and George Newman of Big Y with a “large” token of our appreciation.

Craig Thomson, Paula Siebers, George Newman

Big Y began participating in our Meat the Need program in November 2013.  In just those few weeks in 2013, the eleven stores in our service area donated enough frozen meat to generate over 45,000 meals!  This is a tremendous help to us, and goes a long ways towards providing food for many of the 128,000 neighbors in our area who need it.

Thank you Big Y!

USDA TARGETS FOOD STAMP FRAUD

USDA is looking to crack down on welfare fraud around the country. Its Food and Nutrition Service announced this week it is targeting people who sell food stamps for money. Some recipients cheat the system by claiming they have lost their food stamp debit cards so they can request new ones, the agency said.  To combat fraud, the USDA will require states to be on the lookout for excessive requests for SNAP replacement cards. People who request four or more replacements in a year will receive a warning notice. If trafficking is suspected, the state agency must refer the cases to the state's fraud investigation unit. Currently, 8 out of 10 recipients do not request any replacement cards, and 98% request three or fewer cards each year

Source: The Hill, 4/23/14, Fraud

Hands on Hartford Prepares for Walk Day!

Events Coordinator, Jordan Nyberg received the following email yesterday from one of our Walk Benefiting Agencies, Hands on Hartford.  Keep up the great work!

"We're counting the days till the Walk Against Hunger - 10 days to go!  One of our teams is raising money by sponsoring a "jeans day" in the office - for a donation of $6 for one day, or $10 for two days, employees can wear jeans to work.  Many of our team members have posted about their goals for the Walk on their personal Facebook pages, and a few of us have sent emails to all of our contacts explaining how important the issue of hunger is, and asking for donations for the Walk.  At Hands On Hartford, we are aiming to get all of our board and employees involved by forming their own teams, joining the HOH Friends and Families team, or donating to one of our walkers, with the idea that "working together, we can make a difference!"  The attached photo is of one of our team members from last year's walk holding a sign to help people find our agency table on the day of the Walk.  We'll be sprucing up the signs to use again this year.  We can't wait to see everyone on May 4!"

Why we do what we do...

COMMUNITY ELIGIBILITY FOR SCHOOL MEALS IS EXPANDING

The School Nutrition Program’s Community Eligibility provision allows high-poverty schools to eliminate school meal applications and offer breakfast and lunch to all of their students at no charge. Over 4,000 high-poverty schools in 11 states have already implemented community eligibility, and the White House estimates that 18,000 more will be eligible for the coming school year.

Community eligibility has led to significantly more children eating breakfast and lunch at school.  Daily lunch participation rose 13% over two years in schools in Illinois, Kentucky, and Michigan that adopted the Community Eligibility. And daily breakfast participation in these schools rose 25%.  As a result, 29,000 more children were eating breakfast daily.

 

Source: Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, 4/14/14, Community Eligibility

We need to be more impatient!

Ursula Burns, CEO of Xerox was recently quoted as follows:

“We all need to be more impatient with the status quo…from why we can’t create more jobs to how we can create more jobs…from why we can’t compete to how we can compete…from why hunger and poverty and injustice exist in the world to how they can be eliminated…In other words, we all need to be a little more impatient.”  

I wrote about paradigm shifts a couple of weeks ago and was more focused on the "why" questions.  What are the "how" questions that we should be asking ourselves at Foodshare?  Feel free to send me a note with what questions you think Foodshare should be asking about our work to end hunger.

USING DATA TO CLOSE THE MEAL GAP

Hunger-Free Minnesota is using data to drive initiatives that it anticipates will add 60 million new meals to the state’s hunger-relief system by 2015 through innovative strategies in emergency food system capacity, rescuing surplus food, and enrollment and utilization of federal nutrition programs. At the heart of its strategy is a new geo-analytics tool, called Community Close-Up, that provides insight about the relative severity of missing meals and relative utilization of anti-hunger resources at the local community level. The tool can locate the census tracts where the state’s hungriest residents live and approximate how many meals they are missing. By identifying the highest concentrations of missing meals, Hunger-Free Minnesota can prioritize its investment, and the state’s many hunger-fighting organizations can prioritize their efforts and collaborate more effectively.

 

Source: National Foundation to End Senior Hunger, 4/16/14, Using Data

New report on food policy issues in New England

Through the work of many local, state and regional food system advocates, New England is creating a more sustainable and resilient food system. Together, we can further advance this work by promoting innovative and supportive public policies.

Toward that end, American Farmland Trust, Conservation Law Foundation and the Northeast Sustainable Agriculture Working Group have recently released a new report, New England Food Policy: Building a Sustainable Food System. Please visit www.newenglandfoodpolicy.org to download the report.

This report is intended to guide citizens, organizations, coalitions, agencies and policymakers in identifying supportive policies and areas where new or changed policies may be needed to help New England expand its food production, strengthen its agricultural economy, and enhance multi-state cooperation. The report is also intended to complement the New England Food Vision, a project of Food Solutions New England, which will be released later this spring. The New England Food Vision sketches a future, through a set of assumptions and calculations, in which the region could produce at least 50% of its food needs by 2060. New England Food Policy offers suggestions for the types of state and federal policies that will be important in moving the region in the direction of the Vision.     

A product of eighteen months of research and interviews, New England Food Policy contains policy research, analysis and suggestions in five key food system areas:

·         Land

·         Food Production

·         Food Safety, Processing, Aggregation and Distribution

·         Markets

·         Waste Streams

In addition, the report reviews regional approaches for states to cooperate toward shared food system objectives. 

An important purpose of this report is to stimulate and support policy actions by groups and agencies at all levels in each New England state, and as a six-state region.

Watch for more information in the coming weeks, including notice of the first webinar. 

In the meantime, please take some time to read our report, which can be found at www.newenglandfoodpolicy.org.

BRIDGING A FOOD INSECURITY GAP

An innovative voucher proposal in San Francisco is aimed at bridging a hunger gap that occurs because thousands of Social Security beneficiaries, often seniors and families, become ineligible for Food Stamps when they receive Supplemental Security Income (SSI). Teri Olle, associate director of policy at the San Francisco and Marin Food bank, said SSI benefits, which average around $850 a month, aren’t enough to live on in this high-cost city, let alone eat healthily. The program would give food vouchers to eligible seniors and families receiving SSI benefits who cannot afford healthy food. They can redeem the vouchers specifically for fresh or frozen fruits and vegetables at local grocery stores and supermarkets.  A pilot program found that most participants ate healthier and more nutritiously, buying oranges, grapes, and bananas.

 

Source: SF Bay Guardian Online, 4/14/14, Vouchers

A message from the front lines of hunger - in West Hartford!

In response to a recent fundraising appeal, I got this e-mail:

"Hi, Gloria, My name is Susan.  I wish there was some way that I could donate, but I can't even give my time right now.  I go to one of your Mobile Foodshare sites at a church on Fern Street (in West Hartford) twice a month, and it's not easy, but I thank you and God everyday to have the opportunity to get the little I can have.  A lot of the food I can't accept because a year ago I had colon cancer and I have to be very careful what I eat.  Most of the time I'm supposed to stay gluten free, but I can't afford the things I need.  My husband left me last August when I was half way through my recovery from the surgery and it has been a struggle for me every day since then.  I go to work - I'm a crossing guard in West Hartford - and come home and go to bed most days.  I figure it's better than thinking about being hungry.

"I have sworn to myself that when I am able to get back on my feet that I am going to do some volunteer work for Foodshare, but until then, I just can only say thank you for everything your organization has done to help me and so many others."

What mixed emotions I have reading Susan's e-mail.  I'm sad for her and her personal stuggles.  I'm angry at a society that entrusts her to protect our children on their way to school but cannot make sure she has the care she needs in her times of trouble.  And her positive attitude and hope also makes me hopeful for the future - a future when we don't heare more stories like hers.

So, Susan, you're welcome.  And thank you for your message which keeps all of us at Foodshare motivated and focused on both the immediate task at hand - getting healthy food to people in need - and the longer range goal of ending hunger!

Raising money for the Walk Against Hunger

Another example of the creativity of the team at Foodshare...

Our front desk receiptionist, Arelys, thought she might not have the same connections and ability to raise money for the Walk Against Hunger as some of our other staff and volunteers, but she's found a way to raise money right from her teammates here at Foodshare, with a drawing where everyone who donates will get an entry.

The most popular thing in her drawing is likely that she will do a week of cleaning duty in the break room at Foodshare for the winner.  Like every office, this is a shared chore, and one we all dislike, so everyone hopes to win!

But Arelys is also an accomplished baker and cake decorator and personally, I hope to win this "cake pop" boquet she has made!

▶ Foodshare Walk Against Hunger is just two weeks away!

Are you able to join us?  Watch and hear from some of last year's walkers and then sign up here!

Passover and Easter greetings

I received this e-mail recently from a woman who relies on the Mobile Foodshare site on Fern Street in West Hartford:

"I wish I could do so much more to help, but right now my main focus in life is my health and getting back on my feet the way I was before I became so ill with my illness, but  when I go to the church on Fern Street. I try to make everyone feel like the person that they are, because so many that are there look down on themselves for having to be there, and no one should ever be made to feel that way, I have heard, seen and talked to a lot of people who go to this site and I think I can honestly say that when I am there, I feel a touch of love from so many because I share my story, my life and they embrace the moment and they all know, that they are loved, especially by me, I never judge anyone, its not right...Blessings to you on this our Passover and Easter holiday...God be with everyone..."

Check Out Hunger

Wakefern (Shop Rite and Price Rite) raised $957,261.30 in donations as part of their Check out Hunger Campaign.

The four Price Rites and seven Shop Rites in our area brought in $36,150  which will benefit Foodshare.

Price Rite of New Britain continues to fully embrace this program- this year they raised almost $12,000 putting them in the TOP THREE of all Price Rites in the country.

A huge THANK YOU to the wonderful owners, staff and customers of Shop Rite and Price Rite for making this such a successful fundraiser year after year!

Earth Day fundraiser coming up on Tuesday

SNAP CASELOADS AND SPENDING FALL, BUT NOT IN CONNECTICUT

Participation in SNAP continues to drop, new USDA preliminary data show.  About 240,000 fewer people received SNAP benefits in January 2014 than in December 2013, and about 1.2 million fewer people participated than in January 2013. SNAP spending has also fallen, due to both declining participation and the November 2013 expiration of the 2009 Recovery Act’s temporary boost in SNAP benefits. SNAP spending on benefits in January 2014 was about 9% lower than in January 2013.  

In Connecticut, however, participation increased during both measured periods—up 0.4% from December 2013 to January 2014, and 2.9% over the full year.  As of January 2014, 438,848 people were receiving SNAP benefits in Connecticut. Spending on benefits here rose 0.3% from December to January, but fell 1.6% from the previous January.

 

Source: Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, 4/10/17, SNAP Falling

Introducing our Director of Development

Name: Wendy Kohn

Your role at Foodshare: Director of Development.  I lead the fundraising team, and we raise the money to make sure Foodshare can provide 12 million meals to people in need, and operate all of the great programs we have in place to help people get back on their feet.

How long have you been with Foodshare? Almost a year

Hobbies: gardening, filmmaking, roller derby, working on the house/farm, reading… many more things than I have time for!

Why I do what I do: to do my small part in making the world a bit better for everyone

Most recent accomplishment: getting up in the morning (I am most definitely NOT a morning person)

A personal/professional goal: I want to live in more places in the world. There are so many things to see and experience, and traveling gives you an amazing perspective on your own culture and ideas. It’s humbling and fascinating.

Something about me that few people know: I created a documentary film about domesticating African elephants, filmed in Zimbabwe.

If you were an animal what kind would you be?  Why? It would be incredible to experience being an elephant. Their society and family structure is complex and deep, and I would love to know how they think and what they feel about the strange naked ape that has influenced so much of the planet. Or what would it be like to be an earthworm? What do they feel, and do they have what would seem like “thoughts” to us? Or maybe a bird… wouldn’t it be cool to just be able to launch yourself into the air and see things from a totally new perspective? Or how about…. OK, I’ll stop now.

If you found out you only had a few months to live, what would you do with the time? I would spend time with family and friends (both two and four-legged), in the outdoors, on our farm, enjoying the time I have.

Anne Frank once said that in spite of everything, she believed people were basically good. Do you agree or disagree? Why? I think people are basically good, and I look for the good in everyone. My dad taught me that. I’ve met a few bad people in my life, but if you treat everyone as if they are one of the good ones, in the end, they turn out to be just that.

Promoting the Walk Against Hunger

Foodshare staff is nothing if not innovative and creative!  Jill sent me this message and photo today:

"Since our neighborhood is full of walkers in every season of the year, it seemed to make sense to put up a sign and a box for flyers on this tree in our front yard…..every lap they make around the neighborhood is another opportunity for them to read the poster, be reminded of the event and hopefully participate!!"

Paradigm shifts

I've been out of the office more than in these last two weeks, attending a Feeding America meeting and a training session provided by Bank of America.  Time away is good, time to connect with others doing this work, time to think about who we are and where we're going, and time to consider the other big questions attached to our mission of ending hunger.

I was particularly struck by a comment made by my friend John Becker, CEO of the Food Bank of Northeast Georgia, in Athens, Georgia.  He was talking about the need to ask more questions and how that might result in a paradigm shift.  His example as about going to a food pantry and asking the question, "Why all the canned goods?"  The pantry volunteers replied, "Because that's what these people want - they don't know how to use fresh food."

So, he went outside and asked the clients lined up at the food pantry, "Why all the canned goods?"  And they said, "Because that's all they give us here."

At Foodshare, we have certainly demonstrated this paradigm shift over the last dozen years.  Today, fully half of the food that Foodshare distributes is fresh produce, and a signficant additional percentage is other fresh and perishable foods.  Low-income people do want this food, they do know how to use it, we just had to find a way to get it to them, which happens largely through the Mobile Foodshare program.

Where else do we need a paradigm shift?

• Why is the pantry only open two hours in the middle of weekday?  With more and more working poor people needing help with food, and more and more working people wanting meaningful volunteer opportunities, wouldn't some evening or weekend hours make sense?
• And, you know, why does Foodshare not have more evening and weekend hours for those people who want to volunteer and cannot come during a weekday?
• Why does my church (or synagogue or school or workplace) run a canned food drive?  Are there better ways to attack this problem?
• Why are so many people who are eligible for federal food assistance like SNAP, free school breakfast, or summer food for children not receiving these benefits?  What can we do about it?
• Why are there so few grocery stores in low-income neighborhoods?  Should we try to open more stores or should we design transportation systems to get people to the stores with good selection and prices?

What other questions do we need to ask?  Where else might we need a paradigm shift?  Feel free to e-mail me your thoughts at gmcadam@foodshare.org!

EASY ACCESS TO PRODUCE

When Gallup pollsters asked Hartford-area residents how easy it is for them to access affordable fruits and vegetables, 91% said they had no problems.  But this answer placed Hartford in the bottom third of the nation’s metro areas, the same as Little Rock, Arkansas. This compares to the 96.6% of people in Olympia, Washington believing they had easy access to affordable fruits and vegetables.  People in Anchorage, Alaska and Prescott, Arizona saw themselves as having the hardest time getting affordable produce (67.3% and 83.1%, respectively).

 

Source: Gallup, 4/8/14, Produce

College students facing hunger

An article from the Washington Post was reprinted in yesterday's Hartford Courant.  The story delves into the reasons that college students are more and more often going hungry or seeking the assistance of private charities.  I was struck by the pride factor - how the students were too proud to ask for help.  We often think of this as an issue for seniors, but clearly it can affect younger generations, as well.

THE SECRET LIFE OF FOOD STAMPS

SNAP is a government subsidy with two lives. First, low-income people get financial help to buy food. Then, when they spend their SNAP benefits at checkout counters, the government pays those stores for that food, payments that include the stores’ profits. Last year $76 billion flowed from the U.S. Treasury to people’s SNAP cards. That money then flowed into the revenue streams of about 240,000 stores across the country. Unfortunately, a lot of the information about how stores benefit from food stamps is confidential. Federal law prohibits the government from sharing “relevant income and sales tax filing documents” that a store might submit in the course of applying to be part of SNAP. For many years USDA officials have interpreted that to mean no information can be released on how much an individual store or company makes in SNAP revenue. A federal appeals judge recently agreed that this is a misinterpretation of the law and sent the issue back to a lower court for review.

 

Source: Slate, 4/1/14, SNAP Secrets

RISING FOOD PRICES + SNAP CUTS CHALLENGE LATINO FAMILIES

Milk prices could rise about 50 cents per gallon this year, and USDA forecasts that grocery store food prices could increase 3.5% in 2014. California’s drought is making fresh fruit and vegetable prices rise, and poultry prices rose 5% last year. And, Congress has cut SNAP benefits by billions. Latinos are less likely to live near supermarkets offering healthy food at reasonable prices, and non-Hispanic neighborhoods have three times the number of supermarkets as Hispanic neighborhoods. The Latino community continues to suffer from an 8% unemployment rate and nearly one in four families struggle with hunger.

 

Source: National Council of LaRaza, 3/31/14, Latino Challenges

RYAN’S SNAP PROPOSAL WOULD HURT MILLIONS

Millions of people would lose part or all of their SNAP benefits under the new budget proposed by House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, which the House was expected to pass on Thursday. The Ryan budget cuts SNAP by $137 billion between 2015 and 2024.  It includes every major benefit cut in the House version of last year’s Farm Bill, which Congress ultimately rejected.  On top of these cuts, which would end food assistance for 3.8 million people by 2018, it converts SNAP into a block grant beginning in 2019 and cuts it by another $125 billion — almost 30% — over the next 5 years. Since 90% of SNAP spending goes to food assistance, a cut of that size would require restricting SNAP eligibility for needy people, slashing benefits, or both.

 

Source: Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, 4/7/14, Ryan Budget

West Hartford expands school breakfast program

Community Network Builder, Jim Palma, sent me this e-mail earlier today:

 

"Hello Gloria, I am happy to report that there is anarticle about a West Hartford HAT project in today’s Hartford Courant.

"An ongoing project of the West Hartford HAT is to expand the School Breakfast program. Shortly after 4 HAT members met with the Elementary School principals in January to make a case to school breakfast, 4 principals said yes. The linked article is about one such school’s efforts. What’s unique is that breakfast is delivered to the classroom every morning in red wagons by students and occasional celebs (Mayor, UCONN sports figures, WH athletes, etc.) As one of our active HAT members, Dawn Crayco provided strong leadership in this effort. We also had two Moms speak, who represented their PTOs, as well as the Director of Nutrition Services – Trish Molloy. It was Trish who successfully applied for the SDE grant that paid for the coolers, wagons, and universal breakfast for teachers and students for the first month. The entire HAT sent a letter of support for School Breakfast to the principals as well.

"I’m very proud of the collaboration that has taken place in the first 6 months of having a West Hartford HAT."

 

Congratulations to Jim and the West Hartford Hunger Action Team on this great work!

CLIMATE CHANGE THREATENS WORLD FOOD SUPPLY

Climate change threatens to delay the fight against world hunger for decades, according to a new report from Oxfam. From production to prices, the threats climate change poses to food supply are significant. Net global agricultural yields are predicted to decrease by up to 2% per decade while a rapidly rising global population is expected to increase demand for food by 14% per decade.

Oxfam estimates that global food prices could double by 2030, with a shifting climate responsible for half of that rise. And in the next 35 years, there could be 25 million more malnourished children under the age of five than there would be without climate change affecting food availability.

 

Source: Oxfam, 3/25/14, Food Supply

TAX INCENTIVES ENCOURAGE URBAN FARMING

California’s Urban Agriculture Incentive Zones Act allows large cities and counties to designate zones in which landowners receive a property tax break if they agree to use their land for urban agriculture for at least five years. The program is designed for landowners of up to three acres parcels that are vacant or blighted.  Landowners who commit to restricting the use of their land for urban farming may qualify to have the property assessed based on its agricultural, rather than market, value.  This could result in significantly lower tax bills.

 

Source: CT Office of Legislative Research, 4/1/14, Urban Farming

A SUSTAINABLE SOUP KITCHEN

Holy Apostles Soup Kitchen is New York's largest soup kitchen. It serves 1,000 nutritious, sustainable meals, every weekday between 10:30 a.m. and 12:30 p.m., under the socially conscious banner of "Farm-to-Tray." Two cooks (and 1 prep cook) make all the food and do it for less than $2 per meal. More than 24,000 apples are handed out per week and 100 dozen whole grain rolls are served daily. The kitchen’s mandate is to serve fresh fruit and vegetables every day and to source as many local products as possible, and over the last three years director Michael Ottley has been able to cut all processed food from the menus. According to Mr. Ottley, "for some of our guests, this is their only meal and it needs to be healthy and nutritious."

 

Source: Huffington Post, 4/1/14, Soup Kitchen

3rd Annual CT Agriculture Commission Conference

An update from Beatrice Maslowski, Foodshare's Community Network Builder who attended the 3rd Annual CT Agriculture Commission Conference on Saturday April 5th in Hampton, CT:

"U.S. Representative Joe Courtney gave a brief update on the Farm Bill including his hard fought battle to keep Connecticut defined as rural to protect our region, as well as the new funding for fresh fruits and vegetables for low income students, and farmer's market local grants of up to $100,000.  I was able to introduce myself and speak with him for a few minutes regarding local Hunger Action Teams.  Congressman Courtney felt it was important for Foodshare to continue be involved with local Connecticut Agriculture Commissions."

 

(l to r) Lisa Coverdale, USDA-NRCS State Conservationist; Joe Courtney, U.S. Representative; Bryan Hurlburt, USDA-Farm Service Agency; Steve Revizcky, Commissioner of Agriculture; Kip Kolesinskas, American Farmland Trust