June update 2008

The Farm Bill has passed! After months of delay and a presidential veto there is finally a bill with enough funding in place to start increasing the flow of food back to Food Banks and Pantries towards the levels we saw five years ago before inflation ate away at the funds. The new bill has a provision to adjust funding based on price increases so we hope to see a stable volume of food over the five years covered by the bill. It could not come at a more important time, with fuel prices continuing to go up and food prices following closely behind. We hope to see increased shipments into the warehouse within the next 60 days as state administrators receive funding allocations and order food. It is particularly important to us because our monthly total of inbound food remains about 100,000 pounds behind our goal with requests for support up about 15%, meaning we need about 150,000 pounds more each month than we have been getting. Our staff has significantly increased their contact with local grocers to increase local donations but local donations alone will not solve the problem.

Our summer lunch program for children started on June 2^nd using food prepared in our new kitchen facility following a ribbon cutting ceremony on May 29^th. Congressman Jo Bonner helped cut the ribbon and spoke of the importance of the kitchen in feeding children from financially strapped families as well as the potential role of producing thousands of meals daily for the community following any future severe storm along the central gulf coast. The kitchen will be supporting 25 lunch sites serving free lunches to as many as 1,800 children under the federal Summer Lunch Program. We’ve hired 8 high school students and two school cafeteria supervisors for the effort as well as four drivers to delivery the lunches each day. I see the kitchen as a real win-win-win. We have an asset that supports youth programs year round, is instantly available following disaster and provides work experience to teenagers.

Hurricane Season began on June 1^st which is the trigger for our staff to update phone rosters, check our emergency generator, review safety procedures and cross our fingers that we won’t need to make use of any of the preparations! For those who don’t live on the gulf coast consider this, the water temperature on the Alabama gulf coast this morning was 86 degrees. That’s higher than usual thanks to a hot start to the season and water temperature has a big impact on the strength of storms. I’ve got my fingers crossed hoping for a cooling trend later in the month before any big tropical weather patterns start to work into the Caribbean.

June will not be a lazy month for us. America’s Second Harvest has made a decision to change their name and brand in an effort to be more visible to the general public. Three of our staff will be attending a conference in Chicago to understand the transition. Others will be attending training as volunteers for the network’s disaster response teams. And, all of us will be checking records and processes in preparation for our America’s Second Harvest compliance audit, conducted every two years and designed to ensure we’re managing food donations within the guidelines of the Network as well as government.