Food Pantries Pinched by New Produce Fee
Posted by The Editorial Desk / Tuesday, June 28th, 2011
Although workers in Arlington and Fairfax Counties may have the the second and tenth highest average salaries in the country, the region’s food pantries are being forced to swallow a bitterly expensive pill.
Beginning July 1, hundreds of area agencies will pay 10 cents per pound for fresh fruit and vegetables to the Capital Area Food Bank, the region’s primary supplier of food for the poor. The Capital Area Food Bank is imposing the fee in order to cover its own skyrocketing transportation and food costs (to the tune of more than $1 million in unanticipated expenditures). It is projected that U.S. food costs will increase between 3-4 percent by the end of the year.
For Northern Virgina’s Food for Others pantry in Fairfax, the produce fee will add an additional $40,000 in expenses, a sum equal to a quarter of FFO’s food budget. As the Washington Post reports, area food banks are now seeking creative solutions to offset higher food costs, including ”harvest parties” (scavenging fruit from trees in public spaces and private backyards) and “urban gleaning” (gathering fruit from the city tree canopies). In a related story, NPR recently spotlighted food bank efforts to salvage normally discarded canned foods and billions of pounds of wasted farm produce.
To help the FFO, consider volunteering for the Harvest for the Hungry Project. Volunteers will harvest crops from the USDA Agricultural Research Center’s 3,000-acre farm in Beltsville, MD, which are then transported to a warehouse for distribution. Both children and adults are welcome. The 2011 Harvesting Schedule for the summer months is as follows:
Wednesday, July 13
Wednesday, July 20
Wednesday, July 27
Wednesday, August 3
Wednesday, August 10
Wednesday, August 17
Wednesday, August 24
Wednesday, August 31
To register for one of the above dates, email harvest@foodforothers.org. For additional dates and more information, click here.
Food for Others
2938 Prosperity Avenue
Fairfax, VA 22031
(703) 207-9173
-Johnisha M. Levi
Tags: Arlington, average salaries, Capital Area Food Bank, crops, Fairfax, FFO, food costs, Food for Others, food prices, fruit, Gut Check, Harvest for the Hungry, harvest parties, Johnisha M. Levi, Northern Virginia, Northern Virginia Magazine, NoVA, NPR, produce, scavenge, urban gleaning, USDA Agricultural Research Center, vegetables, Washington Post