Great article from NPR last year (August 1, 2017) about Rochester, NY, food bank Foodlink's partnership with their local school district to provide locally grown slice apples for school lunches.
by ANYA SACHAROW
Wayne County, New York, is the biggest producer of apples in the Empire State. Yet, in 2013 public school children in the county were being served apples from Washington on their lunch trays. At the end of the lunch period, the lovely, whole Washington apples ended up mostly uneaten in the garbage.
Tom Ferraro, founder of the Rochester, NY, food bank Foodlink, set about solving the problem. Ferraro was familiar with a recent study showing that children were more likely to eat sliced fruit than whole. Since Foodlink had the facilities to wash, slice and package apples into portions, Ferraro decided to purchase apples from local farmers, process them, and sell them back to local schools.
The program has been a success. Since July 2014, Foodlink has purchased 3.8 million pounds of local apples, investing $600,000 into the local agricultural economy. Children are eating the apple slices. And Foodlink uses revenue from apple sales in its own kitchen to prepare scratch-cooked meals for local school lunches, after-school and summer programs.
"It's outside the realm of what most people think of when they think of a food bank," says Julia Tedesco, the executive director of Foodlink. But this aligns with the organization's mission, she adds. By investing in the local economy, the organization has been able to tackle the root cause of hunger – poverty.
Foodlink has nearly doubled its staff since it started investing in local produce, therefore creating new jobs for the community. At the same time school children are eating more nutritious scratch-cooked foods. It's a way for Foodlink to "nourish this community by nourishing the economy and the individuals in it," says Tedesco.
Foodlink's ongoing work represents a new direction in food banking — a shift from simply storing and distributing food to addressing America's hunger crisis by focusing on ways to alleviate poverty as well as providing healthier foods.
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