Bay Area food banks and farmers are working together to better help cash-strapped families put food on the table, especially with the holiday season approaching and ongoing cuts to food programs.
On the San Mateo County coast, the owners of Brisa Ranch are busy cultivating crops for a special kind of a market place. They lead a food hub that features a collaboration between local farms and food banks.
“It’s given them a turnkey opportunity to be able to know exactly what to grow in advance with knowing, ‘Hey, I want this many pallets of poblano peppers and cilantro on this date,’ for example,” Brisa Ranch co-owner Cole Mazariegos-Anastassiou said. “In turn, they’ve really been able to build their ground up with that in mind.”
That’s crucial for Second Harvest of Silicon Valley and other Bay Area food banks serving a diverse community.
“In our community, bok choy and cilantro are two key items that we can’t source easily on our own,” Second Harvest of Silicon Valley CEO Leslie Bacho said. “So by making these commitments to have them grow those crops and by doing it collectively with all Bay Area food banks, we’re able to do that more economically and in a way that actually supports our local food system.”
The idea of connecting farms to food banks is being followed by programs being created by the California Association of Food Banks, a network of 44 food banks that work with more than 6,000 community-based organizations.
“This partnership, what it’s able to do is to bring together both an investment in the food banks and also an investment in local agriculture,” California Association of Food Banks CEO Stacia Levenfeld said.
Groups have had to deal with numerous funding cuts, so biopharmaceutical company Gilead Sciences this year donated $2.5 million to keep it all afloat.
“We focus a lot on health,” Gilead Foundation President Jane Stafford said. “Our vision is, in fact, making better health possible. We see food and food access and food insecurity as critical to long-term health in the communities where we live and work.”
