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(This is the text of a presentation I prepared for the Share the Harvest Dinner and Fundraiser. At the last minute, I changed my presentation so it was much less formal than written here.)
Good evening. My name is Lisa Harmison. I am this year’s coordinator for the Plant A Row for the Hungry program here in Story County. I’d like to thank you for the opportunity to share information on the Plant a Row for the Hungry Program.
According to US Department of Agriculture, one in ten households in the US experiences hunger or the risk of hunger. Approximately 25 million people, including 9.9 million children, have substandard diets or resort to seeking emergency food because they cannot always afford the food they need.
The purpose of PAR is to create and sustain a grassroots program to encourage the donation of surplus garden produce to local food banks, soup kitchens, and service organizations to help feed America’s hungry.
PAR’s success hinges on its people helping people approach. There are over 70 million gardeners in the US, many of which plant and harvest more vegetables than they can consume. If every gardener plants one extra row of vegetables and donates their surplus to local food pantries, a significant impact can be made on reducing hunger. Food agencies will have access to fresh produce, funds for produce can be redirected to other needed items and the hungry of America will have more and healthier food than is presently available. On the national level, PAR provides support and direction to community volunteers to execute the program at the local level. It is part of the Garden Writers Association.
PAR began in Anchorage, AK, in 1994, when a garden columnist who was a former president of GWA, asked his readers to plant a row of vegetables for a local soup kitchen. Over the past eleven years, the idea has spread across the country through continued media support, individual and company sponsorship, and volunteerism. In 2004, 1,248,405 pounds of food were collected across the country, the cumulative total of produce collected is 8.2 millions pounds, not including this year’s collections. Nationally, PAR has over 600 volunteer communities with an average of 45 people in each totaling over 27,000 volunteers.
All this has been achieved without government subsidy or bureaucratic red tape - just people helping people.
PAR started in Ames actually in the fall of 2003 by local Garden Writer Association member Linda Naeve as a way to do something useful with the produce in the home production garden at RG. She organized a meeting with representatives of local gardening related organizations and food pantries. Linda laid the groundwork to get things going. In the spring of 2004, she turned the project over to a student intent at RG, Joy Middleton, who finished putting together the foundations of the program. Joy did an incredible job of getting the word out to local gardeners about the program. Last year, PAR in Ames collected just over 4,000 lbs (2 tons) from Ames-area home gardeners and farmer's market vendors.
At the end of last year’s collection, the campaign became an all-volunteer effort. It is organized by a committee of eight community volunteers and three representatives of the local food pantries. After analyzing the first year and looking to improve the program, the 2005 PAR committee focused on providing simple recipes and tips for preparing and cooking the harvested vegetables and herbs, which was part of the feedback we got from the food pantries. Each food pantry now gets several copies of the recipes and tips for the visitors to take with them. We included slips of paper in the bags of produce identifying what it is. This proves to be very helpful for the non-gardeners, especially with the herbs.
We also fine-tuned the collection process for the volunteers and created a website. We collected from July 11 to September 26. Again, we collected at Reiman Gardens maintenance building and distributed to the Bethseda Food Pantry, MICA, and, in mid-summer, we added the Food at First program as one of our recipients.
This year we collected 2827.5 pounds of food over the 12 weeks of the program (70%). We had 16 dedicated volunteers, and 14 individual donors, plus several vendors at the two Farmers Markets. The volunteers visited the Saturday farmer’s markets, asking vendors if they would like to donate any produce to the program. This produce was stored in the coolers at Reiman Gardens until Monday morning. Individuals brought their donations to RG on Monday mornings. Our dedicated Monday morning volunteers weighed, recorded, sorted, and delivered the produce to Bethseda and MICA. Food at First representatives came to RG to collect their share.
In a couple weeks the committee will meet once more to critique this year’s program and try to make improvements for next year. Reiman Gardens has already agreed to let us use their coolers for storage and a corner in their maintenance building to collect.
Before closing I’d like to thank my fellow members of the committee: Cate Clark, Shelly Dilks, Debbie Gitchell, Roy Hougen, Chuck Jons, Diane Nelson, Denise Rupp, Jo Simpson, Lynette Spicer, Mary Wilkins. They made my work much easier. I’d also like to thank the following sponsors who also helped with this year’s campaign: Ames Garden Club, Copyworks, Reiman Gardens, Story County 4-H, Story County Extension, Story County Master Gardeners Association, and Ames Fareway Grocery Store and Hy-Vee. Also thanks to the 16 volunteers who worked Saturdays and Mondays to collect, weigh, sort, and distribute the produce. And finally to all the gardeners in this community who generously supported our program by donating produce - thank you.
If any of you are interested in volunteering to help next year, please let me know. I encourage all of you to consider planting an extra row of produce and donating extra vegetables to the Plant a Row for the Hungry program next summer.
Thank you. Any questions?