An Idea Whose Time Has Come

All of us are aware how great the need for food is at community programs across the city, and I’ve received plenty of positive feedback around City Harvest’s plan to increase the amount of food we will collect and deliver over the coming year.

I’ve also been asked how the organization can possibly meet this challenge. Like any other business with a large truck fleet, escalating fuel costs have forced us to look at our business model.

As part of our work streamlining our truck routes, City Harvest’s operations team identified a number of food businesses making regular donations of less than 50 pounds. Knowing that we needed to direct our trucks towards larger food pickups, we asked ourselves how we could continue to rescue these small but needed amounts of food. Enter the City Harvest bike fleet.

Each of the three City Harvest cargo bikes is outfitted with an insulated cart that can hold up to 500 pounds of food. Like our truck drivers, cargo bike drivers are trained to pick up and handle food safely. Perhaps you’ve already seen one of our cargo bike drivers pedaling around Manhattan, transporting food donations to a nearby agency. If not, you might want to check out a story that recently ran on NBC about the bikes. You can also find out more about the bikes – part of our larger Green Initiative – on our website.

When City Harvest began the concept of food rescue, many of us felt it was idea whose time had come. I feel the same way about our bikes.

Watch the virtual tour of the new City Harvest Cargo Bike

Ending Hunger

In my last blog entry, I shared the challenge I made to my staff: to rescue an additional three million pounds of food over the coming year in response to the growing need for food in our city. In response, a volunteer posed a powerful question to me about City Harvest’s mission. As he or she pointed out, our mission is to end hunger: “Is food rescue really an effective means of ending hunger? Or does it just stave off the hunger for one more day?”

I know this question well because I’ve asked it myself. When I joined City Harvest as Senior Director of Program Development in 2004, my role centered around the development of initiatives to address longer term issues that surround hunger. Today, in addition to meeting the immediate needs of hungry New Yorkers with rescued food, we’re also working to ensure that people have regular access to healthy food – which is what it means to end hunger.

Volunteers at City Harvest began rescuing food more than 25 years ago in response to the hunger so many of our neighbors were experiencing. We’re still best known for our work rescuing food. But we’ve also developed programs to increase the availability of affordable, good quality food in targeted low income neighborhoods and courses to teach people to prepare nutritious meals on a budget. Most recently, we launched a buying club in partnership with FreshDirect to bring residents of the South Bronx high quality food at a discount.

I think that the success of programs that address hunger’s root causes also depends on making sure that people have the food they need to be healthy today. That’s where food rescue comes in. Both are key to ending the cycle of hunger, poor health, and poverty.

Our New Challenge

As the cost of living in New York City rises, so does the number of hungry New Yorkers. Nobody knows this better than City Harvest. My agency relations team recently shared with me that three quarters of our agency partners are rationing food distributions – giving out smaller pantry bags or smaller meal servings – in order to serve a greater number of people. They’re asking City Harvest for more food.

Knowing how critical the situation has now become, we’ve pledged to secure an additional three million pounds of food this year, bringing the total we plan to rescue to 23 million pounds. Keeping in line with our mission, 75% of that poundage will be nutrient dense food like fresh produce, meat, and dairy. I’ve never seen my staff so determined to meet a challenge – because we know how great our impact can be.

Fortunately for City Harvest, New Yorkers remain committed to feeding other New Yorkers. Our continuing deliveries of fresh, nutritious food depend on the generosity of so many individuals and companies. We’re constantly reaching out to new donors and to old friends and finding new, more efficient ways to move food. I’ll keep you updated on our progress throughout the year. It’s a big push, but we’re up to the challenge.

Welcome

I’ve wanted to start a blog for some time. With such a dramatic change in both the number and type of New Yorkers seeking food in recent months, sharing what I see has become more urgent. More people than ever before are contacting me directly to ask where they can find food. I’ve heard from a man with a college education who now finds himself unemployed and living in his car; another who moved to New York with his girlfriend and children to care for his elderly mother and now can’t find work; and a disabled person on a fixed income who is going hungry. The people writing to me are unfamiliar with local soup kitchens or food pantries. It’s likely that they’ve never had to rely on emergency food before.

Rising prices for food and other necessities are pushing a greater number of people into food lines. Higher prices on items like a dozen eggs – which cost $1.50 just a year ago but $2.00 today – add up to grocery bills that many families simply can’t afford.

At City Harvest, we’re always looking for new ways to get people the food that they need. In addition to stocking the shelves of programs where people can go to receive free food, recently we launched a new buying club in the Bronx in partnership with FreshDirect to help people shop for high quality food and groceries at a discount. Members will even be able to use their food stamps to shop. Read an article in Crain’s New York Business about the new program, or learn more about the club on our web site. It’s part of our work bringing affordable food, as well as free food, to low income New Yorkers.

Times like this push City Harvest to work harder than ever. I hope that this blog can serve as a forum to share our news and challenges with you on a weekly basis, and to hear your comments.