Helping the Hungry Eat Fresh

It’s true that most Americans are not eating enough fresh fruits and vegetables. The chances of having poor eating habits are even more likely for those who are food insecure. One man in Virginia is trying to change that.

In 2006, more than 35 million people in the United States were living in households where access to food was uncertain due to a lack of resources for securing food—be that money or a backyard vegetable garden—according to statistics from the USDA’s Economic Research Service. More than one third of those food insecure people were children.

It is difficult to imagine people going without three meals a day in a nation as prosperous as ours, but more than 10% of the population is food insecure. Even those who gain access to food through food banks or soup kitchens don’t necessarily receive the best nutrition from those sources.

Bob Blair, founder of the Volunteer Farm in Winchester, Virginia, which provides fresh produce to the Blue Ridge Area Food Bank and the Capital Area Food Bank in the summer and fall, recently spoke to a woman in a Salvation Army shelter who had been suffering from diarrhea for 12 days. “She had been living in that shelter for 12 days and hadn’t had any fresh vegetables during that time,” Blair explains.

Fresh Food For All

Access to fresh fruits and vegetables is something most Americans take for granted. Even if they don’t have their own gardens, they have easy access to produce in grocery stores or farmers’ markets. But those without money have neither, and even if they benefit from programs like free lunches at school or food bank deliveries, more often than not, the fruits and vegetables they receive are canned.

That’s one reason Blair, a former government employee, started the Volunteer Farm seven years ago. “I just woke up one morning and knew this is what I had to do,” he says. Blair began cultivating his own former Christmas tree farm near Woodstock, Virginia, for the production of vegetables. Currently, he leases 65 acres of land to the World Foundation for Children, the parent organization of the Volunteer Farm. Forty of those acres are in active production. Blair is currently working to raise funds to get a second farm site in Culpeper, Virginia up and running.

“Part of the concept of the farm was to give everything we had to the Blue Ridge Area Food Bank,” Blair explains. “They’d never heard of such a thing before, but they bought into it.” They recently added the Capital Area Food Bank as a recipient.

Ruth Jones of the Blue Ridge Area Food Bank says a lot of farmers or people with gardens donate excess produce to the food bank, but Blair’s idea was the first time a farm had come to them with the idea of donating all its produce. “He has a great passion for what he does,” says Jones, “and he wanted to bring fresh produce onto the tables of people that need it.”

Who Works the Farm?

Of course, running a farm is hard enough, but running a farm with no intention of accumulating profit is even harder. “I had not done anything like this before,” says Blair, who had no previous experience in raising produce on a large scale. Like any farmer, he’s seen the ups and downs of production due to drought and other variables that can’t be controlled. But he plows ahead anyway with lots of support. Last year, more than 2,500 volunteers provided service to the Volunteer Farm. Since opening, 10,000 workers have labored side by side to see the farm prosper. “We have two blessings: the hungry people that we are able to help and our volunteers,” says Blair.

“We’ve gotten volunteers from every state in the union and 25 foreign countries,” he notes. Many of them come from church missions who send workers to serve a day on the farm. The vast majority of the volunteers come from churches, youth groups, and civic groups in the 25-county area the Blue Ridge Area Food Bank serves.

There are only four paid staff at the Volunteer Farm: a farm manager, an office manager, a full-time volunteer coordinator, and a part-time development director. The whole organization runs on an annual budget of around $200,000. Even though the United States is struggling economically, Blair says the farm is doing well.

“Farming is very expensive to begin with,” notes Blair, who is well aware of the fact that one piece of farm equipment can cost as much as a small house. “Then we have the expense of recruiting volunteers, too.”

Seventy-five percent of the farm’s volunteers are under 18, says Blair, which is appropriate given the fact that so many of the food insecure in the Blue Ridge Area Food Bank and Capital Area Food Bank’s network are children.

How It Works

“This seems to be a very unique model,” Blair says of his farm. “I only know of one other farm that’s even remotely similar to it.” Volunteers are scheduled to serve on the farm planting, weeding, picking, or whatever needs to be done at any given time of the year.

At this point, the Volunteer Farm’s harvest consists of peas, beets, turnips, onions, potatoes, and bush beans. In 2009, 65 tons of produce from the farm’s fields were donated to the two food organizations that serve 800 food pantries, soup kitchens, and other food assistance services. “We serve about 100,000 people a month, give or take,” says Blair. The farm’s goal for production in 2010 is 100 tons of donations.

The food bank then handles distributing the food to needy families through its various agencies around the region. Those agencies include churches and civic organizations that provide bags of food, including some of the Volunteer Farm’s fresh produce, to individual families. Some of it may also end up in soup kitchens or kids’ cafes.

It’s a major priority of the food bank to keep the food items in its warehouse nutritional, Jones says. The Volunteer Farm makes that job a little easier.

“We contend that what these people need are fresh vegetables,” says Blair. He recently took 30 pounds of fresh peas to a shelter in Winchester, which served them with hot dogs for a meal for the residents. “Those people treated those fresh peas like ice cream,” Blair says. “Most food banks serve vegetables from a can.”

Providing for Better Nutrition

The Blue Ridge Area Food Bank that the Volunteer Farm helps provision serves about 80,000 people a month. Blair says half of those are children. “Obesity rates of kids getting their food through food banks are twice the norm,” he adds. “Obesity leads to diabetes, heart disease, everything that negatively affects one’s life span.”

“People who don’t have much money often buy food that isn’t good for them,” adds Jones. “The Volunteer Farm has helped us increase the amount of fresh produce we can provide to families.” Blair hopes those contributions of fresh produce will help area kids get better nutrition and set healthy eating habits for adulthood.

One Drop in a Big Bucket

Blair is the first to admit that the Volunteer Farm is making a very small dent in staving off hunger and poor nutrition. “Most of our fresh produce goes to about 25% of the area the food bank serves,” he explains. But he hopes to inspire others.

In 2008, the Volunteer Farm added to its goal. In addition to providing fresh vegetables to area food banks, the farm also wanted to provide protein. “We accept donated livestock and take them directly to local plants for processing,” Blair explains. He hopes people will donate funds to help pay for animal processing, noting that it costs about $400 per animal for meat to be processed in a USDA-inspected plant.

“It’s not our intention to raise prime beef,” Blair says, “but to feed hungry people. We’re going to need donations and volunteers.”

If you’d like to lend a hand or offer a donation to the Volunteer Farm, visit www.volunteerfarm.org.

— Deborah R. Huso