How to improve food delivery to those who need it was the focus of a workshop April 3 in Reedsport.
It was hosted by Oregon Food Bank and NeighborWorks Umpqua.
“I work all over the state as a community organizer on rural, community food systems,” Sharron Thornberry, community food systems manager at Oregon Food Bank, said to open the meeting. “FEAST is a program we developed in 2009. It stands for food, education, agriculture solutions together.”
She says, while Oregon Food Bank is a huge resource in the state, it can’t do everything.
“We can’t feed everybody,” she told the group. “More and more people are coming to the emergency food systems. We want to get on the front end of this and actually start working with communities to strengthen their local food systems so that there’s lots of emergency food and people have access to food.
She says they’re also concerned that people who need it have access to healthy food.
“We want to try to build up those assets in rural communities throughout the state,” she said.
The goal of the meeting, said Thornberry, was a list of the community’s assets, challenges and opportunities.
Assets included community gardens, the fishing industry, soup kitchens and senior lunches and local food banks.
Joe Coyne, of the Winchester Bay Merchants Association, said the community is involved in a number of ways.
“If you go see the play, you bring a can of food,” he said. “If you go to the basketball game …”
“So, solid community support,” Thornberry concluded.
Challenges include limited economic resources, not enough community-supported agriculture, transportation.
“I’m not just talking about low income,” Thornberry said. “I meant in general.
One of the concerns was access to fresh local produce for people in need of emergency food boxes.
“You can go to Coos Bay,” said a woman who identified herself as Sitka, who is involved in the community garden. “You can go to Florence. No, you can’t get it here.”
She said it’s an economic issue.
“If you have enough money, you can order it online,” she said. “You can become part of a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture). You can have access to food.”
“Are there a lot of seniors here who might have transportation issues,” Thornberry asked, “who don’t have as much access?”
Allen Chaney, with the Lower Umpqua Ministerial Association, says they try to provide as much emergency food as they can through the two local food banks.
“It’s set according to the quantity of food that they’re able to stock,” he said. “Over the years, it has fluctuated. Right now, individual families come the Project Blessing six times a year.
“AARP (a local food pantry operating out of Henderson Park), they can go once a month,” Chaney said.
“The need for some of these people is more than once a month,” Coyne commented. “If it was possible to have more access, open availability. That’s a supply issue.”
Chaney said they’re currently working to improve a city building that may allow Project Blessing to increase hours. He said a grant, from Oregon Food Bank, is currently allowing them to re-roof the building.
“We’re hopeful that, when we get that facility up and running,” Chaney said, “that, not only can we expand the quantity of times per year (a family may receive food boxes), but also the quantity of times per week. But, at the end of the day, it’s all economic.”
He said, in the past few years, they’ve seen a significant increase in the number of people coming to the food pantries.
Another challenge is growing enough fresh produce.
“At Great Gardens we provide garden plots so people can grow their own food,” Sitka said. “But, then, I also use half the garden for growing produce here, for the community. We usually take it to food banks.”
She also says they teach people how to harvest produce from the garden. She pointed out, however, in some years she can’t grow enough to meet the demand.
Among other challenges identified by the group were more access to fresh fish from Winchester Bay fishing boats, fresh crab from the docks and freezer space for local food pantries.
“If we could put a nice, big walk-in freezer in that new building,” Chaney said, “we could then really increase the quantity of food that we could bring in here.”
Opportunities
A farmers market or mobile market might be an opportunity for the Reedsport area.
“Would people be interested in having a farmers market, if you could attract farmers here to do that?” Thornberry asked.
Sitka said there isn’t really a farmers’ market, per se, in Reedsport.
“It’s a go over to Roseburg and buy stuff and bring back over here and sell it market,” she said.
“It isn’t a true farmers’ market,” Laura Stroud, of NeighborWorks Umpqua, said. “It happens on Saturday in the summer.”
That sale, said Stroud, is a fundraiser for the Senior Transit System.
Sitka said “gleaning” local farms and orchards is also an opportunity. Some farmers leave a portion of their crops for people to glean at the end of the harvest.
Thornberry said she will take the comments she heard back to Oregon Food Bank to develop ways to further help the community.
Originally published in The World
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