By: Joe Mingle, Founder of Healthy Food For All
When Healthy Food For All (HFFA) formed in 2015, our main mission was reducing food waste and sharing the surplus food we rescued with neighbors in need. During times of abundance and plenty, large volumes of surplus food routinely got tossed because no one knew what to do with it all. During the pandemic lockdown, HFFA was on the frontlines managing the massive amounts of surplus food generated by the closing of stores, restaurants, and catering operations.
During the Covid crisis, many weaknesses in the brittle and fraying industrial food system were on full display for all of us to experience. In the post-pandemic period, we’re all still seeing the instability of the food system and increasing need for food support among struggling neighbors. As our understanding of current conditions change, HFFA’s work is also evolving to meet the immediate needs of neighbors and ensure real long-term food security for all of us.
The end of emergency pandemic aid to food banks and pantries has created a real crisis. Lines keep getting longer and longer but the amount of food available is rapidly shrinking. Food and cash donations are down overall and especially concerning is the lack of resources to purchase fresh produce. Much of the food available through our community partners is limited to processed foods, canned goods, and day-old bakery.
As the climate crisis accelerates, we all know it will impact the cost and availability of all sorts of food. Mass deportation of migrant farm workers is also sure to further disrupt production and drive up prices. The need, the changes, and the future are clear, so HFFA is stepping up its game to help expand local food sources and mobilize the entire community to create our new food future.
Since the pandemic, HFFA has assumed responsibility for two longtime food recovery projects that needed greater organizational support. We now lead the collection of surplus produce at the Dane County Farmers’ Market which generates many thousands of pounds of fresh produce every season. We also now maintain a Retail Gleaners Network of volunteers who collect surplus from groceries and other retail outlets across Dane County.
Friends of the Farmers
More and more our work is focusing on helping local produce farmers expand and on rebuilding local food system infrastructure. We all know that real long-term food security requires a growing network of strong local farms and facilities to process and produce all the things we like to eat. In that spirit, we’re trying to fashion ways for everybody in the community to help build the local food system.
We have strong ties with many local farmers who grow food specifically for distribution to low-income neighbors. We are proud to be longtime partners with Madison Area Food Pantry Gardens and the Geezer Gleaners, which both provide many, many tons of fresh produce every season. We also distribute many tons of produce as part of the Purpose Grown Project led by Crossroads Community Farm and Troy Farm. This year, we also began providing distribution services to Gorman Community Farm and Promega Farm.
Central to our plan for expanding local food production is building our new Friends of the Farmers organization. FOTF’s mission is to help build up farmers’ markets, help farmers to expand production and rebuild local food system infrastructure. While our roots are in surplus food recovery, changing conditions demand we broaden our mission. Expanding local food production is key to long-term food security, but it also helps increase food access for neighbors in need.
FOTF will provide support services to help local farmers’ markets to increase foot traffic so that vendors’ sales increase. We want to organize a network of market managers to share resources and ideas on how to help the markets grow. For example, we hope to organize joint promotional campaigns and even create a market managers’ manual with information on local resources and organizations they might find helpful.
Our first step has been the creation of the Friends of the Eastside Farmers’ Market which has been meeting since January. HFFA and FOTF see the Eastside Farmers’ Market as a workshop or laboratory for developing new and innovative programming that can grow all the markets. Based on our model, increasing foot traffic and sales at farmers’ markets directly results in more donated produce available for distribution. Here’s how it works.
Buy One For A Neighbor
One original, innovative project HFFA has developed is Buy One For A Neighbor (BOFAN). Originally piloted at the Northside Farmers’ Market, you may have seen our BOFAN booth this past season at the Eastside, Northside, Monroe Street, or Capitol View markets. BOFAN asks market shoppers to buy an extra bag or bunch of something and immediately donate it to us on the spot. At the end of each market, we immediately do a pop-up pantry in a low-income neighborhood and give it all away.
Shoppers love the project because they can buy something they like and share it with a neighbor. It’s a real, immediate way to help, which makes people happy to do it. The farmers love it because it’s a whole new stream of revenue we refer to as “sales for donation.” Of course, the recipients really appreciate the fresh food and also the fact that individual shoppers cared enough to pick out and share these things with them.
Shoppers get to do some good, farmers sell more, and people get access to healthy food, so it’s a triple-bonus situation from where we’re sitting. The icing on the cake is it demonstrates our sincere commitment to helping local farmers prosper, and they are more inclined to donate any surplus produce they might have at the market’s end for us to also share with others.
While BOFAN is one example of how we are helping farmers’ thrive, expanding farm production is only one part of our mission. An increasingly critical challenge facing the community is rebuilding local food system infrastructure like storage and distribution facilities or shared processing and canning kitchens. By creating the means to process and preserve local produce at a much larger scale, farmers can expand beyond just market and CSA scale production and we’ll all have a more secure food future.
HFFA is proud to call FEED Kitchens on Madison’s northside our home. HFFA staff are integrally enmeshed in FEED’s operations, which has given us insights and direct experience with local infrastructure needs. We’re privileged to work closely with caterers, food cart operators, value-added product makers, and all sorts of food entrepreneurs. Existing infrastructure for local food businesses like FEED Kitchens is mostly maxed out and building more is critical to relocalizing food production and long-term food security.
Help Build Our Shared Food Future
HFFA and FOTH have a vision of our shared food future that is both equitable and resilient. Everyone reading this knows the industrial food system is looking increasingly shaky and unreliable. We all also recognize that the accelerating climate crisis and other chaos in the world further threaten the existing food system. Prudence demands we look into the future, imagine where we want to be, and take immediate, concrete steps on that path.
As a famous poet once wrote, the future’s uncertain and the end is always near. It seems like time is short and the crisis is already upon us. Individually, many of us feel mostly powerless to stop the big forces driving the craziness all around us. But we also know that together as a community, we have the vision, knowledge, and skills to rise to the occasion and take on big challenges.
We’re pretty lucky compared to many places seeing as we have lots of fertile land and water resources. Also, we stand on the shoulders of giants who came before us and spent decades building the local natural foods scene. Willy Street Co-op itself, with roots all the away back to old hippie Mifflin Street, and other venerable mothership institutions like the Dane County Farmers’ Market, give us a real head start on building this shared food future.
But most important of all, we have a community full of smart, compassionate, motivated neighbors who can make most anything happen once we set our minds to it. More than anything, we need you, friend, to show up, join in and give your time and talents. Wherever you live, whatever your skills or experience, HFFA and FOTF need your active involvement to make this possible future our shared reality.
There’s an easy way to sign up to volunteer at hffadane.org or make a donation. We especially need folks who might be interested in helping out at area farmers’ markets. For example, we hope to create a supervised kids’ activity area at the Eastside market this season and could use a few teachers or parents who would like to help out.
We always need volunteers to staff Buy One For A Neighbor booths at various markets and collect produce donations. If you’ve got a strong back, we need help hauling and distributing nature’s (sometimes overwhelming) bounty especially at the height of the growing season. If you’ve got a pickup truck or SUV, come help schlep a mountain of sweet corn or the thousands and thousands of lovely tomatoes that all come ripe at once!
Radical acceptance of the hard realities before us is critical to staying happy and healthy. Find a real sense of meaning and purpose by standing together with your friends and neighbors to build a more secure future for all. There’s no better way to feel joy in these troubled times than to serve others and the community and see the real concrete fruits of your labor.
