Hamilton Community News - Oct 28th 2010

Food Share provides a lifeline for area food banks

By Gord Bowes, News Staff

Oct 28, 2010

It's a well-oiled machine these days, with a million tons of food moving in and out the doors
each year.

But it wasn't always that way. Until Hamilton Food Share moved into its new digs at 339 Barton St. in Stoney Creek about six years ago, it was quite often a mad scramble with trucks unloading their goods in less-than-perfect conditions and food bank volunteers squeezing in to pick up their allotments.

At the old facility, which had only 3,000 square feet of storage space, member agencies would be lined up around the building to get their supplies. It was also difficult for transports to unload.

These days, Food Share has 12,000 square feet of space, including proper loading bays and room for large trucks to manouevre around the building and not block the busy street.

That's what is needed to handle the 2.1 million pounds of food it collects each year and distributes to its member agencies: Good Shepherd Centres, Mission Services, Neighbour to Neighbour, St. Matthew's House, Stoney Creek Food Bank, Salvation Army, Welcome Inn, Wesley Urban Ministries and Living Rock Ministries.

"Food Share is more of a systematic way to get a ton of food and then get it out so it benefits a whole community," says Joanne Santucci, the umbrella organization's executive director.

When Ms. Santucci started with Food Share in 1990, most of the food it collected came through organized drives rather than the food industry.

It wasn't enough to fill the growing need, so a concerted effort was made to get donations from the corporations producing much of the food we eat.

Today, with Food Share co-ordinating, about 85 per cent of the donations it receives come through corporate donations –hundreds of truckloads each year. It's a better result than each food bank going to the companies themselves and asking for help.

"One ask, one give," says Ms. Santucci.

Now, with corporate donations down due to the economy and companies selling to liquidation centres more of what they would have donated in the past, planning has begun on a major change in the system.

Food Share is working to increase fresh food donations from local farmers in the hope of building a more sustainable system.

"We have to stop reacting and start planning," says Ms. Santucci.

Currently, fresh food usually comes in at the end of its shelf life. The system they hope to implement will mean a big jump in nutritious offerings. The hope is to harvest 500,000 pounds of fresh produce each year.

"So we move from reacting to planning, and once we move to planning it's going to be pretty awesome," says Ms. Santucci. "We're going to grow food for food banks." She says she hopesthe need for food banks can be eliminated some day and the facility can be used for other purposes.

"We can turn this whole facility onto child nutrition programs, the shelter system. The entity that the community helped build has the capacity to really help in so many different ways."