Cabbages at DUG’s DeLaney Community FarmFood is an integral part of the human experience. Beyond its crucial role as a source of nutrition and energy, food is a part of nearly everything that we do: it brings us comfort and it brings us together. In our daily lives, and particularly in a community garden, food and community are intertwined at every level. We work to create and share food with our neighbors, we commiserate when crops fail, and we celebrate with harvest festivals and potlucks.
Given the everyday, fundamental nature of food, it is startling to consider that there are members of our community that do not have enough to eat. In fact, Hunger Free Colorado estimates that 815,000 Coloradans are at risk of hunger. Additionally, more than 25% of working families in Colorado do not have enough food to meet their basic needs, and Colorado has the fastest growing rate of childhood poverty in the nation.
In the Underground News series on hunger, we will explore what it means to be hungry in the land of plenty, the individual and systemic challenges that lead to food insecurity for working families, and the role that community gardens play in improving community security and relieving hunger at the neighborhood level.
We are kicking off this series on a positive note, with an announcement about a brand new initiative to connect food pantries with gardens. In response to increasing demand at community food pantries, several local organizations have come together to create Produce for Pantries. Denver Urban Gardens is joining Cooking Matters, Grow Local Colorado, Slow Food Denver, Plant a Row for The Hungry, Livewell Colorado, Food Bank of the Rockies, Metro CareRing, Yardharvest and St. John’s Cathedral to connect food pantries with school gardens, community gardens and home gardens in their neighborhoods to provide locally-grown and healthy food and nutrition education to those in need. Through Yardharvest, food pantries will also be connected with fruit gleaned from resident’s trees who have an excess they would like to donate.
To date, twenty-three Denver area pantries are involved as pilot sites for 2012. DUG, along with our partners at Slow Food Denver, are getting the word out to community gardeners at our school and neighborhood community gardens, and the Produce for Pantries team is reaching out to home gardeners via a media campaign. As well as receiving fresh produce, food pantries will be provided with easy, nutritious bilingual recipes to accompany the produce, information on safe food handling and storage for the fresh produce, as well as onsite cooking classes.
Produce for Pantries is a natural partnership that takes a community-oriented approach to food security, ensuring that no produce goes to waste, and that those with food to spare can go straight those in their community that need it most. Denver Urban Gardens is grateful to our partners for their crucial work in hunger relief, and for the thousands of Denver-area community gardeners that donate more than 30 tons of produce each year.
Community gardeners should get in touch with us to find out how you can get involved, and home gardeners can send and email to produceforpantries@gmail.com to connect with their nearest participating food pantry. Residents with fruit trees can reigster with Yard Harvest to donate excess fruit to nearby food pantries.
