The Need

A Community Challenge 

Our community is filled with paradoxes. On the one hand, there is intense natural beauty, bountiful harvests, and personal wealth. While on the other hand there are those in our community that often go unseen, people who find themselves laid-off from work, divorced, or have a medical emergency arise. These folks are caught in a downward spiral, with limited resources, forced to make tough daily choices about what needs they can afford and what will have to wait.

• U.S. Census Bureau statistics for 2008 indicate that about 17,490 people live in poverty in Grand Traverse, Leelanau, Benzie, Antrim, and Kalkaska Counties (more than 10% of the population)
• Nearly 40,000 people live in low-income households

Since the Fresh Food Partnership began in 2003, the number of pantry clients has more than tripled. The Northwest Food Coalition reports that people are increasingly turning to area pantries, shelters, and community meals programs for temporary assistance in feeding themselves and their families.

Throughout our region and the country, food pantries remain the primary means by which people in need obtain emergency food supplies. In most cases, food pantries can only provide highly processed canned and packaged foods full of sugar, salt, and carbohydrates. Though sufficient to quell hunger, these foods add to a pattern of poor nutrition for many families struggling with poverty. By purchasing locally grown healthy produce, the Fresh Food Partnership is a bridge between people threatened by hunger and the local producers of nutritious fresh food.