Filling A Need

I'm Lacy Gray with Washington Ag Today.

It's definitely the time of year when "abundance rejoices and want is keenly felt", and Melissa Cloninger with 2nd Harvest in Spokane says the winter weather plays a huge part in that.

CLONINGER: This is always a time of year when need spikes. People are struggling to pay their heating bills and other things that have a tendency to increase in the winter and still at the same time provide enough food for their families. So, in our world our needs are always about having enough food, being able to resource enough food to help people in need and it's also about having enough funds to transport, repackage, and then distribute that mostly donated food.

Thankfully 2nd Harvest has been helped through numerous partnerships.

CLONINGER: We have a number of partnerships that have made resourcing food considerably easier for us this year and a lot of those relationships and partnerships are with grower donors throughout eastern Washington and north Idaho, and one of those relationships is with AgriBeef and with the beef industry. Ranchers and all of the wonderful folks involved in that industry have made it possible for us to partner with them in a program that is called "Beef Counts" since about 2010. In fact, in the three years in which we have been a part of this wonderful program we have been able to provide 230-thousand pounds of round bottom roasts.

Cloninger says that they are deeply grateful for their relationships with all of their grower donors. Thanks to all of them 2nd Harvest has been able to resource more food than ever before this last year, distributing almost 21 million pounds of food throughout their service area.

That's Washington Ag Today.

I'm Lacy Gray on the Ag Information Network.