I interviewed David Proctor with the Idaho Foodbank while he gave me a tour of the Boise facilities. It was a truly eye opening experience.
Christina Todd: How does the Idaho Foodbank work?
David Proctor: The Idaho Foodbank is a distributor of food. Our job is to collect all the food we can and distribute to local food pantries around the state.
CT: How many food pantries are there in Idaho?
DP: Over two hundred. We service them through this branch, one in Lewiston and one in Pocatello. There are only about 200 Foodbank like us around the whole country. A lot of food pantries like to use the word Foodbank in their name, but this is a rare distributorship.
CT: Do you receive government assistance?
DP: No we are complete privately funded, we rely heavily on private donations of money and food, the 20 to 30 small food drives going on around the area every week, and with our Grocery Alliance Program that picks up food from large grocery chains like Fred Meyer and Wal-Mart.
CT: What does hunger look like in Boise?
DP: A lot are working families who can’t afford to pay for rent, or utilities, or the gas in their cars and afford to pay for food. Most of these people don’t’ qualify for food stamp assistants from the states cause the supposedly make too much money, most don’t. The programs we have in place are there to help anyone who needs help.
CT: Can you tell me a little about some of your programs?
DP: The Mobile Food pantry is one of you biggest programs. There are a lot of rural towns in this state, some that don’t even have grocery stores and if they do the cost is so high they can’t afford to pay for it nor do they have the facilities in place to store the food we give them. Last week we went to Wendell, Idaho where we held our monthly food drop. We drive to the local fire department or church in area and with the help of volunteers we pass out food. In Wendell we park at the firehouse, when we pulled up to start unloading there was already a long line of people waiting to receive food, it didn’t just resemble a depression soup era soup line it was one. It is sad as the economy gets worse the lines are getting longer and longer, especially in the rural parts of the state.
CT: What is the backpack program all about?
DP: Oh this program is very dear to my heart. It was developed by a school teacher in the Midwest many years ago. Kids were going home o the weekends and starving, the relied on the free foods the schools gave them to eat. We fill a backpack every Friday for kids all across valley to prevent them from going hungry during the weekend. The sad face is right now we make 2000 of these. Every week we set up an assembly line on these tables where we stuff bags to be delivered to schools knowing that we could easily fill 7000 backpacks if we had the ability too.
CT: How much does it cost to produce a backpack meal?
DP: $6.11, it contains three square meals, none which have to be cooked, everything in this pack is child friendly, most kids who are going hungry on the weekends don’t have parents around.
CT: What do you think of forced volunteer work?
DP: I am on the fence about that. On one side we need all the help we can get, but having someone in here who doesn’t want to be can be very counterproductive, especially if that person is a teenager.
CT: Do you get a lot of fresh fruits and vegetables from the community when they begin harvesting their gardens?
DP: Yes we get a lot, but a lot of times people don’t know what to do with the vegetables. We will hand them a bag of mixed vegetables and they look at us like we are crazy. More often than not people will ask what the hell are we supposed to do with these. It has become such a problem that we now hand out recipe flyers with all the vegetables.
CT: So is it not smart to bring the Foodbank your surplus?
DP: No not at all, we never turn down any food. We have taken a big hit this last year in our food supply from the big chain stores, like Wal-Mart, who have opted to sell their damaged and mislabeled goods to the dollar stores instead of donating it to us and taking the tax write off. We need all the help we can get. I just wish more people knew what to do with a bag of vegetables I am worried more goes to waste then anything.
CT: Hungry people will throw away food?
DP: This is big problem. Every year we know a lot of pounds of food is wasted because people don’t know how to prepare it. Zucchini is the worst just because so many people grow it.
CT: So would that in mind would you think it would be beneficial for kids in school to learn how to cook vegetables?
DP: Yes, I believe if they had skills to cook them we wouldn’t be getting these stares that say are you kidding me we want real food.
CT: Are you afraid that people are become too dependent on your services?
DP: No, most people don’t like to come to food pantries to take hand outs. If there is a problem with someone working the system for free groceries it is very rare. We aren’t going to investigate; we go by the honor code that tells us if they are here they need help.
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