Local farmers assist Erie County families

Mem­bers of the Erie County Farm Bureau are work­ing to fight hunger in Erie County through the Ohio Farm Bureau Farm­ers Feed Our Needs campaign.

Recently the Erie County Farm Bureau Board of Trustees mem­bers and their fam­i­lies gath­ered bright and early on a Sat­ur­day morn­ing in Milan Township.

They met to help in dig­ging and pick­ing up over 1,200 pounds of pota­toes. These pota­toes were grown on Ten­der Shoot Farm by Dave Weil­nau, an Erie County Farm Bureau mem­ber. The pota­toes were then washed, sorted and donated to Vic­tory Kitchen and Care ‘n Share food bank of Erie County in San­dusky. The pota­toes will be used to pro­vide food for many hun­gry peo­ple in Erie County.

The Erie County Farm Bureau would like to thank Dave Weil­nau for his con­tin­ued sup­port of this pro­gram. With­out his sup­port this pro­gram would not be possible.

The Erie County Farm Bureau’s project is part of a statewide effort of coun­ties and the Ohio Farm Bureau Fed­er­a­tion (OFBF) and many part­ner­ing orga­ni­za­tions. John C. (Jack) Fisher, OFBF exec­u­tive vice-president pointed out that only 19 cents of the aver­age food dol­lar makes it back to the farm fam­i­lies who grew it; 81 cents goes to non­farm costs such as energy, labor and marketing.

The farm share of food costs remains low in spite of dra­matic farm pro­duc­tion cost increases; diesel fuel costs are up 272 per­cent and fer­til­izer costs are up 175 per­cent since 2002. “With nearly 13 per­cent of Ohioans not sure they’ll have enough to eat, farm fam­i­lies are eager to help, and we hope all Ohioans will pitch in.”

“Our Erie County Farm Bureau Board hopes to orga­nize more dona­tion of food efforts dur­ing 2012, many times veg­etable farm­ers have extra food to donate, but we need to find vol­un­teers or vol­un­teer groups will­ing to help pick the extra food to be donated” stated Denny Weil­nau, Erie County Farm Bureau Pres­i­dent. He also added, “If you or your group would be inter­ested in vol­un­teer­ing to pick food to be donated in Erie County next year please call me at 419–499-4910 and give us your infor­ma­tion and con­tact per­son. We will try to coor­di­nate har­vest­ing efforts as food becomes avail­able next year.”

Posted by Becky Brooks on Nov 15 2011. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.