Read the full article by Jennifer Junghans at Sacramento News & Review
In Yolo County, families and individuals experiencing food insecurity can show up at one of Yolo Food Bank’s roughly 60 monthly distributions at 21 locations to receive fresh produce, dairy, meat, bread and nonperishable items nearly every day of the year.
“In our county, we’re feeding one-third of the people that live here,” says Karen Baker, executive director of the Yolo Food Bank, noting another third is probably on the borderline. Beyond distributions, the food bank partners with 62 small nonprofits, such as the UC Davis Pantry, Woodland Food Closet and Meals on Wheels, to distribute food to 30,000 of the county’s nearly 77,000 households. According to the food bank’s Yolo County Food Access Survey Report, just under 30% of households in the county are food insecure.
“The need that we have for fresh produce is pretty intense because anytime you come to a distribution, I’m going to hand you a sack of fresh produce and a sack of shelf stable. … You’re going to get 45 pounds worth of groceries,” Baker says.
To meet the demand, the food bank depended in part on funds from the Local Food Purchase Assistance Cooperative Agreement Program, established by the Biden administration during the pandemic in 2021 to strengthen local food supply chains, while investing in small to mid-scale farmers “with a focus on buying from historically underserved producers.”
