Plate & Pitchfork tackles serious food issues during 2013 farm-to-table season
PORTLAND, Ore. – October 2013 – For the past decade, Plate & Pitchfork has been connecting urban food lovers with local chefs, winemakers and family farmers to experience Oregon’s bounty with a farm tour followed by a gourmet meal. Always eager to support local food and farm programs, Plate & Pitchfork founder Erika Polmar chose Farmers Ending Hunger as the sole beneficiary for the 2013 summer season, raising more than $22,000 for the organization’s work with local hunger relief.
“Plate & Pitchfork has a long history of supporting numerous community organizations each season, but we wanted to make a more significant impact this year and that meant finding just one,” said Polmar. “Farmers Ending Hunger has a creative solution to eradicating hunger in Oregon by working directly with farmers who are growing and harvesting food for donation and utilizing the distribution systems of the Oregon Food Bank. They’ve created a very efficient and effective system to feed the hungry. Although our guests were keenly aware of the hunger problem in Oregon, they were not aware of the impressive efforts by Oregon’s farmers to solve the problem.”
This year, 2.1 million pounds of fresh food will be harvested in Oregon and donated to Farmers Ending Hunger, a 9-year-old nonprofit created to bring nutritious food to those who need it most. Funds raised by its Adopt-an-Acre program are used to harvest, process, store and distribute fresh food donated by dozens of family farms from the Columbia River Basin to the Willamette Valley to Southern Oregon. Once it is processed and packaged into products like frozen and canned vegetables, ground beef and pancake mix, the food is delivered to the Oregon Food Bank’s regional network for distribution in their food relief boxes, along with fresh fruit and vegetables like pears, cherries, cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower and winter squash.
“Oregon is one of the most productive growing regions in the country and also one of the hungriest,” said Farmers Ending Hunger Executive Director John Burt. “In an average month, 84,000 children in Oregon eat meals from emergency food boxes. Farmers Ending Hunger finds another use for Oregon’s bounty by asking farmers to provide fresh, nutritious food to those who need it the most.”
About Farmers Ending Hunger
Eastern Oregon resident Fred Ziari created the nonprofit Farmers Ending Hunger in 2004 when he learned that Oregon was one of the hungriest states in the country. Farmers Ending Hunger gathers Oregon’s agricultural resources to help feed the hungry. For information on how to contribute to Adopt-an-Acre, please visit www.farmersendinghunger.com or call Executive Director John Burt at 503-931-9232. Follow us on Facebook at Farmers Ending Hunger for news and events.
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