Second Harvest Urges Food Contributions and Passage of Farm Bill

Largest Network of Distributors of Food for the Needy Predicts Shortage

In a Thanksgiving Day press release, Second Harvest announced that its food pantries' stock was unusually low even for this time of year. The projected shortage is of fifteen million pounds of food by the end of the year, according to the Second Harvest press release. (Fifteen million pounds of food are equivalent to 11.1 million meals or four hundred truckloads of food, stated the press release.)

Second Harvest, which is the largest food network for underprivileged individuals and families in the United States, urges families and corporations to make contributions so that four hundred truckloads of food can be delivered to those in need of hunger prevention by December 31st of 2007.

Vicki Escarra, president and chief executive officer of Second Harvest was quoted in the press release as pleading: "Our food banks across the country are reporting significant increases in the number of people seeking emergency food assistance. We are very concerned that we will not have enough food to feed everyone who needs help. Therefore, there is a critical need for donations from the general public and corporate America." Escarra went on to identify certain areas that had as high as a twenty percent greater demand for food this year: Orlando, Florida, Phoenix, Arizona and Denver, Colorado.

The press release maintained that there was less intervention in farming this year by Congress due to a healthy market for foods but that a Farm Bill was urgently needed so that foods could be distributed by the government to those in need. A Farm Bill which pays farmers for surplus crops and distributes the crops to the poor would strength the relationship between the United States Department of Agriculture and those in dire need of nutrition and foods, argued the Second Harvest press release.