A mobile food pantry run by the Crisis Center of Johnson County made its official debut this week in an effort to address the issue of hunger and food insecurity in Johnson County. After a successful trial run at the Forest View Mobile Home Park, the pantry made its first official stop at the Cole’s Mobile Home Park on Riverside Drive in Iowa City Monday afternoon.
Food insecurity in Johnson County is higher than the statewide average, with 14.2 percent of Johnson County residents identified as food insecure, according to a Johnson County Hunger Task Force Report filed earlier this year. Every school district in Johnson County has seen a recent increase in children who qualify for free and reduced lunch, with Iowa City Community School District reaching 33.7 percent in the 2014-2015 school year, the highest in the county according to the report.
The Johnson County Board of Supervisors provided emergency hunger relief grant money to fund the pantry. A Farm to School farm stand, set up by Field to Family, another recipient of Board of Supervisors grant money, was also on-site on Monday to provide fresh produce.
Sarah Benson Witry, Food Bank and Emergency Assistance Director of the Crisis Center, said that the task force discovered transportation was a major barrier to food insecure individuals’ ability to access adequate nutrition in Johnson County. This spawned the mobile food pantry idea.
“Best practice for providing service is to put as much of the burden on the service provider as far as being available and being accessible to the client and when we had people from all over the community having to travel miles to get to a pantry, that means that the transportation burden and the time burden is on them,” she said.
The pantry will visit three sites on a monthly basis: Cole’s Mobile Home Park, Breckenridge Estates and Forest View Mobile Home Park. These locations are considered food deserts, meaning that there is no nearby source of food and those without reliable transportation may not have consistent access to proper nutrition. The Crisis Center’s goal is to serve about 300 families a month.
“The dream is that we would expand this mobile pantry service to go to more sites throughout the county, and perhaps to visit particularly high need sites more than once a month,” Benson Witry said.
The food offered at the pantry comes from donations from Table to Table, purchases through the HACAP Food Reservoir, purchases from local growers and purchases from Hy-Vee, which sells products to the Crisis Center at below-retail prices.
Fresh produce was also available on the site on Monday through a Farm to School farm stand organized by Field to Family. The organization promotes local, sustainable food consumption that supports area farmers. The Farm to School component of the organization supports school gardens, promotes local foods in the school lunch program, and hosts farmer fairs, where elementary students meet farmers, learn about growing and taste fresh produce.
The farm stand tables featured free seasonal produce along with an educational component, including cooking demonstrations and tastings, recipes, interactive games and prizes for kids and plants to take home. The farm stands will be joining the mobile pantry throughout November, and will return again in the spring when the new growing season begins.
Michele Kenyon, program director of Field to Family, said that the produce for the farm stand was from local sources, including Grow: Johnson County, another project that has received recent support from the Johnson County Supervisors.
In 2015, the supervisors granted a five-year lease, as well as funding, to begin work on two acres of land at the site of the former Johnson County Poor Farm, which closed in the 1960s. At the site on the far west end of Melrose Ave, experienced growers share organic farming and gardening knowledge with anyone who wants to learn, and all produce is donated to help meet the needs of the food insecure in the local community.
County Supervisor Lisa Green-Douglass was present at Monday’s mobile pantry opening. Green-Douglass said that she voted in favor of granting funding for the food pantry and the farm stands because of a report from the Hunger Task Force.
“Both the farm stands and the mobile pantry were a way to bring foods, and especially fresh produce, to people who otherwise couldn’t get to the pantries,” she said.
The grant will fund the project through June, and Green-Douglass said that while it’s not clear whether the same kind of funding stream will be available next year, she hopes the group will apply for additional grants.
The Crisis Center will also be using some of its $42,000 in funding to open a food pantry at Tate High School.
