A local organization looking to help provide healthy food for those who need help is facing some food challenges themselves.
Grow It Forward CEO Amber Daugs says her organization continues to see food prices increase, and it can be disruptive to their business.
But she explained on WOMT’s Be My Guest program that the organization is seeing another challenge.
“We used to receive anywhere from 250 to 280 boxes of produce through the Emergency Food Assistance Program. This is a government commodity program where we receive surplus produce,” she explained. “Now we are only receiving five boxes a month.”
However, the organization still serves an average of a little over 2,000 people a year and provided a food allotment of over 4,500 last year.
The CEO addressed the issue saying, “We have less food and in order to provide those delicious items that people need in order to live a healthy productive life.”
Now, Daugs explains that there could be more food issues stemming from the tariffs from the U.S. and retaliatory tariffs from other countries.
“There might be food that’s stuck in ports,” she stated. “Eventually that food might end up coming into communities as well, so we’re trying to pay attention to the resources. And the last time we might have experienced this in our community, one of the issues that came up is that we didn’t have enough storage in our pantries to accept the food that was being given to us. So, we’re continuing to have the need to build capacity, even though we might not have enough food supply right now, it’s going to come, it’s just going to take time.”
Daugs says Grow It Forward is also looking to help change legislation to help them purchase eggs since they can only buy them from a certified source and not from just anywhere.
In 2023, Grow It Forward helped over 1,200 households and provided over $750,000 worth of resources to those in need.
