Healthy soil and sustainable growing

["Tradingpost" <tradingpost@gilanet.com>]

2 local food bank directors assigned to Louisiana
By Amanda Iacone
The Journal Gazette
http://www.fortwayne.com/mld/journalgazette/12571009.htm

Two directors from a local Fort Wayne food bank have been dispatched to
Louisiana to help supply a network of food banks in the South with food.

Jane Avery, executive director of Community Harvest Food Bank, has spent
the past five days in Chicago handling the logistics for opening a new
warehouse in Alexandria, La., that will hold supplies for 22 food banks
affected by the hurricane. Director of operations Bill Hoover is already
in Louisiana, Avery said from her cell phone Monday evening.

The new warehouse received its first shipment of food Monday afternoon,
she said.

Avery expects the warehouse operation will run for the next 12 to 18
months. She will be joining Hoover on Thursday and plans to be in
Alexandria for two weeks before coming home to Fort Wayne or perhaps being
deployed elsewhere in the South, she said.

Community Harvest is part of a national group of 211 food banks called
America’s Second Harvest. A tenth of its banks were directly affected by
Hurricane Katrina or secondarily affected by the toll of overcompensating
for banks that were wiped out from the storm.

Everything inside the New Orleans food bank was condemned. But the Houston
network food bank is getting hit by the large number of evacuees fleeing
to the city, Avery said.

Avery was picked to lead the warehouse and supply effort in Louisiana
because she chairs a committee for America’s Second Harvest that deals
with disaster response. She’s the only committee member whose food bank
was not affected by the hurricane, Avery said.

The national food bank works with other relief agencies such as the Red
Cross and the Salvation Army to provide emergency food assistance in
addition to long-term food relief, she said.

“This is going to impact all of us, and it has,” she said of food
banks.

The stagnating economy has pushed more hungry people to food banks even
before the storm hit. Now Community Harvest and its sister food banks will
continue to feed people in their own communities as well as the hurricane
victims, Avery said.

Food banks from across Indiana are planning a statewide collection this
month to help. Donations of any amount will be appreciated, she said.

The hurricane victims need food not just for survival but also to have the
energy they need to rebuild their homes and communities, she said.

“It doesn’t get any more basic than food.”