Eastern Iowa Farmer Fall 2020
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coronavirus<br />
hungry as the economic fallout continues.<br />
“In part, it’s shifted from a lower-class problem to a middle-class<br />
problem,” Miller said.<br />
River Bend Food Bank supplies most local food pantries. It<br />
merged last year with St. Stephen’s Food Bank in Dubuque.<br />
It delivers 17 million meals per year, and it saw distribution<br />
increase by a third in the beginning months of the pandemic.<br />
Unemployment and federal stimulus programs have helped<br />
many who lost income, but they don’t fill all the gaps. In<br />
Dubuque, volunteers have organized food deliveries to Guatemalan<br />
refugee families.<br />
On a food delivery day, volunteers pack their cars to the roof<br />
with diapers, masa flour, pasta, thermometers and other supplies,<br />
including the colorful boxes of produce from Capital City Fruit,<br />
a Des Moines-area business that started as a fruit stand in 1949.<br />
One almost-20-pound box contains apples, lettuce, carrots, tomatoes,<br />
onions and peppers, including produce grown in <strong>Iowa</strong>.<br />
While food pantries and banks get people as much fresh produce<br />
as possible, much of their normal fare is business cast-offs,<br />
serviceable but requiring sorting.<br />
“In this case, we’re getting brand new fresh fruit,” Miller said.<br />
“It’s at the beginning of its life instead of the end of its life.”<br />
The silver lining of pandemic hunger is people stepping up to<br />
fill a need that sometimes appears invisible.<br />
“COVID seems to have increased people’s awareness that<br />
hunger is an issue in America,” Miller said. “What I’m hoping<br />
happens is that awareness continues post-pandemic.” n<br />
B.J.<br />
Blanchard<br />
B.J. Blanchard, dairy<br />
manager at Blanchard<br />
Family Dairy, said<br />
he and other family<br />
members in the<br />
business take many<br />
precautions to keep<br />
people safe.<br />
<strong>Eastern</strong> <strong>Iowa</strong> <strong>Farmer</strong><br />
photo / Trevis Mayfield<br />
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74 <strong>Eastern</strong> <strong>Iowa</strong> <strong>Farmer</strong> | fall <strong>2020</strong> eifarmer.com
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