Sweet corn for charity: Harvest delivered to food banks

PRINCETON, Ill. — Sweet corn grown on Illinois farms is going directly to people looking for some assistance with their food needs.

The Sweet Corn for Charity Program organized by the Agri Heritage Foundation celebrated its 10th year of working to connect Illinois farmers with food banks.

“It is awesome for us to get fresh sweet corn directly out of this field,” said Herman Carnie, director of food acquisition for the Greater Chicago Food Depository. “We have about 700 food programs we support in Cook County.”

Jim Rapp planted two acres of sweet corn on his farm near Princeton for the project.

“Years ago we had the discussion at Corn Growers about fresh food deserts in the city and somebody said maybe we should send some sweet corn that way,” Rapp said.

Rapp has participated in the program since it was started by Chris and Cari Manns.

“I like doing it and helping somebody out,” said Rapp, who farms with his sons, Nick and Ben.

“Jim wanted to send sweet corn to the city,” said Cari Manns. “The first several years we picked by hand, but now our charity is raising funds to buy a four-row picker so we can become more efficient and supply more sweet corn.”

Paul Jeschke, Art Bunting and Tony Bonucci also grew sweet corn this year to support the Eastern Illinois Food Bank, the Northern Illinois Food Bank and the River Bend Food Bank.

“Everyone at the food banks are so dedicated and enthusiastic,” Manns said. “They are delivering this sweet corn to people who really need it and who are trying to make ends meet so they don’t buy sweet corn because they have to buy milk or eggs.”

“The corn we harvested today will be in the community early next week,” Carnie said.

“One thing we’re really stressing is fresh produce because the communities we serve have medical challenges like diabetes and high blood pressure,” he aid. “We’re distributing about 37% of our food as produce.”

To help support that effort, the depository provides recipes to those who receive food.

“Some folks may not be familiar with the different types of produce so we try to help them get comfortable with utilizing fresh produce,” Carnie said.

The 700 programs supported by the Greater Chicago Food Depository include food pantries, popup pantries, shelters, soup kitchens, senior centers, veterans programs and school programs.

“During the past fiscal year which just closed on June 30, we distributed 93 million pounds of food which was a huge increase because of the need with the COVID virus,” Carnie said. “We were fortunate to get food with the Coronavirus Food Assistance Program.”

Most of the food distributed this year has been through pantries and pop-up pantries that were able to handle large volumes of distribution, Carnie said.

“They had to change their model from being inside a building to outside,” he said. “That really stressed the logistics since everything had to be just on time because we don’t have the refrigeration outside.”

Moving food to different locations was also a challenge.

“We had driver helpers going out with the truck drivers before, but they couldn’t social distance in the trucks,” Carnie said. “So, we had to give the truck drivers equipment so they were able to handle the weight of moving the food.”

Although the depository is distributing large amounts of food there is still a need for more, Carnie said.

“I don’t think we’ll ever have enough food to satisfy the need, but we’re bridging the gap,” he said. “A lot is tied to what is available through the government.”

The truck-to-trunk model of CFAP had a significant impact on the depository, Carnie said.

“The distributors delivered to the sites so we were averaging about 1.8 million pounds of food that we weren’t even touching and that basically doubled our volume,” he said. “Even though we recently remodeled and expanded our cooler capacity, we’re already maxed out.”