“They’d be priced out of it, even if they were able to get some.”įood Forward works with 350 direct partners to coordinate food donations to 12 California counties, six other states, and two Tribal nations.īased in the region that receives and ships the most food in the U.S., Food Forward has built an extensive recovery network that enables it to support food distribution partners on a local and a nationwide scale. “Food Forward helped us get nutritious, fresh whole foods to these communities that would rarely be able to access it to begin with,” says Mitzkewich. Since 2020, Cherokee Nation residents have been able to access produce at two Talequah community centers that receive fruits and vegetables from Vegan Outreach and its partner, Food Forward, a Los Angeles-based nonprofit that aggregates pallets and truckloads of surplus produce from growers and shippers in Southern California that might otherwise go to waste. A combination of inflationary price spikes for fresh produce and a pandemic-driven shortage of transport options have made prices even steeper. The costs of transporting fresh fruits and vegetables into the region are high, Mitzkewich says. Fresh food was hard to find, and dollar stores were the only places to buy groceries for miles around. Yuri Mitzkewich, the Vegan Outreach program leader who made the call, was shocked when he visited Tahlequah, home to the largest number of native Cherokee speakers in the country. “Honestly, I thought he was fibbing,” laughs Serrano. įree, high-quality produce donations are so rare in Tahlequah, Oklahoma that Stacy Serrano, vice president of the Rural Community Initiative Foundation (RCIF), thought it was too good to be true when she first received a call offering a free truckload of fresh fruits and vegetables from the California-based advocacy group Vegan Outreach. This story was originally published on Civil Eats.
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