Hunger program loses state aid

Change strips farm project of funding for transportation

by Maria Prato-Gaines, Staff Writer
   Getting “five a day” won’t be so easy for some of New Jersey’s underprivileged families now that a state-sponsored program that distributes produce to the needy has lost its funding.
   For 11 years the New Jersey Farmers Against Hunger acted as a middleman, harvesting and transporting farmers’ surplus crops to food pantries and churches for needy families throughout the state.
   ”We harvest something in the morning and distribute it in the afternoon, so it’s on someone’s table that night,” said Judy Grignon, the program’s coordinator.
   Trucks stopped running and weekly shipments stopped moving Saturday after the state Department of Agriculture did not deliver on a $100,000 portion of New Jersey’s state food-purchase program, said Ms. Grignon.
   That’s because the state stipulated that money set aside to feed the hungry must be used for purchasing food, something Farmers Against Hunger doesn’t do, Ms. Grignon said.
   According to the state Department of Agriculture’s Web site, Gov. Jon Corzine included funding in the fiscal year 2007 state budget to initiate the State Food Purchase program. It says the program distributes $3 million for purchasing healthy and nutritious foods to feed the hungry and $1 million to help the state’s emergency feeding operations expand their storage capacity and upgrade food-preparation equipment.
   ”We found out at the 11th hour,” Ms. Grignon said. “It’s a language issue. Because we do not purchase or sell anything we were cut out of the loop.”
   One Monmouth Junction family farm, Von Thun Country Farm Market, 519 Ridge Road, has been contributing to the program for the past two years.
   The farm’s average weekly 1,500-pound shipment of produce to the Franklin Township Food Bank, will now amount to excess spoilage, said Bob Von Thun, the farm’s manager.
   ”It’s a shame,” he said. “(The produce) will just be discarded if we don’t have someone pick it up.”
   In past years, the program has been funded by grant writing, private donations and fundraisers along with a $50,000 grant from the Department of Community Affairs, Ms. Grignon said.
   But that grant had a shelf life that ended in 2005, she said, and in 2006 the program was salvaged by another one-year special purpose grant for $50,000.
   Aside from distribution, the program had a number of other facets, Ms. Grignon said, including using inmates and volunteers to harvest crops, teaching underprivileged families how to prepare produce and donating items for community organizations’ annual Christmas baskets.
   Ms. Grignon is still hoping that the state will push semantics aside and find a way to give her program its cut of the relief fund.
   ”This is often the only fresh healthy food they get in a given week,” she said. “It’s a mess. But I think there’s a way they’re going to make it work for us.”
   For more information on New Jersey Farmers Against Hunger, log onto www.njagsociety.org .
   If interested in making a donation to the program, make checks payable to New Jersey Farmers Against Hunger and mail to P.O. Box 331 Trenton, N.J., 08625.