A
tax break from the province is prompting farmers to donate more fresh
produce to food banks, reports the CBC today.
For
years, the Daily Bread Food Bank has had informal relationships with
Ontario farms to obtain produce they can’t market because it fails
to meet buyers’ standards.
After
the tax break became law, about a
year ago the
Daily Food Bank
hired a staffer to develop formal agreements with farms in an effort
to get even more fresh fruits and vegetables.
This
frees
money for the agency to buy more dairy and protein products, says.
executive director Gail Nyberg.
Now,
a hamper given out by Daily Bread or one of its partner agencies
across the Greater
Toronto
Area
(GTA)
contains more
than
30 per cent fresh food, "and we're pushing to even have more,"
Nyberg told the
CBC.
"We
want people to get two to three days' worth of food covering all of
the food groups. Giving someone a bag of crackers isn't really
helping. We want to have protein, we want to have fresh fruit and
vegetables, we want to have dairy."
The
growing relationships with farms are paying off, she said. Between
July 1 and Nov. 21 last year, the Daily Bread had collected some
181,000 pounds of food. As of today, the total is 510,000
pounds, Nyberg said.
The
CBC features long-term donor Dominion Farms of Bradford in its
report.
