OSHKOSH (NBC 26) — After federal funding cuts put the Oshkosh Area Community Pantry's supply of fresh produce at risk, the non-profit turns to the community for support.
- A program that paid local farmers to donate their produce to community pantries was cut this summer.
- The program provided $120,000 worth of produce to the OACP.
- The pantry is turning to public donations to ensure its clients still have access to fresh, local food.
Curtis Dewitt started coming to the Oshkosh Area Community Pantry within the last year.
“We've been on some hard times for the past few months,” he says. “Just keeping food in our house has been trouble with the amount of paychecks we get and everything else, so this has been really helpful.”
He says he appreciates OACP’s options for fresh food.
“I’ve been to other pantries and you get maybe one or two apples,” he says. “I like the healthy choices– I'm a fruit guy myself."
The OACP’s produce selection, however, is in trouble.
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This year, the federal government cut funding to the Local Food Purchase Assistance Cooperative Agreement Program, a program that connects local farmers to community pantries.
“That program allowed all that produce to come to pantries, and the federal government was paying farmers for it,” Ryan Rasmussen, executive director for the OACP, says.
According to Rasmussen, the partnership brought in $120,000 of produce in to the OACP over the past year.
“We pride ourselves on produce here,” he says.
The cut impacts not only those who get the food, but those who grow it too.
“At the same time that this funding was cut, so was Farm-to-School, and we were very involved in Farm-to-School funding,” Tracy Vinz, co-owner of Olden Organic farm in Ripon and a long-time partner of the OACP, says. “So between the two of them, yeah, it was a cut.”
Vinz says she was "devastated" when the funding was cut, but she says she knows they will find a way to continue the partnership.
“I always say farmers are resilient, we have to be, and so you got to figure out a way,” she says.
OACP says public donations and support from Women Who Care Greater Oshkosh, Oshkosh Area Community Foundation and Feeding America Eastern Wisconsin has already covered half of the $120,000 lost.
“I know that our community will rally,” he says. “Every time that we talk about some of the needs that we have in our community, our community has wrapped their arms around us and has tried to help solve it.”
Rasmussen says the cuts come at a bad time, as membership to the pantry continues to rise.
“Right now we’re serving about 2800 families a month at this location, so this is also coming at a time when we’re the most busy we’ll ever be,” he says. “So it really creates that extra urgency and that extra need.”
