According to a 2001 America's Second Harvest National Hunger Study, it is estimated that more than three million people live below the poverty level in New York State; one-third  of these people are children. Nowadays, poverty is no longer synonymous with being unemployed and down on luck— nearly half of the users of soup kitchens and pantries are members of the working poor, who toil at minimum wage jobs while supporting families. However, one small local nonprofit organization has been quietly working to make a difference in fighting poverty and hunger throughout the Hudson Valley—and has been succeeding on a grand scale. Food Bank of the Hudson Valley runs what staff members refer to as "a recycling program" that joins corporate donors with food-distribution outlets throughout the area.

Janet Whitman is the director of the Food Bank of the Hudson Valley, located in Cornwall-on-Hudson. Whitman came to the Food Bank as a volunteer over 16 years ago, having left her job as a DJ at radio station WDST after deciding she wanted to make a difference and "do something good."

Whitman explained the "recycling" aspect of the Food Bank's work as follows: "The basic premise of our mission is that we take food that would be wasted, and prior to 20 years ago was wasted and, in a sense, recycle it [by distributing] it to agencies who then distribute it to those in need here in the Hudson Valley. I think of it as a real practical charitable effort in a twofold way."

Warehouse Assistant Pete Mallone and volunteer Rodney Rivera fill orders.

The concept of food banking began in the late 1960s in Phoenix, Arizona, with John Van Hengel, a retired businessman working at a local soup kitchen, who solicited donations of food products and found that he rapidly generated more food than the soup kitchen could handle–so much so that he soon needed to find a warehouse in which to store the donated products, from which he could also distribute food to the various charities that worked to feed the hungry people of Phoenix. Gradually, this system was copied in other major American cities, and in 1976, coinciding with tax reform enticing corporate donations, Van Hengel received a federal grant to develop a network of food banks across the country. In 1979, member charities of the nationwide network of food banks established by Van Hengel combined their efforts, and America's Second Harvest—subtitled The Nation's Foodbank Network—was founded and incorporated. Today, America's Second Harvest distributes 1.8 billion pounds of donated food and grocery products annually, making it the largest charitable hunger-relief organization in the nation.

The Food Bank of the Hudson Valley is a satellite program of the Regional Food Bank of Northeastern New York, based in Latham, near Albany. Like its overseeing organization, The Food Bank is a member of America's Second Harvest. The Food Bank was originally an ad hoc organization created by a group of food pantry coordinators in response to a sudden influx in the number of people requesting emergency food assistance in the Hudson Valley, thanks to the recession that began in the early 1980s. Initially, food was transported south from the Regional Food Bank and distributed from the backs of trucks to a small group of member agencies throughout the Hudson Valley. However, as the number of people without work and in need of food increased, so too did the number of Regional Food Bank's member agencies. In 1990 the Food Bank of the Hudson Valley was founded and a warehouse in Newburgh was acquired, which not only allowed the Food Bank to collect more donations from food companies, but ensured better food safety and greater efficiency of operation.  Today, the Food Bank and Regional Food Bank work together to cover 23 counties, servicing more than 1,000 food assistance programs stretching from Rockland County to the Canadian border.

Stacked food

As a member of America's Second Harvest, the Food Bank of the Hudson Valley is also a distributor of USDA commodities to federally funded programs, so, according to Whitman, there is "no problem getting access to food." She explains: "As well as America's Second Harvest, we have our own local food distributors—including Nabisco, Keebler, Wakefern, [and] CNS Wholesaler Grocers—who donate pallet loads at a time. We have orchards and farmers who also donate loads of fruits and vegetables. So the food in quantities that a warehouse would support isn't the problem. But finding the money for the cost of fuel [to distribute food], which has doubled for us over the past year, is."

The Food Bank of the Hudson Valley essentially functions as the hub in a distribution system supplying food to social programs that feed people spread across six counties: Orange, Ulster, Putnam, Rockland, Sullivan, and Dutchess. Operating on a shoestring budget and buoyed by volunteers, the Food Bank's fulltime staff of eight moves an impressive eight million pounds of product a year, providing staples for over 360 member organizations, including soup kitchens; food pantries; rehabilitation, disability, senior citizen, and after-school programs; daycare centers; homeless and women's shelters; and summer camps for underprivileged youth. Other recipients of food from the Food Bank are Family of Ellenville, New Paltz, and Woodstock, as well as Ulster-Greene ARC and Crystal Run Village, two organizations that support independent living for people with disabilities.

The Food Bank's 55,000-square-foot warehouse in Cornwall-on-Hudson, which is filled with rows of pallets stacked with boxes of food, drinks, snacks, personal hygiene products, and recently, even alarm clock radios and hair dryers, was graciously gifted to the organization by a food importer who moved his operation in the late 1990s. Explains Toni Gutter, director of development, "Food is donated for a variety of reasons such as if a pallet falls over, or the expiration date is nearing or a certain promotion has ended. It's all still perfectly good, it's usually [not sellable] for packaging reasons... We accept anything and everything, because we will find a home for it." The warehouse is includes a cooler with an insulated garage door, as well as a two-story 5,000-square-foot freezer that dominates one end of the building.

Administrative Assistant Ramona Torres and Development Director Toni Gutter.

The Food Bank's associate director, Jill Dunn, ensures that organizations applying for membership meet the requirements, including being a 501(c)3 organization and having a sanitary food preparation site. Yet Dunn confirmed recent media reports that many local food pantries are experiencing "donor fatigue" due to increased need for food and state funding cuts.

"I was just on the phone with a distressed gentleman from one of our member organizations," Dunn reports. "As of the last distribution, he had used up his yearly grant from the state which was supposed to last through June 2006. He doesn't want to close, and he doesn't want to just give out little lunch bags of food to people who have been waiting in cold weather. I have no idea where that money is going to come from, but I'm going to try to get him that funding."

Sean Sullivan is in charge of the Herculean task of organizing and distributing millions of pounds of food for the Food Bank. As warehouse manager, he prepares orders that are distributed on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays when member agencies stop by all day every 15 minutes. It's a chaotic, stressful, but ultimately satisfying job, says Sullivan. "The most satisfying thing is when things work the way they are supposed to. When we get a phone call from a farmer in Tivoli and pick up three pallets of mixed produce and get it here and are able to get it out to our agencies by the end of the day, that's a great feeling because that's stuff that was getting thrown out."

Like Sullivan, Dunn says she receives an enormous amount of personal satisfaction from working at the Food Bank because each day she witnesses the organization's direct impact on the community. "We are the ultimate recycler," she explains. "We prevent so much in the way of product waste and get it to the people who can really use it."