The Phoenix Local Government’s Genius Solution To Saving Farms And Local Businesses While Feeding The Hungry

Experience Nutrition

All over the world, you will find individuals thinking of innovative ways to support their family, friends and peers throughout the coronavirus pandemic. The good thing is, so have governments. In Phoenix Arizona, their local government has miraculously been able to save a huge number of farm and restaurant businesses – while giving free meals to those in need at the same time.

From July to December 2020, the Feed Phoenix program were able to provide more than 50,000 meals to residents, which is only the beginning of this amazing charity.


Back in April, the city received its CARES Act federal funding, and while they could have just directed the money to local food banks, they decided to instill the help of nonprofit group, Local First Arizona in ordered to have a more holistic approach in dealing with the city’s food system.

As a result, the Feed Phoenix program has been a great success as they connect struggling farmers with restaurants and caterers that are looking for more business during the pandemic. This nonprofit buys the produce directly from farms and then pays the restaurants to cook and deliver meals to those citizens in need – for free.

There are 30 locations where the meals are distributed in like food banks, where they can be eaten free of charge. The best part is, all this food is fresh and ready-to-eat which makes it more nutritious than the usual canned and processed items one finds in these places due to low budgets.

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Local First Arizona was in a great position to have been offered this project because of their past work. This charity has been supporting 3,000 locally-owned businesses and promoting residents to buy local for years.

The nonprofit founder and executive director, Kimber Lanning told Bloomberg that:

“The city could have awarded one very large contract to one very large company to just prepare all of those meals. Instead, we decided to create a program to touch as many businesses as possible.”

Maria Parra Cano, chef at Sana Sana Foods said that they were forced to shut down restaurant operations because of the pandemic. “This program has helped us feed our community—but in my commercial kitchen (that) we activated again through this grant,” she said. They have now been making hundreds of vegetarian burritos for Feed Phoenix events throughout the year.


While funds were only given until January 2021, the city council has designated enough money to fund Local First Arizona until spring because of its great success. After the pandemic, the impact of this charity will be still be felt because of the connections that have been forged between farms and local restaurants who will be continually working together.

Roseanna Albright, Phoenix environmental programs coordinator told Bloomberg that “what is going to be left behind is a stronger community food network. Restaurants realize the value and excellent product that can be delivered by our farmers, and they want to continue those connections.”

 

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