Food storage cooler gets town OK
Town Board members have agreed to allow Family of New Paltz to install a small cooling building at the transfer station to store food for distribution to local pantries.
The authorization was given during a meeting Thursday, with Family Executive Director Michael Berg saying the building is being constructed through a $25,000 grant from the Local Economies Project.
“Rondout Valley Growers and Family have been working for about seven years to collect produce and distribute it to the major food pantries and feeding programs in the county,” he said.
“Last year that amounted to 63,000 pounds that we distributed of which we processed 10,000 that we froze and we distributed it throughout the winter,” Berg said. “It went to about 28 local food pantries but what we found is that the pantries don’t have the physical capacity to increase their freezers and their coolers, and they are not able to store as much food at the time we get it.”
Berg said there are five 8-by10-foot buildings planned in Ulster County, with the cooling done through air conditioners that will bring the temperature down to 38 degrees.
“Those will each serve four, five or six pantries locally,” he said. “That way there will be less transportation and people can share the resources that we have.”
Coolers have already been constructed in Kingston and Rosendale, while plans include buildings in Ellenville and Shandaken.
Berg noted that the need for food pantries has risen and the people served have been struggling despite having jobs in may cases.
“Our numbers show that 54 percent of the families coming to the food pantries are working, because the cost of housing is such that what you can earn working locally cannot pay for both housing and adequate food,” he said.
“When people are confronted with losing the shelter over their head or skipping on food, they skip on food,” Berg said. “But they can come to a local pantry and get help.”
Berg was grateful that the Local Economies Project was willing to work with other groups to established the storage facilities.
“We are doing this with the help of the Bruderhof,” he said.
“We are hoping that by the end of the year all five (coolers) will be in place. But there is also the Farm Hub, the Farm to Table that is now called the Farm Bridge, and many, many farms are giving us produce now.”