By DAVE BLOWER JR.

Senior Editor, Farm World

CRAWFORDSVILLE, Ind. — Approximately 21,600 meals were packed into more than 100 boxes in a little less than 90 minutes earlier this month at North Montgomery High School, in an annual event that benefits the Kids Against Hunger charity.

The work was organized by the North Montgomery FFA with the help of dozens of volunteers, many sponsors and a $3,000 Living to Serve grant from the National FFA. All of that help allowed North Montgomery FFA package more than twice the number of boxes and meals as last year.

“The FFA grant was a matching grant, so we had to come up with the other half of the money,” said North Montgomery FFA Advisor Nancy Bell. “We still had to come up with the other half of the money, and our sponsors have been great to work with.”

The local sponsors involved this year include Arends Hogan Walker Equipment, Bane-Welker Equipment, Beck’s Hybrids, Cargill, Ceres Solutions, Crop Production Services and Land O’Lakes.

“Our sponsors showed up and helped in many ways,” Bell added.

Kids Against Hunger-Waynetown is a global hunger relief ministry of the Waynetown Christian Church. Allison Delp, who coordinates the ministry, said the meals packaged at North Montgomery High School will be distributed this fall to 20 food pantries across Indiana.

The meals are a mix of rice, dehydrated vegetables, a vitamin/mineral powder with 21 essential vitamins and soy with vitamins and high protein content. Six servings of this meal base is mixed into plastic bags – the ingredients cost $1.50 per bag. And 36 bags are packed into each box, which will weigh 33 pounds. Each box costs $54.

In the United States the meals can be mixed with inexpensive foods to make filling casseroles or other tasty dishes. Internationally, though, where rich foods are uncommon, most families mix the meals with water.

Delp said the slogan for Kids Against Hunger is “Feeding Families Around the World and Around the Corner.” Although all of these meals will stay in Indiana, she said the national organization works to send 80 percent of its meals overseas, with 10 percent staying within the United States and 10 percent local.

“By our government’s standards, one in four kids in our Montgomery County schools is hungry,” she explained. “That is something we want people to know so that we can help as many families here that we can. But we also know that poverty and hunger in the United States is very different from poverty and hunger around the world.”

Since 2008, Kids Against Hunger-Waynetown has distributed food to nearly two dozen food pantries in Indiana. But it has also sent food to Lansing, Ill., Joplin, Mo., and Scott County, Tenn. Internationally, the charity has shipped food to Haiti, Guatemala, Mexico and The Philippines.

Delp likes for her volunteers to decorate the boxes before they are shipped. Once, when an area church sent temporary missionaries to Haiti, those missionaries texted photos of the decorated boxes in a local shelter.

“The boxes said ‘With Love from North Montgomery High School,’” she said. “I know the food is getting where it is supposed to, but it was really nice to see those pictures. It inspires you to do more.”