By CELESTE BAUMGARTNER
Ohio Correspondent

COLUMBUS, Ohio — Imagine, if you can, hand-picking 50 to 60,000 pounds of cabbage. That’s what farmers in Sandusky County, with help from FFA members and volunteers, did to get excess cabbage to Ohio food banks rather than destroy it.

This was done as part of the Ohio Farm Bureau Federation’s (OFBF) “Farmers Feed Our Needs” campaign, a program to bridge the gap between producers and consumers.

“It started at a Sandusky county board meeting when that county board was talking about how we could participate in the “Farmers Feed our Needs” campaign,” said Daryl Knip, OFBF state trustee.

”We have multiple growers in the county that grow cabbage for this processor and most of us had some cabbage left. Most of it had been disked up but ours hadn’t yet.”

The idea got to the OFBF office in Columbus, which then contacted the food banks to see if they could use the cabbage.

“In a week they came back and said they could use 110 bins of cabbage, which is 50 to 60 thousand pounds of cabbage,” Knip said. “I was a little concerned with how we were going to harvest 110 bins of cabbage; that seemed like a lot at the time.”

The cabbage came from Knip’s farm. Typically, it is machine-harvested and used for sauerkraut.

“To use for fresh consumption it has to be handled a little different,” Knip said.

It was too much for Knip, his wife, Cate, and his dad, Burdell, who own the farm, to harvest by hand.

“So not having any labor, our organization director (Allen Gahler) in Sandusky County along with some people here in Columbus tried to find people to do it,” Knip said.

The response was tremendous, Gahler said. Several FFA chapters in the area came and volunteers from four or five counties helped cut, load and ship the cabbage.

In all 112 bins of cabbage were donated with an estimated value of $85,904; enough to produce 121,875 meals.

“The volunteers from all the counties coming together, having a plan to find out who needs it and a plan to get it there it seemed like a good thing,” Knip said. “I was pleased it worked out well.”
Lisa Hamler-Fugitt, executive director of the Ohio Association of Second Harvest Food Banks was also pleased: “The donation came at just a perfect time – right before the Thanksgiving season. It was a great opportunity to provide not only holiday poultry to low income families that were coming to food pantries and soup kitchens, but beautiful cabbage that had been harvested from our Ohio growers as well as potatoes and onions.”

The cabbage was distributed through the food pantry networks, Hamler-Fugitt said. They worked with OSU cooperative extension to provide recipes to the agencies and clients who received the cabbage.

“With fresh fruits and vegetables being so expensive these days in our grocery stores it is one of the things that low income families really struggle to be able to afford on a limited income,” Hamler-Fugitt said.

“We were so grateful not only to the Ohio Farm Bureau, but also to the farmers that participated and the FFA volunteers who donated their time and effort and their backbreaking work to harvest all of that. We’re looking forward to additional opportunities to work together.”

Jack Fisher, executive vice president of Ohio Farm Bureau had this to say about the “Farmers Feed Our Needs” campaign: “We’re in the middle of some difficult economic times, and so the idea arose that we could share our message about agriculture and food production at the same time that we assist those that might need some help right now because of the economic downturn.”

So far about 40 county farm bureaus have had various projects for the program.

“We hope to carry this on through the next several months and on food checkout day in February and then do another major project in springtime,” Fisher said.