A Fresh Approach to Feeding the Poor

Dave Phillips’ business has a growth rate even the most bottom-line-conscious corporation would envy: a sevenfold increase in customers during its first five years.

But the success is bittersweet because Phillips’ trade is feeding the growing ranks of the hungry in the east San Fernando Valley.

Unlike traditional food banks, which rely mostly on canned goods, Phillips has created the Children’s Hunger Fund to distribute the untapped surplus crops thrown away or left to rot in the fields and packing houses of the Southwest.

Using an innovative method of rushing fresh goods directly to the needy through some 60 East Valley churches, the Hunger Fund doles out 100 tons of foodstuff a week, feeding 25,000 people. Three-fourths of the food is gleaned from the fields. In comparison, the Los Angeles Regional Food Bank, the country’s largest, distributes 75 tons a week, most of it canned.

“Produce is something that everyone looks upon as a great aspect [for feeding the hungry] up until you get into the logistics,” said Doris Bloch, executive director of the Los Angeles Regional Food Bank.

Farmers “have more products then they can sell,” says Phillips, 35, a clean-cut man fond of button-down collars. “They are anxious to move out the day-old crops and make room for the new.”

Phillips runs his Christian-oriented charity out of a Pacoima warehouse on about $300,000 in annual donations. He and four employees spend much of their time on the telephone talking to farmers and packing-house foremen as distant as New Mexico.

They call seeking surplus potatoes, carrots, beans and other items that the companies will be forced to throw away in order to save on storage costs.

To pick up the food, five semi-tractor-trailer trucks and their drivers are usually at the Hunger Fund’s disposal. Some are offered through Operation Blessing, of Riverside, another nonprofit group, and others are donated by private haulers such as Tiger Lines.

About 15,000 of the weekly recipients live in the Valley, where the poverty rate has nearly doubled since 1980. Another 10,000 are fed at various Southern California food pantries, Native American reservations and international orphanages.

Phillips, who lives in Granada Hills, sees the Valley as “an untapped market . . . for addressing the needs of the poor.”

In soliciting growers, Phillips emphasizes the Hunger Fund’s ability to take surplus food off their hands in one shipment as well as its reputation for flexibility and a thorough follow-up.

Hunger Fund offers to ship donated food overseas, in case a donor does not want domestic circulation of surplus products that may contain an embarrassing snafu, such as mislabeling. It even provides the companies snapshots of the church giveaways, to be proudly displayed on newsletters.

Once the food is secured, it is stored at the Hunger Fund’s 10,700-square-foot warehouse complete with three large industrial coolers.

But it doesn’t sit for long. Following a strict schedule, volunteers from the 60 churches then use pick-up trucks, minivans or other vehicles to get the goods. The Hunger Fund screens its churches for promptness; if they do not pick up the food at the time designated, Phillips may be stuck with his own surplus. Usually, the food is in the hands of the needy no more than three days after its harvest, he said.

Phillips got the idea for the Hunger Fund while working for World Opportunities, an anti-hunger organization he joined after graduation from Westmont College, a small Christian school in Montecito.

He credited the organization for substantial work in its target area, South-Central Los Angeles. But he said it would not use his ideas on how to tap into the staggering amount of wasted fresh food.

The Los Angeles County Division of Strategic Planning and Urban Research estimated this year that one in six Valley residents lives below the poverty line. The number was 1 in 11 in 1980.

The Government Accounting Office, Congress’ investigative arm, estimated in the 1980s that as much as 20% of all food grown in the U.S.--up to two tons per person, per year--is thrown away.

Phillips left World Opportunities in 1991 and started the Hunger Fund.

During a period when donations to more traditional food banks and pantries have fallen 20%, Phillip’s operation has thrived.

Carolyn Olney, associate director for the Southern California Interface Hunger Coalition, which seeks to coordinate pantry efforts countywide, has found that ever-thinning profit margins are spurring companies to sell the goods they once gave to food banks.

Many of the canned items can now be found on the shelves of secondary stores such as the Scratch ‘N Dent Food Shops in Plant City, Fla., or Dentco in Fontana.

To combat that loss, food banks have tried to get more and more food from the fields. But they have faced challenges in their efforts to look beyond traditional canned items.

Many of the smaller food banks, for instance, do not have large enough refrigerators to keep the massive amounts of produce from going bad. Some recipients, used to picking up on a looser schedule, do not follow the routine needed to ensure items are delivered freshly.

Phillips emphasizes that his efforts should not be misconstrued as a replacement for a shrinking government safety net.

“We’re doing more and more to address the needs of the community, but the needs are far outpacing the effort,” he said.

The church volunteers, who usually schedule giveaways one day a week, say the hungry range from laid-off aerospace workers to those suffering from mental illness or drug abuse to the largest number: poor Latino immigrants.

One of the immigrants, Adrian Magdalno, recently stood in line with 80 others at a distribution point, Arleta Foursquare Church. He wore jeans and a T-shirt still spotted with plaster from a day’s work in construction.

“I’m looking for a better job . . . but in the meantime this food helps me to buy many things I cannot afford,” he said.

The 34-year-old Sun Valley resident, who said he emigrated legally from Mexico, said his $150-a-week salary is not enough to provide for a family of three. He said with the recent welfare downsizing, he will no longer qualify for food stamps, stretching his budget further.

Many of the churches also supplement offerings from the Hunger Fund by asking their neighborhood supermarkets to donate slightly damaged goods.

At Arleta Foursquare the other day, recipients gave back an item or two from their eight-item packages to create a few extras for those who came late.

“These people are not greedy,” said Ramon Sierra, who volunteers with his wife, Mary. “They will share and not complain.”