Spotlight On the Community Fridge and Pantry Growing Its Own Produce

When Yvonne Martinez shops for her weekly allotment of food from the Skyview Elementary and Middle School Pantry in Anaheim, California, her box isn’t filled with nearly expired canned goods. Instead, it’s brimming with in-season fruits and vegetables that were harvested less than 25 miles away. 

The selection has not only introduced Martinez to new ingredients, such as eggplant, but she’s learned to cook with them thanks to her children, who receive free classes through their school. “They make broccoli soup. They like cauliflower,” she says. “You don’t think of kids liking Brussels sprouts and these kids love them now.”

Yvonne Martinez shops at the pantry. Photography courtesy of Second Harvest Food Bank of Orange County.

The pantry is just one location in Second Harvest Food Bank of Orange County’s network of nearly 300 distribution sites; the 41-year-old organization serves an average of 430,000 people per month who are experiencing food insecurity.

About three years ago, the southern California food bank added something novel to its system: a 40-acre farm. 

At Harvest Solutions Farm in Irvine, fresh produce is grown specifically to be distributed to Second Harvest’s partners such as the school pantry. Since its inception in August 2021, the property has produced more than five million pounds of nutritious food for the surrounding community.

“There is a symbolism in the fact that we are growing [locally] , that we are growing food right here that is going from farm to food bank to table in 48 to 72 hours,” says Second Harvest CEO Claudia Bonilla Keller. “Those that need the most help are getting some of the best food that we could ever hope to procure.”

Volunteers working at Harvest Solution. Photography courtesy of Second Harvest Food Bank of Orange County.

Most food banks operate by gathering unwanted and donated food and distributing them to food pantries and other programs so the people who need the sustenance are able to access it. But those donations can be tenuous. Recently, inflation and supply chain issues have made it even more difficult to maintain operations—particularly at a level that addresses the rising need. 

Seventeen million US households experienced food insecurity at some point in 2022, according to the US Department of Agriculture, a number that grew as a result of the pandemic. 

Harvest Solutions Farm, which operates on University of California South Coast Research and Extension Center (REC) land, grows various crops throughout the year—from cabbage and broccoli to zucchini and watermelon—that is then harvested and driven two miles to the food bank’s warehouse, allowing the organization to quickly distribute the perishable goods throughout the county. 

It’s a symbiotic relationship. Second Harvest gains access to free land (the organization pays for water use and some equipment), and the soil health of UC’s otherwise unused plots is supported. Because the farm relies primarily on volunteers—an average of 170 per week—there’s also an educational component: The community has the chance to connect with farming and food in a way that shopping at a grocery store can’t offer. “People are losing touch with agriculture,” says Darren Haver, director of the REC system and interim director of South Coast REC. “This partnership allows a lot of volunteers that would have never set foot in an agricultural field to actually experience it and learn about it and have a greater understanding of that.” 

Volunteers, in turn, help make the project economically feasible. “The most innovative thing about it is the produce is affordable to a food bank, to us, because the labor is done by volunteers and that allows us to take [the food] in at prices that are competitive with the state co-op, (under 30 cents per pound on average, on par with the California Association of Food Banks),” says Keller. “It’s a relatively small part of our supply chain in all honesty, but it is one that we 100 percent control.”

Photography courtesy of Second Harvest Food Bank of Orange County.

The farm also reinforces Second Harvest’s mission to provide dignified access to food and nutritional security, which is not only making sure people like Martinez and her family have consistent access to food but ensuring that the fare is truly healthy. “It’s something that is not only going to feed your family but nourish your family,” says Keller.

Although Harvest Solutions isn’t the first of its kind (other farm-to-food-bank programs exist across the country, including at Seeds of Hope in Los Angeles, South Plains Food Bank in Texas and Golden Harvest Food Bank in Georgia), the scale of the farm is unique. And it’s something those involved think can be replicated elsewhere, particularly with strong partnerships in place.

“The model that we’ve had around the country and almost around the world is that our expired, rejected, quality-impacted foods are made available to food banks at discounted prices or for free and we pat ourselves on the back thinking that we’re addressing waste,” says A.G. Kawamura, the former secretary of the California Department of Food and Agriculture and chairman of the nonprofit Solutions for Urban Agriculture. Kawamura, a farmer himself, started other, smaller versions of Harvest Solutions and was integral in getting the project up and running. Within a season, he says, efforts like this one can “really attack the problem of hunger head-on and make such a big dent in it immediately.”

Britt and Reagan Clemens volunteer at Harvest Solutions Farm. Courtesy of Second Harvest Food Bank of Orange County.

This matters to community members such as Martinez, who was homeless with her five kids for about two years. Some of the food banks she visited would give her canned food, for which she didn’t have the ability to open, eat or cook. She would return to the places that had fresh produce.

The family has been settled in an apartment for two years, and the school-based pantry has been incredibly beneficial to her, both for the convenience (it’s accessible year-round) and the quality and variety of the produce. Her kids sometimes walk straight to the kitchen to show her their latest cooking skills. The weekly box also allows her to stretch her budget to other necessities, such as proteins beyond chicken, which is what her budget limited her to before. “This program,” she says, “has helped me tremendously in a lot of ways.”

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