Striving to provide Lodi with a community space for exchanging food, ideas, and resources with our neighbors. No income restrictions. No registration.
While people in the higher income brackets are now catching on to the importance of consuming fresh local foods as part of the solution to both health and environmental problems, access to such foods has not so far been an option for those of lower income or in rural areas where they are still heavily dependent on the heavily processed foods in the local grocery stores. While it would seem that fresh foods would be available in rural communities this is not always the case. Increasing the access to fresh food is one step, but it is also important that rural families learn the lost arts of growing and eating fresh foods once again. With this in mind the Lodi Food Pantry was started this summer by an enthusiastic group of Lodi residents who wanted to focus on the production, collection and distribution of local, fresh food to the people of Lodi and surrounding towns. While many food pantries distribute packaged and processed foods, or foods that they must purchase from regional food distribution systems, we decided to work on increasing the self-reliance of the local community by getting maximum benefit from locally grown foods, both from neighbor's gardens and from local small farms. Our first step was to become a Neighborhood Food Hub of the Friendship Donation Network of Ithaca. As a food hub we managed to collect and distribute approximately 100 pounds of fresh produce from local farms and gardens that would otherwise have gone to waste. We open our pantry every Saturday between 3 and 5 p.m. at the Lodi Presbyterian Church just south of the village of Lodi on Rte. 414. Every week neighbors come in to the pantry to pick up the beautiful fresh produce and breads we have to offer and to talk about how to prepare vegetables that are unfamiliar to them and exchange recipes. Keeping in mind our goal of increasing the food self-reliance of the area, we hope to be a place for neighbors to share their cooking and food preservation skills with one another, to teach one another how to grow more of their own foods, and possibly to expand into purchasing foods from local farmers to be sold at wholesale prices through a pantry buying club. We are also looking for more farms in the southern half of Seneca and Schuyler counties who may be interested in donating produce to our pantry. For more information please contact Barbara Smith at 607-582-6954 or the Lodi Whittier Library at [email protected].
Reviews, get directions and information Food For All - Lodi's Community Pantry.
