- Associated Press - Saturday, July 25, 2020

SOUTH SIOUX CITY, Neb. (AP) - In the midst of a lush garden, master gardener Marion Cain walks up and down the rows, enthusiastically pointing to vegetables in various stages of development.

Dozens of volunteers share her enthusiasm for what’s known as the Cooperative Learning Garden, converging on this patch of ground in South Sioux City every year to cultivate and harvest thousands of pounds of fresh produce that’s given away to needy Dakota County families.

“It’s pretty phenomenal, isn’t it? The enthusiasm has really come up in the last few years, and that’s exciting,” Cain told the Sioux City Journal.

Phenomenal is an apt description of the garden and others that are part of the Dakota County Voices for Food project, a community-based volunteer organization coordinated by the University of Nebraska-Lincoln Extension.

In 2019, Voices for Food’s two learning gardens yielded more than 12,000 pounds of fresh produce for distribution at Dakota County food pantries. Add another 5,000 pounds of produce donated by local gardeners, and the project gave away 17,343 pounds of produce to approximately 5,000 participants. The project has distributed more than 46,000 pounds of produce in five years.

That’s a lot of healthy food to supplement the canned, boxed and processed offerings at food pantries, which can’t always easily transport and store fresh food. Produce also tends to be more expensive than prepackaged, processed food, so people with limited incomes often must pass over the greens in order to stretch their food budget.

“Adding two to three tables of produce, that lineup has changed the package of food that people can pick up,” said Brenda Sale, a UNL Extension associate and Voices for Food coordinator.

Voices for Food provides produce for three food pantries operated by two local churches and runs another food pantry, open in the evenings for those who work during the day, at the Dakota City fire station.

Launched five years ago as part of a six-state program funded by a $4 million federal grant, Voices for Food was located in communities struggling with food insecurity, a lack of quality access to safe and healthy food either because families and individuals can’t afford it or because there are not enough grocery stores.

Since then, Dakota County’s project has become self-sustaining and is supported by grants, donations and Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program Education dollars.

“We get a lot of community support,” Sale said.

The free food is just the beginning of what the program’s about. Sale and others teach people how to cook and use vegetables they might not be familiar with and encourage them to grow their own food. More gardeners means more people raising their own healthy food and a larger number of people who can supply even more excess produce to food pantries.

Volunteers and visitors at the project’s two cooperative learning gardens pick up tips from master gardeners who spend time there. In prior years, community and school groups were welcomed there to learn about gardening. That type of outreach is on hold this year because of the COVID-19 pandemic and the limits on social gatherings, but the spirit remains.

“We want to keep teaching people to garden,” Sale said.

The pandemic has highlighted the need for programs such as this. Because of the disruption to businesses, many workers have been laid off or had their hours reduced. Affording food has become a challenge for some, and food pantries have taken on added importance.

“We saw a lot of people in food pantry lines that probably never thought they’d be in food pantry lines,” Sale said.

Sale said the two cooperative gardens are at or near peak productivity, so she and others hope the gardening bug takes root with others like it did at the Siouxland Community Health Center in South Sioux City. The health center was initially a drop-off site for food donations. It now has six raised growing beds in which staff members and volunteers grow vegetables that are available to health center clients, many of whom are low-income or have special medical needs.

It’s one example, Sale said, of how new gardens can help fill the food gap for Dakota County residents.

“This program is successful because of the volunteers,” Sale said. “Volunteers in this community make Voices for Food what it is.”

That is, a program that, like the vegetables in its gardens, continues to grow and serve more people in need.

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