Dear Readers:
If you have read past blogs that I have written, you will have noticed that the main issue that CCPP seeks to address is climate change. However, it is not the only issue. CCPP also seeks to address food insecurity.
According to an Aug 4, 2022 article in the NYT written by Lora Kelley and Nicholas Kulish entitled More Americans Are Going Hungry, and It Costs More to Feed Them, food insecurity is on the rise. And, donations are declining.
“Data from the Census Bureau showed that last month, 25 million adults sometimes had not had enough to eat in the previous seven days. That was the greatest number since just before Christmas in 2020, when the pandemic continued to take a high economic toll and the unemployment rate was nearly twice what it is today.”
What will CCPP do to help address this problem? The Community Compassion Network (CCN), a food bank based in Mt Pleasant, MI, is among CCPP’s strategic partners. CCN will provide an orientation to the Permaculture Incubator Program trainees.
Then, as part of its application to USDA/NIFA for a Beginning Farmer and Rancher Development Program grant, CCPP has asked for a small amount of funding to buy trays, the kind CCN uses for donations, to be given to the PIP trainees.
CCPP certainly cannot compel its trainees to donate a portion of the harvest from their two-acre plots to CCN. But it can sensitise them to the problem of food insecurity and create the conditions that would increase the likelihood that they would make donations to help to ease the crisis.