Gleaners’ “No One Runs on Empty” campaign revs up to deliver milk to the underserved

Photo courtesy of Gleaners

At the Indy 500 this Sunday, as the cars whip around the track, you might hear announcements about “Winners Give Milk.”. It’s part of a Gleaners Food Bank of Indiana campaign designed to distribute one million gallons of milk to Hoosiers in need in 2022.   

By texting 55433 you can contribute funds towards their May goal, which is to fund 16,500 gallons of milk. equal to 500 gallons per Indy 500 driver.  

Gleaners, which distributes food and grocery items to a network of more than 300 soup kitchens, schools, and food pantries through 21 counties in Indiana, is focusing on the distribution of fluid milk because of its enormous nutritional value. It’s an item not always available in food pantries, according to Gleaners COO/CFO Joe Slater.   

“A family that has to visit a food pantry regularly will receive two gallons of milk per year,” Slater said. “That is clearly woefully inadequate. Dairy is one of the food groups that families struggle to get regularly if they are food insecure.”

With the Consumer Price Index up 8.5 percent for the year as of March, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, food insecurity is on the rise, and not exclusively among low income households. 

“Demand for charitable food relief has gone up quite a bit, probably as much as 40% since January,” Slater said. “Really, a huge driver, almost all that, is inflation, right? So lower and now even lower middle income households are really struggling to get it all to come together.”

Consequently, there has been a rise in the number of households coming to the pantries that Gleaners serves.

“At the same time our food supply is really being challenged and that's on several fronts, primarily on donations, with retailers having shortages and how to [get some] key items like protein, right, maybe even certain canned goods, canned fruits and vegetables,” Slater said. “So the donations that we typically get from retail, manufacturers, and wholesalers are down considerably.”

Contributions from government sources, particularly from The Emergency Food Assistance Program (TEFAP) from the USDA are also down significantly this year.  

“Here locally what that means is, while we were assuming 20 million pounds of food from the federal government,” Slater said. “We're on pace to receive 9 million this fiscal year and it was all good healthy stuff that we had been getting over the last three or four years. Fluid milk, chicken, fruits, and vegetables.”

The campaign also has distributed a checkered flag which can be seen at businesses all around Speedway and other locations in Central Indiana.

Also on board to assist the campaign are Andretti Autosport and their driver Romain Grosjean, who drove the No. 28 Gleaners Food Bank of Indiana Honda in the 2022 GMR Grand Prix at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway on May 14.

“He's leveraging his social media following which is enormous,” Slater said. “And Andretti Autosport as well, is leveraging their social media following and assets and activation to really spread the word, raise awareness, and try to drive some funds from their supporters and partners.”

Just as Indy 500 drivers practice techniques to conserve fuel, people looking to give charitable donations to food banks might want to consider donating to an organization like Gleaners rather than, say, dropping off canned goods at a food bank. That is because Gleaners gets so much mileage, as it were, out of its donated funds. This is because Gleaners — which gets a four star “give with confidence” rating from Charity Navigator  — leverages the power of its partnerships.   

“These days, with as much scale as we have, we're able to purchase at a far lower cost than anybody could ever buy themselves at retail,” Slater said. “So we're always encouraging people: ‘Don't go out and buy the food. Bring it to us.’ Give us that money that you would spend to buy it and we can leverage multiples of that, even as much as eight or nine times the purchasing power that someone might have individually.”

Those partners include the Indiana Dairy Association and Dairy Farmers of America. Gleaners is also a member of Feeding America, a national network of more than 200 banks across the U.S.

Sam Schwoeppe, Senior Account Manager at Feeding America, knows a good deal about where to access large quantities of milk at below market prices because she is a dairy farmer, with an operation based in southwest Indiana.

“Sam was one of the first people we connected to to say okay, can you help us source milk?” said Slater. “Sam was able to help us navigate the landscape of dairy producers and figure out where there might be some that had excess capacity so we could buy at a lower cost than what just might be available to buy at any wholesale price. Sam's in-depth knowledge of the farmers themselves, who has production capability etc., was instrumental in enabling us to source milk that we are now purchasing at a very attractive cost.”

Inflation in regard to food staples may not ease anytime soon. Schwoeppe is concerned with the late start farmers are getting in planting their fields this year due the wet spring. Supply chain issues are also a concern, she said.

 Longer term, she is also concerned about the steady exit of farmers from the dairy industry in Indiana.

“In dairy, we have seen a lot of people leave production over the last 10 years,” she said. “There's a constant decline in dairy producers. I believe, last week I heard we have like 771 dairy farms left in Indiana. And we're seeing consolidation in agriculture just like we are in other businesses where there are less farms but the farms are larger.”

The World Food Program calls the small farmer “the backbone of food security.” Larger farms may result in less expensive products but there is a cost to society in terms of the food security on which society depends.

But the loss of the small farmer from the rural landscape is an issue that also goes beyond food security.

“So that's changing the rural landscape and what our rural communities look like,” said Schwoeppe. “When you lose your local communities of agriculture, it affects our school systems and affects our tax base and our rural economies. You lose the support for services.  Farms need a lot of maintenance and repair work, whether that's through vehicles or through buildings; you also have  feed and supply service companies.”

Overall, however, Schwoeppe thinks Indiana is better positioned than many states in terms of agricultural production, and she praises the emphasis the lieutenant governor has put on rural infrastructure. 

“That's what is gonna keep the vibrant economy for us here in the state, but those are things that we're all facing,” she said.