Fighting Hunger

About 650,000 people living in Central and Eastern North Carolina have been identified as “food insecure,” meaning a lack of money or other resources limits their access to an adequate supply of food at times during the year. North Carolina is just one state—add up numbers like this one for every state in the country, and the challenge of feeding people in need is daunting.

Health care costs, underemployment and unemployment take their toll, says Ashley Delamar, vice president of development for the Food Bank of Central and Eastern North Carolina.

“We had a very hard winter in North Carolina,” says Delamar. An ice storm shut down businesses for about a week. That meant lost workdays for many people. Just a few days without pay meant people who were living paycheck to paycheck did not have enough money to buy food.

Fortunately, yearly contributions from Syngenta, other corporate sponsors and individuals help to feed more than 300,000 people in the 34 counties the food bank serves.

Over the last three years, Syngenta has donated its own vegetable varieties to a Community Garden Project in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina. The garden has supplied an array of fresh vegetables to the food bank. More than 75 Syngenta employees have volunteered their time and agronomic expertise to the garden, says George Aux, team leader of product safety business management and compliance for Syngenta.

Last year, this quarter-acre plot produced 4,000 pounds of vegetables. Syngenta volunteers delivered these vegetables—including tomatoes, peppers, squash, melons, green beans, collards, kale and more—to the food bank. The garden also doubled in size from 2013, its first year of operation.

"We distribute about 54 million pounds of food each year. About one-third of that is in the form of fresh vegetables, fruit and meat."

This year, Aux expects the garden to again produce about 4,000 pounds of vegetables for the food bank. The garden also features an Operation Pollinator plot. Volunteers have planted one-eighth of an acre in perennial flowers to attract pollinators and other beneficial insects.

Syngenta has also made significant monetary contributions to the food bank over the years, and many employees from the company’s Research Triangle Park facility have volunteered to help sort food donations.

Solving the problem of food insecurity is a huge endeavor. But agricultural retailers and other companies can help make lasting impacts in their own communities, Aux says. Retailers can, for example, donate leftover vegetable seed inventories to local community gardens. Or, retailers and their employees could lend their agronomic expertise. Multiply one such project by many, and the challenge of giving all people food security becomes possible.