Food on the fly: Mobile food pantry rolls to the rescue in Southwest Missouri

SPRINGFIELD, Mo. -- Even standing still, the new Ozarks Food Harvest Mobile Food Pantry appears to be flying to its destination, filled with healthy food for hungry people.

The converted beverage trailer announces its identity with lettering that practically jumps off the truck, the brown letters speeding across the side.

The truck will soon be "flying" down the highways to communities across southwest Missouri to get fresh produce, dairy products and meat, along with nonperishable food items, to areas that have no pantries to feed families in need, or whose pantries are limited in space and staffing.

This is a dream come true for Ozarks Food Harvest director Bart Brown, who proposed the concept more than a year ago.

Thanks to the Rotary Clubs of Springfield and Ridewell Corp., the first of two planned mobile food pantries will make its first delivery Friday to Oregon County.

The regional food bank serves more than 300 pantries and other agencies in 29 counties in Missouri, distributing more than 4 million pounds of food to feed an estimated 37,000 people each month.

The food bank has experienced a 44 percent increase in the number of people requesting food assistance in the past four years, and those numbers are continuing to go up, Brown said.

The mobile food pantry is designed to help meet that increased need, especially where the poorest people live, and transportation is a problem for them.

"Our first priority is to go to areas with the highest poverty rates," said Brown. Factoring in the number of local food pantries, the food bank is targeting underserved areas.

One of those areas is Shannon County, where the poverty rate tops 21 percent and the per capita income -- $11,492 in 1999 -- is nearly half the state average.

The Shannon County Food Pantry is located in three rooms at the Three Rivers Sheltered Workshop, where volunteers distributed food to 310 families last month, totaling 723 individuals. In a county of only 3,300 households, or 8,324 people, that represents nearly 10 percent of the population.

But Alan Stringer, president of the pantry's board, knows that many of the county's most needy cannot get to Birch Tree, where the pantry is located.

Since this summer, Ozarks Food Harvest has been sending its delivery truck to the county in a pilot mobile food pantry project.

In November, another 269 families were served from the mobile pantry in Eminence, the county's largest city, about 25 miles from Birch Tree.

"The local pantry is very small," said Stringer, who is also the pastor of the First Baptist Church of Eminence. "[The mobile pantry] helps us out a lot. It gives us extra distribution in our county."

The Shannon County Food Pantry has two large refrigerators and five freezers, allowing only limited storage of perishable foods.

With the new truck, the 14 insulated compartments can hold at least 25,000 pounds of food. Even more significant, that food can be kept cold or frozen to guarantee fresh, nutritious food that will go directly to the user.

At about 60 pounds of food per family, that could feed 400 families, said Brown. The mobile pantry could serve two or three locations per trip.

Once the food bank has more space for storage in a new location -- planned to be started by spring 2008 -- the goal is to have two mobile pantries going out to distributions every weekday, Brown said.

It was Brown's vision that inspired the Rotary to take on the project, said Tamara de Wild.

Rotarian Steve Montgomery brought the proposal to the Rotary Club of Springfield, which meets downtown.

"It was a neat project for our club to get involved in," said de Wild, who serves on the club's community service board. "One of the emphases of Rotary International is addressing the issue of hunger. This was a great fit for us."

The downtown club took the idea to the other clubs in Springfield. They agreed to take on the project.

The clubs and individual members have donated money, and the clubs have worked collaboratively on fundraising projects.

Montgomery also took his idea to his employer, Ridewell Suspensions.

The company is going to celebrate its 40th anniversary in 2007 and wanted to find a way to give back to the community.

The mobile food pantry was a perfect fit. It had a connection to transportation and it was a cause the employees could be proud of, said owner John Raidel II.

"It fit right in with our industry and the industry that supports us," said Raidel. "It was a win-win for us and the food bank."

He wanted a project that would "make an impact in the community and provide a benefit that was needed," Raidel said.

Learning what he could about Ozarks Food Harvest, Raidel decided the agency "really fit the bill."

Donating $100,000, Ridewell made it possible for Ozarks Food Harvest to get its first truck.

Ridewell was also able to locate a new insulated beverage trailer from Mickey Truck Bodies in High Point, N.C., at a special price for the project.

Ridewell recently sponsored a food drive to "fill the truck."

Ridewell's donation has made it possible for the Rotarians to pay for a second mobile food pantry, hopefully within the year.

About half the money has already been raised, and the project has expanded throughout Ozarks Food Harvest's entire service area, including nearly 30 clubs.

Brown would like the Ozarks Food Harvest mobile food pantry to become a familiar sight around the Ozarks.

"Given the size of our service area," he said, "that will really help us make more of an impact."