Courtesy Chris Brockel
Chris Brockel with a chart.
Brockel is a longtime food activist and coordinator for Healthy Food for All.
Chris Brockel, longtime area food activist and coordinator of Healthy Food for All, is a go-to figure in local food recovery. And Healthy Food For All is a leader among groups that help those who have surplus food, matching them with food pantries and other nonprofits who help feed those in need.
When the pandemic hit hard in March 2020, one of Healthy Food for All’s then-new initiatives, to raise awareness among caterers about ways to donate leftover food from events, went on the shelf as events and catering gigs dried up almost entirely.
Catering is now back, says Brockel, and so is the Green Catering initiative. But now the economy is changing the equation.
Food prices have risen so much over recent months that caterers and event planners are being “much more careful” in figuring out the amounts of food they need, says Brockel. That’s good in that food is not being wasted, which is the ultimate goal. “We don’t want people creating food waste just so we can feed people in need.”
But food pantries will likely see less in the way of excess or gleaned food at a time when need is expected to rise; the extra pandemic food benefit to FoodShare recipients was discontinued at the end of February. “The pressure is going to come at the food pantry level for sure,” Brockel says.
Brockel and Healthy Food for All still help reallocate resources from those who have excess food to an entity that can put it to use, and Frankie Pobar Lay was hired in May to take the reins as food flow coordinator.
Healthy Food for All is developing another program that rose out of the pandemic: working with farmers to grow more “purpose-grown produce.” The plan is to pay farmers to raise produce that, for instance, pantries and agencies need — and paying the farmer to produce it — rather than waiting to receive whatever excess crop farmers have and need to give away.
“So instead of getting crates and crates of kohlrabi, which no one will take, you can get the kinds of things that people want,” says Brockel. If farmers are happy doing that, then they are more apt to donate other produce and “it’s a win-win.”
Brockel says the program is being organized under a grant from the Department of Administration, but Healthy Food for All does more pinpoint fundraising, such as a GoFundMe, to fund target farms.
Brockel, also the manager of FEED Kitchens, was named co-director of the Northside Planning Council in January, but that was “just putting a name on everything I have been doing for two years” at FEED and Healthy Food For All, he says. “It’s really the same hat.”
