Tackling the food crisis in Sonoma Valley

Damian Saavedra pulled up in a refrigerated truck Tuesday to deliver food recovered from Sonoma Valley suppliers to support Sonoma Overnight Support’s meal production.

It’s one of seven locations he visits several times a week as part of a new pilot program that in its first month (September) recovered and redistributed 20,000 pounds of food — equivalent to nearly 70,000 meals — to Sonoma Valley residents experiencing food insecurity camps.

The program is part of a multi-year pilot project of the Food Security Initiative, launched by Sonoma Valley Catalyst Fund in 2023 following a 77-page study. “Sonoma Valley Food Safety Assessment,” was released by the Community Planning Collaborative, indicating that approximately 8,000 Sonoma Valley residents face food insecurity.

“The food recovery pilot is one of several strategies within the larger Catalyst food security initiative, identified through the survey results and created using input from nonprofit partners in the Food Security Roundtable and input from provincial coalitions,” said Angela Ryan, Executive Director of Sonoma Valley Catalyst Fund.

In early 2024, Catalyst decided to focus on food recovery and community refrigerators, which complemented each other and addressed the problem of significant amounts of food leaving the Valley since the implementation of SB1383. This law, passed by the California State Legislature in 2022, requires some businesses to reduce their food waste by giving unsellable but safe and edible food to local organizations that can distribute it to people experiencing food insecurity.

These businesses include supermarkets, convenience stores, food service providers, food distributors, food wholesalers, restaurants, hotels, healthcare facilities, large venues, major events, government agencies and local educational institutions.

Catalyst hired Sonoma native Elise Gonzales, who wanted to combine her decade of international community development experience and culinary background into a meaningful role.

“Elise and Catalyst came together at the perfect time,” Ryan said. “As a food network weaver, Elise works with food organizations in the city and the province to identify collaborative opportunities in programming, financing and activities, all aimed at addressing the food shortages highlighted in the recent assessment and strengthening the local food support network .”

Sonoma Valley’s food recovery efforts were previously led by Meals on Wheels and Empire Food Bank, but due to new regulatory requirements, Meals on Wheels decided to take a step back from food recovery and focus on its core mission: preparing and delivering meals to seniors.

That’s why Catalyst has built a working relationship with ExtraFood, a Bay Area-based nonprofit that has been reclaiming food in Marin, San Francisco and surrounding areas for the past decade.

“They provide a proven model for engaging food donors, maximizing donations and ensuring efficient food redistribution to food-insecure populations,” Ryan said.

After working with five local nonprofits and low-income housing sites to develop ways to ensure food reaches community members where and when they need it most, Catalyst decided to implement “community refrigerators” – glass-fronted commercial refrigerators – that it purchased or were donated by Zero Waste Sonoma.

The refrigerators were installed in five locations, which were not disclosed because some are in private areas of residential complexes or in facilities that serve children and other vulnerable populations.

“Each community refrigerator is strategically located at a local nonprofit organization or housing partner site, where they assign a food manager who receives a stipend and is trained in environmental health protocols to increase community involvement and ensure food safety and sanitation are met conditions are met,” said Ryan. . “The refrigerators have been placed in high traffic areas where a clear need for accessible food sources has been identified.”

With the support of Catalyst and in coordination with local nonprofits, ExtraFood now has an employee (Saavedra) and a refrigerated truck to pick up and deliver food throughout the Sonoma Valley. He picks up donated food five days a week from Safeway, Lucky, Nugget Market, Whole Foods Market, Glen Ellen Village Market, Sonoma Valley Unified School District, Sonoma Valley Hospital and Fairmont Sonoma Mission Inn & Spa, among others.

“ExtraFood is continually working to find more food donors and helping existing food donors expand their donations,” said Ryan. “While we are increasing donations, we can also add more community refrigerators.”

Saavedra delivers the food to the five locations plus Sonoma Overnight Support’s Unity Kitchen and Meals on Wheels.

Ryan said Catalyst wants to expand the program to source food from more locations and deliver it to additional partners and hopefully recover hundreds of thousands of pounds of additional food annually. She said the pilot program is gathering feedback from community refrigerator customers to tailor food offerings to meet their needs and wants.

As part of the pilot project, options are also being explored to offer cooking classes to use the products usually available, or to prepare communal dishes at two residential locations.

“Working with the CalFresh Healthy Living Program, we identified two locations in Sonoma that would significantly benefit from coordinated efforts to address food insecurity, social isolation and nutrition education,” Ryan said. “When we saw that some residents were struggling to fully utilize products provided by partners – due to surplus or lack of cultural relevance – we saw an opportunity to implement community-based nutritional cooking classes in low-income residential communities, using making the surplus products supplied by our partners. main product partner, Farm to Pantry.”

She said multiple organizations are working together to design and implement these programs at the two locations.

The long-term goal of Catalyst’s Food Security Initiative is to build a sustainable local food security system that relies on the abundance of local food and the creativity and expertise of Sonoma Valley’s nonprofits, and leverage the connections and resources of public agencies. and regional partners outside the Valley.

Catalyst was founded in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic to quickly respond to urgent needs in the Sonoma Valley community. It mobilizes philanthropic support and innovative approaches to better address urgent, emerging and chronic challenges that no single Sonoma Valley donor or organization can solve alone.

Reach the reporter, Dan Johnson, at [email protected].