Sun Produce is thrilled to introduce another pillar of the community – Professor Maureen McCoy. I’m a Registered Dietitian and Teaching Professor of Nutrition in the College of Health Solutions at Arizona State University. I got involved with the Pitchfork Pantry, Arizona State University’s student-run food pantry, about 5 years ago, as the faculty advisor. I help on the back end of the food pantry making community connections, managing the financial side of it and writing for grants, getting community members involved and guiding our students in running a food pantry.Professor McCoy then spoke to the history of the Pitchfork Pantry and how they operate to serve ASU’s community:
The Pitchfork Pantry has been around since 2017. It was organized after research from one of my nutrition colleagues at ASU showed that about 35% of students living at the dorms on all four of our campuses were experiencing food insecurity. A group of students got together and started the student-run club of the Pitchfork Pantry. Since then, we’ve grown quite a bit. Our main hub is at the Tempe campus. We have student executive directors who oversee the weekly distributions. We are open a few hours a week, and at those times, we purchase produce from Sun Produce. We also pick up food from St. Vincent de Paul as they rescue leftover items from Starbucks stores. We distribute Starbucks sandwiches, protein boxes, nonperishable, and hygiene items. We work closely with our community partners . Our longest running partnership is with Matthew’s Crossing Food Bank in Chandler. On the second Saturday of each month we do a larger distribution than our weekly distributions and we purchase perishable food from a local store in which Matthews Crossing picks it up in their refrigerated truck and also goes to Midwest Food Bank to pick up any additional perishable items. We’re very focused on providing fresh, healthy options to make sure we’re getting the most nutrient-dense options to our students, since their brains are growing and trying to learn. We use grant funding and donations to pay for both the produce and the perishable food items.
On the impact of the Pantry’s efforts to help struggling students at ASU:
Overall, we’re feeding about 2,000 students per month between our initiatives on all 4 campuses in four different capacities. But at this point, we’re seeing about one in four ASU students dealing with food insecurity. The commonly accepted thought of the ‘starving college student’ is something that we are trying to break because we don’t want our college students to starve while they’re with us as they are trying to make a better future for themselves. We want them to not worry about where their next meal is coming from. We hope that we serve as that bridge for students who are struggling during certain parts of their educational experience. I really appreciate the connection with Sun Produce and the local connections. We try to follow along with the Arizona Statewide Food Action Plan in that we really want to value our small farms and farmers, our locally grown produce, and get that to the students who are struggling to purchase produce. It’s a win-win, because we can support our local food systems, and that’s important at ASU as well in terms of sustainable practices. One week, we had rainbow chard; some of our students had never seen it before and didn’t know how to prepare it. If we provide food, but students don’t know how to prepare it, we’ve lost that connection. But if we can also educate students at the same time about where their food comes from, about the food being grown in Arizona, how to prepare it, and how to maximize their nutrient intake, then I think we’ve succeeded.