In short, by focusing on the health of our clients, we are simultaneously playing a role in improving the health of our environment, our local economy, and Berkeley Food Network. This shift in the way we source our food in turn has a measurable impact on the reduction of greenhouse gases, improving local air quality. And by sourcing more of our food locally, we are helping to improve the health of our local economy. We are purchasing more shelf-stable foods from wholesalers of organic foods.
We are recovering growing amounts of excess healthy edible food from local food producers. We developed new partnerships and are today continuing to forge new relationships with farms that use organic, sustainable, and regenerative farming methods. Therefore, we began to source our foods from a wider range of suppliers. We realized that in order to ensure that our clients had access to healthy foods, we had to first ensure that BFN itself was a healthy, resilient organization, largely by diversifying our food sourcing. This meant we weren’t always able to provide our clients with the variety and types of foods they needed to stay healthy. We had been, in part, dependent on a food sourcing system that broke during the pandemic. How did we accomplish this? We discovered that focusing on the nutritional quality of food, rather than on simply providing calories, turns out to be more layered and nuanced than we had imagined. During the pandemic, many folks who were already struggling to pay the bills additionally lost their jobs or were stricken with COVID-19, thus heightening their food insecurity and threatening their access to nutritious food options.įortunately, because of the generosity of our donors, we were able to address this healthy food gap by increasing our capacity and ability to focus on obtaining and offering our clients healthier food choices. That is why BFN is focused first and foremost on the health of those in our community who are not able to put healthy foods on their tables on a regular basis. We do not want to revert back to a community in which some people are left behind, going to bed hungry, or lacking access to healthy food. Here at the Berkeley Food Network, we want to ensure that a return these “Before Times” doesn’t necessarily mean “Business as Usual”.
We are beginning to see the light at the end of the tunnel, a time when we can leave the coronavirus pandemic behind and return to our “Before Times” pre-COVID lives: socializing, traveling, and most of all, living healthy lives. As the weather warms up and the days grow longer, thankfully, more and more people are getting vaccinated and returning to work.