The Port Angeles Food Bank and Sequim Food Bank are the joint recipients of the North Olympic Land Trust’s 2024 Farmer of the Year award. This award honors individuals or organizations that have a lasting and significant impact on the ability of the local lands to provide food and sustenance for the community. “Particularly in the years since COVID, few organizations have done more to bring the bounty of our local farms to our community’s families in need,” said Erika Lindholm, Acting Executive Director of the Land Trust.
“Everybody deserves to have nutrient rich food,” said Andra Smith, Executive Director of Sequim Food Bank. “And our customers can tell the difference between fresh local produce and that which is leftover and donated from the grocery stores,” said Emily Dexter, Executive Director of Port Angeles Food Bank. Having food sourced from local farms means that food bank visitors can use the produce for much longer than the day or two that the grocery store donated food lasts.
Both organizations have long benefited local farms donating excess harvest, but in 2018, the Sequim Food Bank received United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) grant dollars that allowed them to pay farmers to grow food for their food bank. The relationships, contracts and price sheets that were developed with this grant lay the foundation of direct purchasing programming that has developed in the years since COVID.
In the early days of the pandemic, USDA emergency funding purchased truckloads of produce from farmers and shipped it to food banks around the country. “We were getting thousands of pounds of produce from Nebraska which was ridiculous since we had so many farmers here who were struggling just like our customers,” Dexter said. Dexter and Smith worked closely with WSU Extension and WSDA to have relief funds sent directly to communities so that they could contract directly with their local farms.
These efforts paid off. In 2024, with the help of WSU Extension’s Farm to Food Bank Coordinator, there was more than $150,000 of produce and meat sourced from 35 peninsula farms and distributed through 18 different food banks and food access sites across the peninsula. “Andra and Emily’s vision and commitment to working with local farmers has made this happen – they have truly led the way in this work, such that many other food banks and pantries are seeing the benefits of this approach,” said Clea Rome, Director of the local WSU Extension.
Port Angeles Food Bank serves as the Regional Distribution Organization (RDO) for these food access organizations. Because they have a facility large enough to receive and store large quantities of food, they are the clearing house for receipt of local abundance. Every Tuesday, other sites can pick up what they can distribute to their clients as well as drop off anything of which they have more than they need. Sequim Food Bank often brings the produce from the plethora of farms in the Sequim-Dungeness region.
The Port Angeles Food Bank works to make food more accessible to its customers. Dexter recalled an experiment they did after receiving a pallet of beets fresh and completely unprocessed from a local farm. “The first week we put them out in our market, dirt and all, and very few were taken. The second week, we washed them and more were taken but there was still a lot left. The third week, we boiled and peeled them and put them out in small containers and they were all gone by the end of the day.” Flash freezing and packaging fresh hardy greens and cruciferous vegetables from local farms is another way Port Angeles Food Bank works to make local bounty available to customers throughout the year.
In addition to getting food from the land to their customers, both Port Angeles and Sequim food banks provide food back to local farmers. As food they collect passes expiration dates, they donate it to livestock farmers in the area for food for their animals. Last year, the two foodbanks combined provided over 70,000 pounds of feed to livestock farmers in the area.
Like food banks around the country, Port Angeles and Sequim food banks have seen the demand for their services increase since the pandemic. Last year, the Port Angeles Food Bank had 44,000 visits from 4,800 unique households and Sequim Food Bank had 20,000 visits from 3,700 unique households. As cost-of-living increases have put pressure on households everywhere, there is no expectation that need for emergency food support will drop. Just this week data was released indicating that in 2019, 2,200 households in Jefferson and Clallam County combined accessed federal food resources. In 2024 that number increased to over 9,800 households. Dexter and Smith are gratified to see the work to get locally produced foods to the broader community working well, but they note that a lot of funding for this work will be going away next year as the COVID-relief programs term out. Both food banks are 501(c)(3) non-profit organizations, and local donations help them feed and support our communities. To learn more and support, please visit portangelesfoodbank.org and sequimfoodbank.org.
The Port Angeles and Sequim food banks are joining an esteemed group of honorees who have made substantial contributions to the Clallam County agricultural community. SisterLand Farms received the award last year. Others include but aren’t limited to farmers such as Mark Bowman of Bowman Farms, Doug Hendrickson and Lee Norton of Salt Creek Farm, Tom and Holly Clark of Clark Farms, and Steve Johnson of Lazy J Tree Farm, as well as individuals such as Bob Caldwell, Neil Conklin, and Gary Smith, and such entities as the Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe Traditional Foods and Culture Program, the Clallam Conservation District, and WSU Extension.