Beef Council Donates $2,500 To Food Pantries

Pictured from L-R: Wisconsin Beef Council Board Member Hannah Statz, Feeding Wisconsin Board
President Michelle Orge, Wisconsin Farm Bureau Executive Director of Public Relations Amy
Eckelberg, Wisconsin Beef Council Executive Director Tammy Vaassen.

Wisconsin Beef Council kicked off the week with a $2,500 check to Feeding Wisconsin, a network of six food banks. The pantries will use the money to buy Wisconsin beef for its patrons. The money comes from Beef Council’s Burgers & Buns Fun Run in May, put on in partnership with Wisconsin Farm Bureau Federation and the Farm Wisconsin Discovery Center.

Wisconsin Beef Council Executive Director Tammy Vaassen tells Mid-West Farm Report why this is a priority for the organization:

Feeding Wisconsin is a network of six food pantries that provide food to almost 1,000 local food programs in all 72 Wisconsin counties. They sent out 86 million pounds of food to Wisconsinites in 2021, which was a 75 percent jump from 2019. And the amount is only growing, according to Board President and Interim Director Michelle Orge.

Orge is also the president and CEO of Second Harvest Foodbank of Southern Wisconsin, one of those six pantries that are a part of Feeding Wisconsin. She tells Mid-West Farm Report what the food needs look like among Wisconsin residents:

Orge says partnerships, such as the one with Wisconsin Beef Council, are important to meet the needs of their patrons. Pre-pandemic, she says generally, pantries purchased up to 20 percent of their food, and the rest would be covered by food donations. Today, they are purchasing 40 percent of what they need.

She says it’s not because people are less generous, it’s because there’s less to give with higher grocery prices. She notes demand is also greater.