Florida charity finds success with excess from farmers

FLORIDA CITY, Fla. -- Robert Marquis strained to lift a box of fruits and vegetables during his monthly trip to the packinghouse-turned-food charity in south Miami-Dade County.

A woman noticed the 72-year-old's struggle and told him to relax; she would carry the box to his car.

Marquis has been coming to Farm Share, a 10-year-old food distribution charity, to pick up a free box of food for the past three years. The helping hand came from Patricia Robbins, who as the charity's chief executive makes sure tons of produce that otherwise would go to the dump ends up on the dinner table.

"Once I saw the amount of food thrown away and once I saw how many people all around me were in need and how many of our elderly were hungry, I just haven't been able to do anything but this," Robbins said. "It breaks your heart to think that they might be hungry."

Like many of the people who benefit from Farm Share, Marquis and his wife are elderly and they get by on less than $1,294 a month, the federal poverty level.

"Every little bit helps," said Marquis, who is disabled from a back injury suffered installing carpet 30 years ago. "I figure if I can use it and somebody wants to give it to me, I'll put it to good use."

The program was started a decade ago when a packinghouse manager became concerned about the amount of produce he was throwing away. Food farmers couldn't sell it because it was the wrong size or shape.

Since the first distribution center opened in a bedroom-sized cooler, the program has expanded to occupy a warehouse the size of a supermarket in the Florida City Farmer's Market, about 30 miles southwest of Miami.

1.8 million families

About 5,000 families from south Miami-Dade County make the trip to Farm Share each month. The program's reach extends across Florida to 1.8 million families -- 70 percent of them elderly -- and even up the Eastern Seaboard to New York City, as other agencies distribute the food collected.

Robbins said there aren't enough local agencies to help all of the people in the Miami area who need food, so Farm Share schedules them -- one per minute, four days a week -- to pick up the bags of groceries themselves.

"I look at their faces and I just wish I could do more," said Robbins, who hopes to build another warehouse in nearby Homestead.

Along with staples donated from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, crates of vegetables are set out for the people to pick out as much as they can use.

"Then they're really smiling," said Wilbert Burgess, a manager at the packinghouse.

Since Burgess started volunteering three years ago, the number of people who come to the warehouse door has more than doubled.