A first look into Golden Harvest Food Bank’s new produce rescue center
AUGUSTA, Ga. (WRDW/WAGT) - Golden Harvest Food Bank is inching closer to opening its new produce rescue center.
On Wednesday, News 12 got a first look at some of the center’s progress.
The new center will introduce a new world of fresh food options for people across the area and help fill the food desert gap.
In their current space, Golden Harvest is able to distribute about a million pounds of fresh produce a year. Across the street at the new produce rescue center, their goal is to bump up to about two and a half million pounds.
“This is really the community’s food bank,” said Nathan Krupa, Golden Harvest’s annual giving officer. “There’s lots of fresh produce that goes to waste in Georgia. It comes in these big 2,000-pound cartons called totes and so what this space will be used for is taking that produce and breaking it down into individual serving sizes so that it can be distributed to families and individuals.”
It’s a project that is two years in the making.
“It’s difficult to distribute for the food bank because it’s perishable. Without this new facility, we weren’t able to take those fresh produce loads in and turn them around and get them out into the community quickly enough,” said Krupa.
The goal is to have more hands on deck to get fresher produce to the community quicker.
“We’re expecting that in this area, we’re hoping that we’ll be able to increase the amount of produce that we distribute by about 250% annually,” said Krupa. “So that’s millions of pounds of produce.”
Golden Harvest says they’re expecting to finish building in the summer.
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