MILLIONS OF HUNGRY FED FOR PENNY A DAY BY METHODIST GROUP

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, March 14, 1993                   TAG: 9303140030
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: E-7   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: DAVID REED ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: BIG ISLAND                                LENGTH: Medium
MILLIONS OF HUNGRY FED FOR PENNY A DAY BY METHODIST GROUP
The Society of St. Andrew is putting a modern twist in the New Testament miracle of Jesus' feeding 5,000 followers with five loaves of bread and two fish.
The Methodist ministry with a staff of 10 and a $1.2 million annual budget has fed millions of hungry people across the country for a penny a serving.
The ministry started out literally as small potatoes in the summer of 1983, transporting a few truckloads of the tubers to food banks in Richmond and Lynchburg.
Since then it has distributed 140 million pounds of produce - mostly potatoes farmers couldn't sell and vegetables that volunteers gleaned from mechanically harvested fields.
Last year, the ministry provided 22 million pounds of produce along with 75,000 pounds of venison donated by Virginians in a new program, Hunters for the Hungry. For good measure, the ministry sent 117,000 pounds of rice to Russia.
"When you think about the typical administrative overhead at agencies, I think the Society of St. Andrew's work is exemplary," said Cheryl Macia, a staff member of the House Select Committee on Hunger.
It was the disciple Andrew who found the five loaves and two fish by the Sea of Galilee. According to the Bible, with those meager rations Jesus was able to feed the multitude.
The Revs. Ray Buchanan and Ken Horne hope they can feed the multitude of hungry using normally wasted produce.
"You don't think a truckload of potatoes will feed all the people, but it's a place to start," Buchanan said from his office in a spartan, sheet-metal building.
According to a study last year by the Physicians Task Force On Hunger, 35 million people go without food at least two or three days a month in the United States.
"The tragedy is that a lot of the hungry are children and elderly on fixed incomes," Buchanan said. "At this time of year, many of them have to make the choice between heat and food."
According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, 20 percent of all food grown in this country for human consumption is wasted.
Food that is left in fields and orchards after mechanized harvesting or unsold because of improper size or color "is a resource that has been around forever," Macia said. "Ray Buchanan's organization has played a lead in bringing national attention to the existence of the resource and then going after it."
In March 1983, Buchanan was lecturing at a hunger workshop on Virginia's Eastern Shore when the idea "just came clear in my mind." After citing the USDA figure on food waste, a man in the audience challenged Buchanan.
"He said, `We don't waste that kind of food,' " Buchanan recalled. "He was a third-generation potato farmer, and he never realized potatoes dumped in the woods he couldn't sell was food waste."
A few months later, the farmer, Butch Nottingham of Franktown, got together with 11 other growers and arranged for them to donate the first million pounds of potatoes to the Society of St. Andrew.
Word of the Potato Project quickly spread among farmers. "They work too hard growing the food to want to waste it," Buchanan said. "We haven't had to look for a farmer for two or three years. They call us."
When a farmer calls and says a truckload or more of produce will be ready to be picked up in one week, Marian Buchanan, Ray's wife and the operations manager, finds a food distribution agency near the farmer that wants the load.
Through an offshoot program, the Gleaning Network, 4,300 volunteer workers collected about 800,000 pounds of produce last year - including corn, cabbage, peaches and blueberries.
"There is a lot more produce out there that we could salvage that we have to turn down because we don't have the money to do it," Buchanan said.
"The past 10 years have demonstrated that, yes, there is enough food being wasted to feed every hungry person in America and there is a distribution network in place. . . . All we need is that one cent per serving to make that happen," Buchanan said.

by Archana Subramaniam by CNB