Local Food Pantry Tackles Student Hunger

UF will open its first food pantry in late June to meet the health and nutrition needs of students and faculty.

The Field and Fork Food Pantry, which will be located behind McCarty Hall, will be accessible to any student, faculty or custodian with a valid Gator 1 ID.

UF senior Susan Webster spawned the idea of an on-campus food pantry while campaigning for student government.

“I asked students what would they want to change on campus, and a young man on scholarship simply responded that he would like to have a meal,” Webster said. “It was something I had never heard before.”

Webster set out to determine whether she could leverage campus resources to meet this demand. She found that she was not the only Gator interested in creating an on-campus food pantry.

“The recent needs assessment conducted by IFAS found that 10 percent of the student body experienced hunger or was challenged to find food during their tenure at the university,” said Anna Prizzia, IFAS campus food system coordinator. “That percentage was a lot higher among certain student populations. International, first-generation students and those on Pell Grant scholarships had even more food insecurities.”

Prizzia found that other Southern colleges and peer institutions already had on-campus food pantries. IFAS explored the idea and decided that bringing one to UF was the right decision.

Student Government, Student Affairs, the Dean of Students office and the UF Institute of Food and Agricultural Services (IFAS) joined forces to make an on-campus food pantry a reality.

The team held a food drive, which brought in donations from all over campus.

“Even at Levin, where I know the students are busy all day studying for law school, we received huge amounts of canned goods donations,” Webster said. “Every Gator wants to help a fellow Gator in need, especially in the face of hunger.”

The Field and Fork Food Pantry will open and provide food-insecure Gators with nonperishable goods. The pantry will also carry fresh and healthy goods farmed on campus when its facilities are capable.

“There will be a continuous fresh-food program at Field and Fork, so that there are always goods in the pantry available that were farmed at the on-campus gardens,” Webster said.

Another goal of the pantry is to provide the entire Gator community with education tools to improve their lifestyle, including cooking and nutrition classes for people who want to establish healthier eating habits.

“The pantry is a huge aspect to the program, but we also will give a learning, teaching and farm aspect which will be available to all Gators,” Webster said.

The idea behind Field and Fork food pantry was to help food-insecure students, but Webster and Prizzia quickly realized that they had an even bigger role to fill.

“We developed the idea of #FeedingTheGatorGood,” Webster said.

Featured photo courtesy of: Alligator

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