In addition to funding family farmers, this month’s Farm Aid also helped the hungry.
How? The good people at City Harvest held a food drive and, more germane to this site, recovered food from the backstage caterers. While the canned food drive collected 2,000 pounds, City Harvest gathered an additional 5,000 pounds of primo food, the same stuff Willie, John, Neil and Dave ate. Well, at least their roadies.
Kudos to Whose Catering, who made the donation possible by packing and refrigerating the food overnight until the next morning’s pickup. By the end of that day, City Harvest had distributed the food to shelters in all five New York boroughs.
While the hubbub over how “real” Farm Aid’s concession food was received more attention (because it was local foods royalty Alice Waters doing the questioning and later, the kissing and making up), the concert’s donations deserve equal press. Imagine if this kind of food recovery happened after every large event…