Big Bend food bank adds 5 rural Florida counties to its service area

Second Harvest of the Big Bend has added 5 more counties to its service area. CEO Monique Ellsworth says the new counties are rural ones where the need is high, and the fund-raising opportunities are not.

“But what these areas do have is lots of farming,” she said, “so we’ve already identified 67 farms in those 5 counties, and we have staff members that are spending days out there, building relationships with those farmers and growers, so they can help them find ways to contribute to the food needed in their communities.”

The new counties are Columbia, Dixie, Hamilton, Lafayette and Suwannee. Ellsworth says Second Harvest is looking for more opportunities to pay farmers for their food and put it back into their communities.