Enhancing Infrastructure for Fresh Food Storage and Transportation

When we invest in facilities, transportation, and technology improvements, we will more effectively serve our communities while reducing our environmental impact. Rooted + Rising expands Oregon Food Bank’s ability to store and transport the fresh, nourishing and locally grown foods our communities need.

GROWING CAPACITY AT OREGON FOOD BANK’S STATEWIDE WAREHOUSE

Oregon Food Bank’s Statewide Warehouse is the operational hub for our network of 21 Regional Food Banks and more than 1,400 food assistance partners. We move approximately 50 million pounds of food through this facility each year to reach more than one million of our neighbors facing food insecurity in rural areas, small towns and urban centers. Our 20-year-old facility was designed to handle large quantities of shelf-stable goods such as dry and canned products. We are steadily prioritizing fresh foods (produce has grown from 22 percent to nearly 30 percent of total food donations since 2020) yet facilities have been a limiting factor.

Rooted in a belief that our communities deserve nourishing, fresh foods, we’re expanding and strengthening relationships with food producers, manufacturers and retailers to increase access to our local bounty. To date, we have secured over $5 million for renovations to double the Oregon Food Bank Statewide Warehouse’s cold storage capacity and repurpose space to safely receive and process more fresh foods. Facilities improvements will increase community access to fresh, nutrient-dense, culturally-relevant produce, meats and dairy abundant in the Pacific Northwest.

COMBATING CLIMATE CHANGE WITH FACILITIES IMPROVEMENTS

Climate change causes poverty and hunger. We are upgrading facilities and improvements to our fleet of food distribution vehicles to replace fossil fuel consumption with renewable energy, reducing our carbon emissions. With a shore power upgrade at Oregon Food Bank’s Statewide Warehouse complete, we’ve begun converting refrigeration systems in each of the eight freight trailers used to deliver food statewide. Now, they will be charged with electric power, replacing diesel-powered refrigeration.

We will invest over $1 million for transportation improvements into refrigerated sprinter van purchases in 2024-2025, to modernize our fleet for delivery of nutrient-dense produce, dairy, and meat to local partners. This will improve services to smaller agencies with flexible pop-up food distributions and make these types of foods available to communities with historically limited access to refrigerated transportation. With facilities improvements for sprinter van charging stations, these electric vehicles will reduce our carbon emissions by an estimated 45,000 pounds of CO2 in the first year and set Oregon Food Bank on a path to zero carbon emissions by 2050.

Join us to support more critical investments in infrastructure to nourish our communities with fresh, local bounties.

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