Under One Roof
Written by Brian Bushard
Photography by Kit Noble
Nourish Nantucket, the Land Bank and the Food Pantry Team Up
It might be the single most transformative step towards solving Nantucket’s growing food insecurity crisis. This June, Nourish Nantucket and the Nantucket Island Land Bank opened a first-of-its-kind Community Food Hub, providing a new and larger home for the Food Pantry after years of uncertainty over its downtown lease, as well as a commercial kitchen for prepared meals and anew venison processing facility. “This new facility will dramatically enhance our ability to help serve the food needs for over 3,000 individuals who utilize the various food programs on the island—however, our goal is to expand our mission, as this only represents half of the population in need,” Nourish Nantucket Executive Director Meg Browers said.
Nourish Nantucket launched two years ago with a bold goal of solving the island’s food insecurity problem. Last year, it partnered with the Land Bank in a major expansion of the conservation organization’s efforts, to jointly purchase the space for the Food Hub on Boynton Lane. Under the partnership, the Land Bank manages the basement deer-processing facility—which provides ample space for local deer donated by hunters—while Nourish Nantucket runs the kitchen and food pick-up area. The Food Pantry, under a long-term lease, operates out of the same building, bringing Nantucket’s food security initiatives together under one roof.
"This was a remarkably seamless partnership between three organizations, which now under one roof can work together to solve the food insecurity problem on Nantucket,” said Bruce A. Percelay, who created Nourish Nantucket as a single fundraising vehicle for the 12 different agencies on the island, and serves on the organization’s board.
On an island known for fine dining and luxury estates, it might sound ludicrous that more than 30% of year-round residents struggle to put food on the table. It might sound counterintuitive that the island’s Food Pantry—for years the most crucial means of providing food to the hungry—was losing its lease downtown. But that is the harsh reality of the island’s severe housing shortage, the exorbitant cost of living, and the seasonality of labor for a large chunk of Nantucketers.
As of last year, some 46% of Nantucket Public Schools students qualified for free and reduced school lunches, while across the Cape and islands, roughly one-third of households go to bed hungry, according to the Greater Boston Food Bank. With the new facility, Nourish Nantucket will be able to curb food insecurity like never before on the island, through grocery cards, direct support to island schools, ready-to-eat meals for kids in the summer and food rescue from summer rentals.
In addition to existing programs, the Land Bank’s creation of a deer-processing facility is an innovative solution to multiple problems on Nantucket. “By helping reduce the overpopulation of deer on the island, which in turn helps mitigate the tick infestation, we are also able to provide high-protein food for those in need,” Land Bank Executive Director Rachael Freeman said. “We will be preparing ground venison that is hunted on the island. It is truly a win-win situation.”
The goal is to address hunger across all walks of life. According to Nourish Nantucket Board President Brooke Mohr, some 46% of food-insecure households have children, and 42% of food insecure households have seniors. “The food hub is a manifestation of what we’ve been doing since we started,” she said.
Perhaps no organization will feel the impact of the new community food hub more than the Food Pantry. “With the threat of losing our home a year ago, a facility like this is a dream come true,” said Ruth Pitts, the pantry’s manager. “It satisfies our space needs,8 our parking needs and is at a location that is easily accessible. The partnership created by these three organizations has produced a wonderful long-term solution for us so we can focus our efforts on doing our job.”
While the facility goes a long way toward feeding islanders, the need is still severe. Last year, Nourish Nantucket raised over $360,000 for grocery store gift cards for 600 individuals when federal SNAP funding was cut, though more than 1,000 other islanders remained on the waiting list. For other islanders whose salaries disqualify them from receiving federal benefits, Nourish Nantucket bridges the gap. According to Mark Donato, vice chairman of the Land Bank Commission: “The collaboration with the Land Bank, while seemingly atypical for our organization, reflects our goal of responsible land management, and helping reduce the deer population while feeding those in need on the island could not have been a better solution."
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