South Plains Food Bank
Carolyn Lanier, Executive Director
James V. Pipkin, Dehydration Plant Project Manager
4612 Locust Ave.
Lubbock, Texas 79404
(806) 763-3003
(806) 741-0850 fax

Among the hundreds of food banks performing exemplary service across America, this relatively small operation in the dusty oil and farming country at the bottom end of the Texas Panhandle stands out as one of the very best.

Not only does it do all the usual food-bank things well, but it goes far beyond the basics, by taking a stand aimed at ending hunger in its community by any means necessary.

Its creative ideas over the years have sometimes earned it a reputation as a "maverick" food bank, and Carolyn Lanier puts on a knowing smile when she describes the organization as "the REBEL food bank," a group that initially broke ranks with the Second Harvest network but now regularly wins its top awards ... and serves as a model to pull less aggressive food banks along.

Operating as a traditional food bank, it gave away 8 million pounds of food in 1992, serving 180 emergency-feeding organizations in Lubbock and another 50 or so in the surrounding area.

In one startling departure from customary food bank procedures -- and one that works in Lubbock -- one side of the bank's warehouse on the city's industrial east side provides food directly to hungry people, defying the conventional wisdom that food banks shouldn't deal with the public directly but only through intermediate non-profits. "Why not?" shrugs Lanier, noting that the procedure solves the problem of small food pantries having limited transportation. (To retain accountability, individuals who come to the food bank for food issues must be screened by authorized emergency-food providers, who give them vouchers that can be traded for groceries at the food bank.)

But, says Lanier, "food is only a small portion of what we do."

Indeed.

Not only has the food bank started and spun off as independent activities a score of needed services in Lubbock, ranging from weekend congregate-feeding centers in the inner-city to a city-wide recycling program, but it owns its own farm, a five-acre spread on the outskirts of town, run by Roy Riddle, a burly Army retiree who oversees a crew of volunteers to get more than 100 tons of fresh produce in THREE harvests a year off the property.

The food bank is deeply involved in public awareness, from the annual Octoberfast fund-raising and education campaign to Christmas food drives and publicity events.

And it gets involved directly in the lives of hungry and homeless people, aggressively seeking them as volunteers who learn job skills through work ... and move back into the mainstream, more than 100 of them so far, by finding job placement as a direct result of the skills they gained at the food bank.

Because homeless people are welcome at the food bank, it also provides them an array of needed services, including showers and a washer-dryer room, and a busy literacy-training course.

In one of its most innovative efforts, the food bank won national publicity -- and, sadly, ran into more problems than it anticipated -- when it raised $6.9 million to renovate an old industrial building as a food dehydration plant.

Opened in 1993 on 42 acres of donated property, the Breedlove Food Dehydration Plant had the capability to convert an estimated 20,000,000 pounds of fresh produce a year into lightweight, nutritious dehydrated food, based on industrial technology refined for United Nations soldiers during the Desert Storm conflict in Kuwait.

Because dehydrated food is easily transported and stored in its dry form, which turns 100 pounds of green beans into a bag the size and weight of a pillow, James Pipkin said, it is particularly well suited for food banks and soup kitchens ... and for homeless people, who can reconvert it into a tasty and healthful portion with nothing more than warm water from a faucet or campfire.

Unfortunately, although the plant worked well, the initial market for dehydrated food proved much smaller than planners had hoped, making it impossible for the product to cover the plant's expenses. After Lanier's retirement, food-bank officials were looking at ways to scale it back and to keep the project while making it economically feasible.

All the feature stories on @GRASS-ROOTS.ORG's pages are reported and written by Robin Garr, a prize-winning journalist who has visited more than 500 innovative grassroots programs in all 50 states since 1990.

Browse his book, Reinvesting In America, at Amazon.com.

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