hello my name is jerry land and welcome to the show today we're going to be talking about food and food in a way perhaps you've never really heard it discussed politically of emotionally what it really means to us to have food or not to have food and we have with us our distinguished guest today mr larry sly he's executive director of the food bank of salonica county and part of what took us to county and along with my son michael who  also has skirmishes in this field in helping people get food in the clothing and other things that he's been able to do thank you both for being with us today or we're going to be talking about the welfare of the people and what happens when people do not have food what are the ramifications here around our cities in our communities and i think it's far more serious and widespread that many of many of us i thought so perhaps will enlighten the community today certainly with you larry you're on the front lines so tell us how you got started in the food bank how and many years you've been there and and why you chose it as a profession why i think it chose me i don't think i chose it i was hired thirty eight years ago to work for the free bank account process long ago and at that point it was a small two person operation i was actually a truck driver told my family and the idea was that there were seventeen emergency food pantries they gave people a free three day food supply folks would go to the social service office to apply for food stamps or some other government assistance to find a date forgotten their children's birth certificates or some other documentation they needed so they'd send them to a pantry that was general manager church somewhere and they would have that food to keep them through that emergency situation so fast forward thirty eight years later we now find ourselves distributing over twenty million pounds of food a year and that food is there as a supplement for people on ongoing basis people need help every month so we're not doing the emergency we're now part of the support system for low income people in our community how were you able to from thirty eight years ago what was your status then in and then what kinds of skill sets did you have to i'm an executive we learned on the fly michael it was something where again i was the truck driver we had this base of nonprofits who were prodding food and our job was how do we serve them so in a way it's still the same piece today what's our customer base who needs the help we provide how do we do that in the best way possible been a big change for us in that the nature of the food we get has changed to the early days with all canned goods primarily now it's mainly fresh produce we've changed the world significantly but then the miracle targets in the county say it's contra cost and solano we talk in the senate two million people in that in those two counties and one point six million pretty close yeah and it's pretty much two salon we work effectively as we can in every city we actually just recently had a conversation with a nonprofit agencies in the city of aleppo trying to see how can we improve the service we're providing in that community hopefully the most wonderful experience of my life to learn how important it was you know getting food out to people and and how needy people you know and i was surprised and i thought you know i grew up in the time it to when things we're pretty shaky things are so difficult with the drought and with all the other things how are you handling the changes today but it's been really interesting gerri because we have a state association called the california search and food banks and they've been excellent job of building relationships with the agricultural industry  so oranges that are not up to market standards are too large or small or give an abrasion on the can they're getting those donated to us and that's been a real big resources grown dramatically so our food bank has built a lot of distribution programs around that we have a beverage truck that goes to fifty eight sites to custom slaughter counties and we give away twenty to thirty pounds approach produce to people in the communities we have programs that take it to the low income schools and give it to the students there we have programs that just refer to senior citizens and they're getting fresh produce so that it's just the distribution program has really changed dramatically the challenge as you mentioned is the drought from what we understand from our state association the prude will still be there has come to  whole lot more expense so we've got to pay for the cost and we have to pay for fuel none of those costs are going down so we know that we're going to have to raise a lot more money in the community to make that that continue well then how would have some of the ways you can raise that money well we getting back half the money that we get from the community comes from individuals so we ask people through direct mail appeals and through conversations we have a folks to give us the money that we need and we'll budget about ten million dollars a year some more than five million of that comes from individuals but we also rely on faith communities we rely on service clubs and we also rely on the corporate community to i mean are you in this time to to let the corporate community know how it can affect their businesses and many of them get we get great support from the refineries contra costa county we get support from safeway we get support from whole foods we get support from a lot of companies who understand that people being well fed is good for their business and so i imagine you probably have testimonials from all levels from the corporate level to the community level but i'd like to know what kind of reception you receive from the people that are receiving it as they have testimonials believe me it's heart rending it really is because you can tell you made a difference in those get by and trying to figure out what i mean i'm a kid for dinner and i've got nothing but maybe peanut butter and bread and that's it is making us at a kind of a profile of the type of per people that are requesting food i mean nationalities ages as if everybody everybody over the map i mean i'll tell you what it's been interesting because the frightening thing for me has been that it's not the people we think of it's not the alcoholic individually been in the doorway we do a survey with our national organization feeding america people coming to the agencies we serve and with that we find out that nearly half the people who come to us have a working individual in the family so these are folks who've got somebody who's employed but they're making ten bucks an hour  they're bringing home twenty thousand a year and that's not enough to live in this community can't afford rent you can't afford to feed your kids and so we're dealing with those kinds of issues where it is you know every ethnic group in every strata in society needs well this concept of starvation or the lack of access to food i'm thinking that a place like the united nations or someplace on the international level should declare that every human being has a right to a meal to a square meal is there any kind of discussions or like that i don't know i think government has done it but within the food bank world that's something we all except our kind of tagline is because no one should go hungry right when we're in a society that has so much food so many resources there's absolutely no reason a person should be hungry the problem is not amount the problem is distribution so just getting it to the people who need it so if there is an overage for example of food and it gets tossed away because of laws and other kind of things so it's actually missed directed there because it could save a community you know and i think that's really a crime in our society we shouldn't be wasting a resource and frankly if you look at things like the cal fresh program the food stamp program that's something where we ought to be doing that we ought to be ensuring that people have healthy food you know makes me crazy sometimes you know nobody ever disagrees that the school lunch program is a good thing to do right i mean meaning look kids is the thing we all agree should happen and yet somehow if you give people food to take home to their families to give them food stamps that somehow becomes a big political question and i think that's a real real strange thing about the way we look at the system to go it was the same way that they look at the child in the house steps outside of the house becomes a citizen goes to the school and becomes a student right those are three different titles child citizen student more in all politics you know from to there and why they can't and why the how how has this impacted what are we hearing about the international side i mean if if if if banks are not in other parts of the world i mean what kind of information  can you share on that while interesting to food banks are growing in other parts of the world and others i can call the global food bank network and they're doing the same thing taking the principle that we have been applying it in other countries actually quite a while ago it's probably been ten years i took a trip because they were trying to set up food banks and this was in a post soviet era you know it was a country that had a lot of issues to deal with but they were you know now independent not into the soviet sphere as much but it was interesting because one of the meetings we had was with people from the saying yeah i mean we're selling stuff in the stores and we do have all bridges so how do we develop systems that will allow that food to get out to low income people in these communities so it's the same principle wherever there are people in need there are food resources how do you make the connection to make it work when thinking what you really need now is more money absolutely more money from the corporate world and perhaps i was thinking you might start doing that a lot of great of small theaters growing up around the community all the community and of course i think they would love to do something for the food bank and i was thinking yeah playing to do any of these fundraisers and some of the entertainment there are a lot of young bands around the income and a does you know those that we might connect with in the future yeah i think that's part of it and i tell you jerry in some ways the great thing about that is it brings community together if it then has a lot of what we do may not produce a million dollars but if it produces connections with people and they all then i feel like they're doing something and are raises the visibility of the issue is a lot of this comes down to political decisions that are being made in our community absolutely and if people if political leaders understand that we as a society will do that and i think we need to let people know we've reached a part of thing now a place now where they have to give a little more and we have to raise more money and the thought being i don't think people have seen things like th instance i talked about it in argentina where they had this very high class writ of the element that always had food and suddenly there was no food and they were the first to disappear for they just disappear from the city and i think we were scared they didn't want anybody you know they didn't have any food couldn't eat and they just were hidden and one day a meat truck loaded with big beef steaks broke down in the middle of the city i think america has come to the point where they have seen what happens to people to your communities that threatens your business if you have this chaos in the streets which they have that's the human condition so it could cross borders  absolute so let me ask you a question i have there been any discussions as to what happens when the food element is missing i mean what's the first thing that happens now it's completely fried and i mean we understand that that's the role we have to play ok and i tell you i think a frightening for us michel so the more we do it scares us that the need hasn't changed and we're not solving it it's not going away we do distributions mobile distributions where we give away surplus food we get from u department of agriculture as well as produce and bread and dairy outings things like that and we get five to six hundred people showing up so it's almost like the bread line you're talking about in the depression era to pick up those bags and these are people who again may have a working individual in the family but in order to stretch their resources to where they know they can feed their children and they're coming down to get the bags of food and it's just it's an essential part of their life so yeah it's something that we know we can't let happen people have to be fed that's that's the basic piece  of life there are people out there they don't even know that they qualify oh yeah completely so i mean we do a lot to try and get the message out so we get you know electronically posting notices and and then the communication is really good among you know people tell their neighbors and their friends and you know word of mouth is one of your best tools for that and i think that word of mouth is also part of the solution that each one can reach one  i mean i think that whatever i add to the pot is going to help but it does doesn't it does it really makes a difference and again we have donors who give us thousands of dollars each month and we have donors who give us twenty five dollars a year we need them all  adds up to what what the support is that will make our work possible because we you know have to charge for every piece of food so that twenty five dollars is going to allow us to probably buy a hundred pounds of food you know so that people make a difference in whatever way they can and it's really helpful for us because we have a lot of donors so i feel like we are building a community of those who understand what we're doing and know they can make a difference in the lives of people in need well i think two things if you're doing things in the entertainment world whether it's with musicians with i know they always come to the assistance of their because community is that you will raise awareness of the audience it's in there and they will know and you don't know who's going to be sitting in that audience because they come in to be entertained but i think gives you a chance to come out in the beginning in tell what the problem is how dire it is and that anyone in the community that would like to sign up and you have the place for that sign up on the glass or you first of all you get a lot of help that you didn't know the good and they if all the food bank executive directors could each do a life paper on their particular community and then maybe over the overview of everyone and get that paper out to what happens without food we have to create a scenario where there is no food if we want to get people because it's horrendous you know i think a big part of what we do is education i think that's a critical piece to me last will and a lot of it comes down can be a blessing in the future completely when you would have done it right and also to get to get all these different groups out in the community they're doing things that would love to do for us well like you said the entertainers are made yeah like totally w guy and he did a concert at the concord pavilion for us several years ago again talk to people about food banks allowed us to pass the bucket around and he actually gave us free tickets and we were able to auction was off politicians in the powers that be so part of what we do is to help educate congress as well and we want them to understand on the ground level like you said gerri where our life takes place and this is what we're seeing and so we're talking  congressional representatives your senators to or state representatives because they need to understand that what's going on in their communities is something that they've got to deal with and you know when they're making decisions on where budget choices are being made food needs to be a primary piece to make that go on so the farm bill that passes every five years or so is a big part of what enables us to get money to run the food stamp program cal fresh program it also includes subsidies for grain crops and all kinds of other things that the government funds so we need to make sure that they understand that the part they're doing that helps to feed hungry people is as important as subsidies to the  rains the tornadoes tell all of that so you know it's a fabric it's a social fabric that you know you have somebody give you twenty five dollars and somebody gives you ten thousand dollars but the food bank receives both of those equally exactly what i'm hearing so you're a political that way correct well that's a beautiful that's a beautiful story but i think you're right that when you look at it it is the community it's what the community does and that translates into what elected officials do  representatives and we should be telling them we want to see angry people and i mean bottom lines as a society well fed kids do better in school they get better grades they're going to grow up and be better employees you know it's it's a i look at it as a long term investment we're making as a society is you know this is i guess a good question and i want to ask is about the spirituality of all of this i know this that glide memorial and some churches see the need to people communities in the lafayette area in contra costa who have come together and it's very good because it's very ecumenical it's jewish temples presbyterian church and even the islamic center have not together to look at the issue of hunger and what can they do about it and also a lot of the other social issues that exist as well hunger and food are one piece of a larger matrix of problems a lot of people want you know one big issue would be is the people watching this show they say well how can i help h tenth we do food drives during the holiday season we're collecting food from individuals willing to give year round giving food makes a difference or volunteer time and people coming down to help and we plug people in in whatever way they can help so  we actually have within our food bank what we call in embassadors group people who will talk about the kinds of speeches we give the organizations get them trained well enough to go out represent us to their education so i think that's a big part for me is people need to understand what they can do to make a difference and the more that word gets spread it's great with television shows like this in a great way to reach a larger audience but i'm fine with going to talk to a service club that's got twenty people in it and they need to hear the message as well well i'm thinking that in the next place you should go in is where the money is and the money is where those young social media people are absolutely jumping up here to san francisco all of our area they're moving everybody out and coming in well that's fine but come in would you care to give some help going exactly i would think you would definitely target them first of all there are different they're not a greedy group not that they are not the young and the and they they want to give and they were and you would go make a pitch to them would be facebook and all those other they're going after them is that but it's something to or i think you see a generational change as well these are experiences ben that the millennial generation really it's critical to them that the place they work have a social mission as well they're not there to generate money but the paycheck is part of the reason why we're there but it's not the compelling reason why they're there and so i think for them it really is a matter of they want to know that their company is making a difference and for them that's critical so i mean i think we see for the lobster that have been done that a person will leave a company of all they're looking at is the bottom line is right that they want to know that there's a social reason why i think he's young people have a conscience completely and i think we ha pill to that conscience that if you have the amount of money you're getting which you deserve because you became a part of something you are built but how much are you willing to give to feed those people who do not have jobs have no you're not looking forward to getting a job right as the whole game is changed yeah and what would they be willing to give and i believe they would do it and i think it should be on a one time basis if we could arrange for them to give a certain amount once a month to this little about i think that in the long way you know the role model is there you look at what the bill and melinda gates foundation is about you know facebook sets aside you know money i mean all these people understand there needs to be a social mission is fault as well because they're taking from a society that you know needs to be strong in order for them to prosper and when i think if we if we give a for instance to bring the little pamphlet something to the white people i mean they're the photographs and everything else and then the history of what happens if people do not get food right they don't want anything to upset the applecart that they've got going it's a beautiful thing i love to see people make money drink it honestly they don't they don't cheat they don't steal and they're done by brainpower and i just think the world of what they're doing and besides making the world a better place to live in they give us all these gadgets however i also think they are very much like bill gates conscious and aware that you have to have a stable community in order to we're right they would be the last ones that want to see street fights out in the street and so i would really peel to them out of a one one time basis but that how much per month would they be able to give to the areas of all of the food banks the central place  but i think they realize too because they can see the positive things that come you know i mean if you're able to help deal with polio or help stop malaria or new kinds of things that the gates foundation is doing internationally that's right it's just it's absolutely the right thing to do and we see that with a lot of the software companies they want and it's better for them to have poise who are satisfied and feel good about what they do and so i think they realize that they're really helping to make a difference because of the way that they're you know generating food  right thing well i think first target if you want to get that white paper out and then we're going to be easing everything else you've got i think the first target that would be them you know why they would shame the court by the time you get to the corporate world on the edge of all this wonderful solutions that we're talking about here that it's over already we have to have you come back ok i think the next step we do larry is that that you would bring several of your call executive director