Farm to food bank: Moving farmers from ‘dump’ to ‘donate’

On a recent Monday morning, Tom Brugato went to watch his company deliver food.

This, by itself, was not unusual. Mr. Brugato is president of the Pacific Coast Fruit Co., one of the Northwest’s largest produce distributors, with nearly 200,000 square feet of warehouse space and a client base that includes dozens of restaurants, grocery stores, processors, and wholesalers.  

But this time the distribution center was a church. And it was the priest, wearing mask and gloves, who gave out food boxes – some 650 over the course of about 45 minutes, part of a new federal effort to pay farmers and distributors to get their wares to a rapidly growing food-insecure population.

“We watched three big lines of

“A catalytic opportunity” A shift toward fresh produce