Pat Van Burkleo on Food Access Initiatives in Louisiana

Pat Van Burkleo is the executive director of Feeding Louisiana, the Louisiana Food Bank Association. In this interview, he talks about how the food bank functions as traditional pantry locations have decreased.

Transcript

Why are food access initiatives such an important priority for Louisiana, and can you tell us about Feeding Louisiana’s mission in this space?

Food access is really key because we can get all the food in the warehouse, but we’ve got to get it out to the people who need it the most. And the traditional model of food banking was the food banks got the food and then we distributed it to pantries. And what we've seen, mostly after COVID-19, is a decline in pantries. Most pantries are volunteer driven. They're in churches and small community organizations and they just don't have the manpower and access to do that. So they're open 1 day a month, and they're open from 9 to 10 or something.

What we've really seen is the food bank taking on more responsibility and actually distributing that food directly to the clients or the neighbors. The Food Bank of Central Louisiana does 32 mobile pantry stops every month, and that's a new thing. Mobile pantries are where we load up a truck and we go to certain communities, mostly rural communities, where people come and can get the food that they need through our local pantries. And that's happening across the state. So we're trying to figure out new venues to get food out to people mostly in those smaller rural communities, who don't have a lot of resources, who need additional help.