Farmers donate 3,000 pounds of food for needy
Jim Germain, of Feeding America, Migdalia Otero, of Island Harvest, and David Grossnickle, of Food Bank for NYC, help load fresh food Tuesday from a donation from a group of Long Island farmers meeting at the Marriott Long Island Hotel in Melville (Dec. 7, 2010) Credit: Newsday / Audrey C. Tiernan
A group of farmers gave a gift to Long Island Tuesday: 3,000 pounds of food donated to Island Harvest to be distributed to the needy in Nassau and Suffolk counties.
The food was loaded onto a truck outside the Marriott Long Island Hotel in Melville, as the kickoff to the annual meeting of the New York Farm Bureau, a 28,000-member lobbying organization. The 3,000 pounds of food was donated by the bureau.
Overall, the state organization has donated 4.7 million pounds of food to the needy statewide this year. Randi Shubin Dresner, chief executive of Island Harvest, said, "Farmers in New York State are incredibly caring."
The decline in the agriculture industry in the state and on the Island has been dramatic over the decades. Joseph Gergela, the Long Island Farm Bureau's executive director, told a news conference that the remaining farmers, mostly on the East End, represent "the last bastion of agriculture" on an island where the industry was once dominant.
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