(From left) Brent Harrison (mentor farmer), Billy Tate (Moondance Farms), Walter Haugen (F.A. Farms), David Peterson (Double Rainbow Farms), and Craig LaVallee (Nandaño Farms). As participants in the Food To Bank On program, these farmers are on the cutting edge of reshaping agriculture and food security.

25,000 individuals – 15 percent of the population – visited food banks in Whatcom County, Washington, a total of 210,000 times in 2005, according to Sustainable Connections, based in Bellingham, Wash. Meanwhile, the county lost 194 farms, accounting for 12 percent of all farms in the county, and it lost 11 percent of its farmland, between 1997 and 2002.

The Bellingham Community Food Co-op, while considering these disconnected though not unlinked problems proposed in 2002 a project that would kill two birds with one stone. It is about reconnecting the issues of hunger and farm loss, explained Shonie Schlotzhauer, food and farming program manager for Sustainable Connections, and the "Food To Bank On" project was born.

"Food To Bank On" is a simple concept so simple that it is hard to imagine why it isn't being done everywhere. In a nutshell, the project trains new farmers, offers them mentorship by veteran farmers and provides them with a guaranteed market. That guaranteed market is a food bank. Money raised from the local community and natural-foods companies pays for the project. The result is to begin adding new farmers back into the region — 17 farms in the project in its first five years — while providing fresh, locally grown food of high nutritional value to the area’s most nutritionally at risk through its food banks.

To learn more about how the "Food To Bank On" project works, buy the July/August edition of Touch the Soil magazine at a retail outlet or subscribe online.