Business Forum: Give thanks and help

As we sit down to enjoy our food, football, family and friends on Thursday, we should pause to share how we might help those whose plates will be empty this Thanksgiving.

With thousands of Minnesotans out of work -- and increasing stress on thousands more of the working poor -- one in 10 of our friends and neighbors will be hungry this holiday. Many of those with hungry mouths will be children.

So what can we do to confront hunger in Minnesota?

The business community, for one, can play a key role. If already involved, we can challenge ourselves to do more. Firms, both large and small, can engage employees to find ways to make a difference.

The biggest economic downturn since the Great Depression has cut a huge swath through our communities, leaving daunting levels of hunger in its wake.

A food shelf in south Minneapolis scrambles to serve twice the normal number of families -- now 600 a month. Another in Minnetonka reports that one in three clients has never sought this kind of help before. In total, food shelf visits in the metro area rose 43 percent in the first half of 2009 alone.

This is the new face of hunger in our community: the convenience store cashier, the retiree on a fixed income and the schoolgirl, struggling to learn and be at her best throughout a long school day.

In 2006, Greater Twin Cities United Way partnered with 14 hunger organizations -- such as Second Harvest Heartland, Emergency Foodshelf Network and Minnesota FoodShare -- to launch the Twin Cities Hunger Initiative. That partnership continues, but the urgency of the work is increasing. Not only because demand is up, but also because food donations have slipped and government agencies are slashing budgets.

The hunger gap

An average of 44 million pounds of food is distributed to hungry people in the Twin Cities annually, reaching 75,000 families, according to United Way. But the current need in our community would require an additional 54 million pounds of food. That is the hunger gap -- and it's daunting.

Many local businesses have long participated in this fight. Working together as a Food Acquisition Steering Team, representatives from Cargill, General Mills, Land O'Lakes, McKinsey Group, Deloitte and others are working with United Way to find more efficient and cost-effective food donations.

Nearly 50 business and nonprofit leaders gathered at General Mills this month to brainstorm and share best practices at the Twin Cities Hunger Forum. A local tortilla company is donating product. Target is stepping up donations of perishable foods. Others highlighted plans to transport perishable foods from fields in the south to consumers in the north. The response was encouraging.

More than 300 people attended a public discussion on hunger later that day. As the forum's business sponsors, we at Cargill, General Mills and Land O'Lakes have long worked on this issue, separately and together.

Cargill, for example, has contributed more than $27 million in the past three years to help improve people's nutrition and health. Working with international organizations like the World Food Program Cargill has supported nutrition, health and school feeding programs for more than 50,000 children in Indonesia and Nicaragua. Closer to home, Cargill's donation of nearly $2.5 million to Feeding America and its affiliates includes more than 19 million pounds of fresh produce.

General Mills is using its marketing expertise to help stock food shelves. Last year the company partnered with NBC's "The Biggest Loser" program to engage viewers in the "Pound For Pound Challenge." For every pound consumers pledged to lose, General Mills funded delivery of one pound of groceries to a food bank, totaling more than 3.5 million pounds of food.

For General Mills, hunger has long been a focus, with more than $168 million in product donations in the past decade.

The Land O'Lakes Foundation this month launched "Feeding Our Communities'' to help alleviate hunger. In the Twin Cities, Land O'Lakes is partnering with United Way and KARE-11. Visit KARE's website and click on "You Click, We Donate," and Land O'Lakes will donate one dollar, up to $100,000, to local hunger relief.

Land O'Lakes also has pledged up to $1 million for hunger programs in rural communities, an area often overlooked. A new initiative -- "First Run" -- is delivering an additional truckload -- approximately 20 tons -- of fresh products each month to hunger relief programs.

A challenge to help

All of these initiatives help fight hunger. We do it because it's right, but also because we know that hunger weakens our communities.

As we strive to grow our businesses around the world, we must also work to ensure that our communities are thriving right here where our employees live and work. Caring communities come together -- especially in tough times -- and those are the kinds of communities in which businesses look to locate and grow.

Our companies stand side by side in the fight against hunger, but we know we don't have all the answers. And we know we can't do it alone.

Our community needs your help. Will you conduct a food drive in your workplace this holiday season? Will you organize a team to participate in the second annual Walk to End Hunger on Thanksgiving Day? Will you welcome the hopeful optimism of a New Year by joining United Way and other area businesses in this community-wide effort to help our neighbors?

This Thursday, as part of your Thanksgiving, remember those less fortunate -- and join the fight against hunger.