Q: If you don’t give food directly to people in need, what exactly is your purpose?

A: Feeding America West Michigan is the “hub in the wheel,” the principal source of food for hundreds of hunger-relief agencies in West Michigan and the Upper Peninsula. The food bank’s role is to reclaim large amounts of surplus food from farmers, retailers, and manufacturers, inspect, sort and repack that food, and distribute it to 900+ partner agencies. Not only is this good for the food bank’s clients, it also keeps millions of pounds of good food from going to waste. In 2018, Feeding America West Michigan distributed 25.1 million pounds of food, the equivalent of 21 million meals. No other organization in the food bank’s service area is able to address local hunger on that scale.

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