Farm to Food Bank | On the Farm

Bob Silvia stands in Black Dirt Country, New York’s own breadbasket, hunting down every carrot and cabbage before it hits the waste stream. He’s not exaggerating when he says the math is simple — the world grows enough food to end hunger, we just waste half of it, and that’s what keeps him up at night.

So he works both sides: donations from local farms and smart purchasing power, turning surplus into millions of pounds of fresh produce a year. This isn’t charity for charity’s sake — it’s dignity, delivered, because New York isn’t cookie-cutter and neither is what Bob brings through the door.

Whether someone gives five dollars or five hundred thousand, he treats it the same: fresh product, fair labor, fast delivery, and not one dollar wasted.

Give today — help Bob keep the waste stream empty and New York’s plates full.

Hunger Action Month is powered by Wonder through the Grubhub Community Fund.

Transcript:

Bob Silvia, Chief Operations and Procurement Officer

Hi, I’m Bob Silvia. I am the Chief Operations and Procurement Officer here at Food Bank for New York City.

So right now, we’re up in what New York calls Black Dirt Country. This is kind of the breadbasket of the growing here in New York State.

With produce, the object of the game is to keep it out of the waste stream. There’s waste in every part of the farming process.

We grow enough food in the United States and in the world for there not to be any hunger. We just need to be more efficient at getting it to the people who need it. And that’s the kind of thing that keeps me up at night, right? Because if I had that 50 percent, there’s no more hunger in New York City. Right?

So that’s why we take every ounce of every dollar we’ve got to get it out of those waste streams, to get it into people’s hands, because that’s how you solve hunger. Right? And that’s what we do every day.

Basically, we have two sides of our produce business.

Bring me the pounds.

So we deal with a lot of donations. The second part is our purchasing power. We buy a lot of produce.

We have government grants to buy produce, so it’s really twofold. But both of those work on relationships.

I think everybody benefits—from the local farms that we buy from, through the distributors that we work with here in Hunts Point, to our clients who don’t have to have every meal out of a can.

All the distributions, the farmers market distributions that we do, where we actually set up fresh produce stands and people come and pick and choose the type of produce that they want—this is a win-win all the way around.

The amount of fresh produce that we distribute every year changes a little bit. We are firmly committed to it, so the number goes up every year.

Our donations of fresh produce, instead of being in the hundreds of thousands of pounds, are in the millions of pounds now.

So it’s a big commitment to fresh produce, but it’s also a commitment to health. Right? There’s nothing healthier than fresh produce.

The goal is taking someone out of food insecurity so they can live better lives.

And that’s really what you do when you give to a food bank.

We’re giving them the ability to care for their families.

We’re giving them the dignity to feed their kids, to feed their grandparents.

It’s so much different than what people think.

The other thing we have to remember is that New York is not cookie cutter.

Every population in the world lives in New York.

Food insecurity is only solved if you eat the food we give you.

So by understanding the needs of those populations, we’re able to purchase and bring in donations that fit those populations.

What makes us unique is that our commitment is through our entire supply chain.

It’s not just us. It’s understanding our mission. Right?

I donate to the food bank. You donate to the food bank.

We want to be secure in knowing that our money’s not being wasted, and I take that commitment very seriously.

I want to make sure I’m getting the freshest product, the most amount of pounds.

I want the labor to be fair.

I want it transported responsibly.

I don’t want you spending a lot of money on diesel.

And most importantly, I want it done quickly.

I want this stuff being moved, and I want no dollar to go to waste.

But I have the same commitment to somebody who gives us five bucks as I do to somebody who gives us half a million.

I will negotiate down to the final penny to make sure that none of that is wasted.