News

Many FFA hands make 100,000 meals

Wisconsin FFA members teamed up to prepare meals for those in need.

It was part of FFA’s Day of Service, held Monday before the state convention officially began.    Students worked in shifts to pack thousands of meal bags for school and community backpack programs, and for hungry people around the world.

Scott Norem is with Iowa-based Meals from the Heartland. He says, “The exact number is 100,224.” Norem tells Brownfield, “We do a lot with FFA chapters, so we do pretty much all of the states around Iowa as well as Iowa, working with FFA chapters doing their state conventions and one thing led to another and we ended up here this year.”

Meals from the Heartland purchases non-perishable items which volunteers package in sealed bags, which get boxed, palleted, and shipped to various sites feeding about 622-thousand students in the U.S. and around the world every day. “The soy we use comes from Cargill in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. The rice we’re using today comes from Riceland, and they’re located in Arkansas. The vegetable mix as well as the vitamin blend all come from the Minneapolis-St. Paul area.” Norem says another meal they pack primarily for school-to-home packages includes pasta from Sioux Falls, South Dakota and cheese from the Twin Cities area.

Wisconsin FFA students were joined by volunteers from FFA convention sponsors Cargill, Corteva, and John Deere.

Meals for the Heartland also held meal packing event with Nebraska FFA members during their convention last month.