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Food faceoff; Food charities compete for donors, resources; experiment with cooperation.

Article Excerpt
Byline: Sherri Begin

America's new appetite for fresh and prepared food is creating competition in an unlikely place: among local nonprofit food distribution agencies.

Southfield-based Forgotten Harvest, which specializes in fresh food, has nearly tripled its deliveries of food over the past three years to 3.1 million pounds in 2003.

The agency is soliciting donations of food and money across Southeast Michigan. And it is pushing to share in food allocations from state and national food organizations that historically have supported traditional food banks.

Two of those food banks, Detroit-based Gleaners Community Food Bank of Metro Detroit and Food Bank of Oakland County in Pontiac, are keeping close tabs on Forgotten Harvest's growth.

Until three years ago, the food banks dominated the local market. But as fresh foods have become more attractive to emergency food shelters than the canned and boxed goods distributed by the food banks, Gleaners and Food Bank of Oakland have treaded water.

In the past three years, the amount of food distributed annually by Gleaners declined by nearly 10 percent, from 23.1 million pounds in 2001 to 20.8 million pounds of food last year.

The Oakland food bank has fared a little better. It posted modest growth between 2001 and 2003, increasing its distribution by about 8 percent to 7 million pounds last year.

Gleaners President Agostinho Fernandes Jr. said collaboration rather than competition among food agencies would better serve the area's hungry.

Both Gleaners and the Oakland County food bank have offered to house Forgotten Harvest's operations within their own buildings to reduce overhead and assist with distribution of fresh and perishable foods.

That strategy would make sense because they deliver to many of the same agencies, said Helen Kozlowski-Hicks, executive director of...