Until Next Summer, Haul Out Hunger

posted on Tuesday, July 11, 2017

It’s hard to believe that after traveling more than 3,500 miles to visit 98 food pantries and deliver 56,220 pounds (28 tons!) of pork, our Haul Out Hunger journey has come to an end. 

For the past seven years, we’ve been committed to alleviating food insecurity in the rural communities where our employees, contractors and their families work and live and this year did not disappoint. We were proud to significantly increase the number of food pantries visited and pounds of pork delivered (70,000 more pounds of pork than in 2016!) and even added a sixth day to allow additional travel throughout western Iowa.

The foundation of the Haul Out Hunger program is that at Iowa Select Farms and the Deb and Jeff Hansen Foundation, we believe that everyone deserves a good meal no matter their level of income. Food banks and pantries are significantly low in the months of June and July which is why it’s the perfect time for our semi to hit the road and fill freezers to the brim with fresh pork loins intended for low income and/or food insecure households in need.

To deliver 28 tons of pork, we relied on interns, full- and part-time employees and even had some local 4-H and FFA members help out along the way. Memories were made, laughs were shared and muscles were gained, but more importantly, 11,244 pork loins were delivered and households in need will receive more than 300,000 servings of nutrient-rich pork.

Thank you to everyone that contributed to our Haul Out Hunger journey! From the rolling hills of southwest Iowa to the corners of northeast Iowa and southeast Minnesota, we truly believe that we visited with the best of the best. Every day our team was consistently humbled by the hardworking, compassionate, selfless individuals that we met committed to ending food insecurity in their local communities.

We know that hunger does not discriminate and it’s going to take a lot of teamwork, but after these past two weeks we are more confident than ever that together we can #HaulOutHunger.