Milk is a tough commodity for food banks to store and distribute, because of its short shelf life and need for refrigeration.
Kemp’s Dairy and local Hy-Vee stores are partnering to help the Food Bank of Siouxland by donating thousands of “Giving Cow” cartons or milk for distribution across the 11-county service area. Jay Johnson, sales director for the Kemp’s facility in Le Mars, says theses cartons have a special advantage for distribution.
“Normal milk has about an 18-day shelf life. This has a one-year shelf life,” Johnson says. “We donated 36,000 units to help kids throughout the Siouxland community. I believe that 36,000 units will be (part of the Backpack Program) for all the kids in the area, but honestly it’s just a great product, shelf stable, requires no refrigeration whatsoever.”
Jamie Bockelmann is operations manager of the food bank and says this milk will help children who are among the nearly 25-thousand food insecure people in the region. “This donation this year is going to our Backpack Program so it’s supporting kids in the Siouxland area,” Bockelmann says. “So if you think about that, that’s 39,000 sacks that are going to kids that are going to have Kemp’s Dairy in it. That alone is fantastic.” While it sounds like a lot of milk, the cartons will be distributed quickly over the next two months.
Food bank associate executive director Valerie Petersen says companies like Kemp’s are critical to having enough food to meet the area’s demand. “Things haven’t really slowed down since 2020 and the onset of the pandemic,” Petersen says. “Since then, we’ve just seen a number of different things including inflation, the war in Ukraine, changes in gas prices. A couple years ago, we had seen diesel go up, but those things have a lasting effect on us here at the food bank with our transportation costs.”
Kemp’s plans to have another Giving Cow contribution to the food bank in November. That donation will likely be chocolate milk.
(By Woody Gottburg, KSCJ, Sioux City)