Oregon Food Bank Hosting Film Screening Sunday

PORTLAND, OR — The Oregon Food Bank is a hosting a screening of the documentary "Gaining Ground" on Sunday, September 25 at the Hollywood Theatre in Portland.

The film takes a look at the personal live of farmers, as well as the activists working to take on the challenges that come with creating sustainably grown, locally sourced food.

The Oregon Food Bank describes the film on its site:

The documentary interweaves experiences of Urban Tilth’s farmer-activists transforming corners of Richmond, California’s inner city food desert into vibrant community gardens and opportunities for growth; Sun Gold Farm, a small family farm in rural Oregon converting from commodity dairy to sustainably grown produce and Stalford Seed Farms in the Willamette Valley transitioning from growing grass seed to organic grains.

The film also addresses issues of class, gender, race and environmental justice issues through the prism of individual narratives centered on our relationship to food. The filmmakers take on such local issues as the aftermath of the 2012 Chevron Richmond refinery fire on Urban Tilth and the 2013 discovery of GMO wheat in Eastern Oregon on Stalford Seed Farms and Sun Gold Farm. The Oregon Food Bank says that the film ultimately "points the way toward hope."

The film screening Sunday is one of many events that the Oregon Food Bank Oregon puts on each year to draw attention to their overriding mission. The Food Bank does work all year round to help the estimated 270,000 people who receive food from a food pantry across the organization's network of 21 regional food banks and 970 partner agencies throughout Oregon and Clark County, Washington. They offer the following statistics on their site to give context to the work they do:

• The rate of food insecurity (being without access to a sufficient quantity of affordable, nutritious food) in Oregon is 16.1%
• About 644,000 Oregonians are food insecure, of those 223,480 are children
• About 72% of the people who receive food have incomes below the federal poverty level
• Of households utilizing food pantries, about 80% of them are able to meet their food needs for the month with the help of a pantry

To learn more about the Oregon Food Bank, how you can help and attend upcoming events, visit their website.

Image courtesy of the Oregon Food Bank