Flour power

There’s a disconnect somewhere in Montana’s food chain. In a given year, Montana is the third-largest wheat-producing state in the country. At the same time, nearly three in 10 Montanans live in a condition that James Dodge, food resource developer for the Montana Food Bank Network in Missoula, calls “food insecure.” A collaboration between the MFBN and the Montana Grain Growers Association is bringing more of Montana’s amber waves of grain to the state’s dining room tables. Begun in December, the Our Neighbor’s Daily Bread program gives Montana’s wheat farmers a convenient way to donate their product, in the form of milled flour, to the MFBN, which then shares it with some 200 partner hunger relief agencies across the state. “Our guys are trying to help Montanans in need,” said Carl Mattson, conservation and farm program associate for the MGGA. The Great Falls-based association has some 1,200 farmer members representing about half of Montana’s annual wheat crop. Rather than trying to ship flour from all over the state to the MFBN warehouse in Missoula, the growers can, when they deliver grain to their local elevator, specify a dollar amount or bushel equivalent that they’d like to donate to the food bank network. That money is then put into an account that the MFBN can draw on anytime its flour supply runs low. Last week the network took delivery of 7,500 pounds of flour from a mill in Great Falls. So far nearly 60,000 pounds of flour have been donated...more