tv Washington Journal Claire Babineaux- Fontenot CSPAN April 12, 2020 12:49pm-1:18pm EDT
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the 50th anniversary with the 1970 nasa documentary "houston, we have got a problem." james lowell shares his memories of the flight. >> we never committed to ourselves that we are not going to make it. >> the flight director recalls nasa's efforts to ensure the astronauts' safe return. special on the 50th anniversary of apollo 13 today at 1:00 p.m. eastern on american history tv on c-span3. joining us is claire babineau fontenot. she is the ceo of the organization feeding america. thank you for being with us this morning. tell us what the last month has been like for your organization. guest: the only word i can use
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to express it is unprecedented. we have seen significant spikes in demand. we have seen reductions in supply. and right when people needed it the most -- need it the most. host: what does your organization do? how broad do you reach? guest: how network is 200 food banks around the united states. in normal times, around 60,000 pantries, 2 million volunteers. we have often said that we are serving every community where there is food insecurity. that means every single county and parish in the united states. in normal times, we serve every parish and county in the united states. host: in the last month, what has been harder, tougher to get?
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the need of people who need food or the ability of your organization to get it? those are equally difficult challenges. i am sure your audience has seen that wee retail outlets have historically relied upon for donated food have empty shelves. when there shelves are empty, they are not in a position to donate to us. the largest source of food for our network in normal times is retail donations. aretypes of things we need things people are buying the most of. we are having to practice social distancing and new safety protocols because of the pandemic in the health crisis in the middle of this crisis, which is made it more challenging. watching, whate
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do you need it most in terms of what -- what do you need most? guest: we need a combination of things. first, we continue to need funds. we have had a remarkable outpourings of sport -- outpouring of support that has been bipartisan and meaningful and helpful to us. we need people to donate their time. we rely significantly on volunteers -- 2 million, as i thick i mentioned. -- think i mentioned. ofyou can imagine, because ofety concerns and a number our volunteers are elderly and have their own challenges, we have had fewer and fewer volunteers to help us. the thing that i encourage people to do is to go out to feedingamerica.org. there they can find a place
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where they can donate whatever they are able to donate. they can also on that website locate the food bank that serves the communities they care the most about. when they go into the website for that food bank, they can find out if they do need so,nteers, funding, and if what they might be able to help with. an executiveou are vice president and global treasurer for walmart, how does that experience and logistics and planning prepare you for this? guest: i don't know if i would be able to say that anything could have prepared any of us for this. i can say that i have leveraged every experience i had before i came to feeding america. certainly at walmart we conducted -- confronted
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large-scale, significant disruptions. i hope that leaves me in a better position to serve in this capacity, but what we are seeing today is a perfect storm. it is truly unprecedented. i am so proud, though, of the people i get to work with every day at the national office, but also around the country, so many of whom volunteered their services to help their neighbors. their neighbors need them more than ever. ceo ofur guest is the feeding america. we welcome your comments and calls. (202) 748-8000 for those of you in the eastern and central time zones. (202) 748-8002 the mountain and 1 in the 748-800 mountain and pacific region. if you're experiencing food insecurity, the line we set aside for you is (202) 748-8002.
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there was an article in the wall street journal. the headline on their piece said, farmers dump milk, break eggs as coronavirus restaurant closing destroys demand. organizations your on that type of donation from restaurants? guest: you have identified another stream that we have been able to reliably and consistently access. even those who know our network may not realize that we are the largest food waste recovery organization in the united states. pounds ofillion edible foods tends to go to landfills. our organization recovers billions of pounds of that. instead of going to landfills, it goes to people that are hungry. when i mentioned the public -- perfect storm, i did not mention all the elements, but the
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challenges around restaurants and restaurant productivity are causing a strain on our network as well. andmentioned the dumping those challenges there as well. i want to identify the fact that feeding america has had long-term partnerships with farmers, the dairy industry, etc., and we are working now to come up with solutions in a challenging environment. i do not believe any of those people who are dumping want to dump. they would preferred that that food find its way to people who can use it. we are working on solutions to try to make that happen. host: the new york times with some statistics on that process. shells -- shelves, but farmers put food to waste. are dumping as many as 3.7 million gallons of milk each day.
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a single chicken processor is smashing 750,000 unhitched eggs every week. they write that many farmers say they have donated part of the surplus to food banks and meals on wheels programs, which have been overwhelmed with demand, but there is only so much perishable food that charities can absorb. your thoughts? all of those points are accurate. one of the things that was not highlighted was that one of the challenges we would have and the charitable foods system would be the type of containers we would need. some ofight imagine, these dairy farmers have things in bulk and our ability to take that on and to put it in consumer sizing is challenging, especially in an environment where we need to practice new safety protocols. if you're standing six feet apart, if you have fewer
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volunteers, your ability to work with a product has been diminished. our ability to be -- to work with the product has been diminished. way sure that there is a for us to make -- match these up better than we have and we will work hard to come up with better solutions. host: let's go to calls. we hear from enid. caller: thank you. host: you are on the air. go ahead. caller: hello? yes. i would like to suggest that the farmers who are dumping all this milk and eggs and different -- so that it should be shared to the people in feeding lines and lines of cars of
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people who need food. instead of the farmers dumping, you know, all this milk and eggs, it could be prepared and used. host: ok. have you had conversation with farmers about organizations -- actions your organization could help -- could take? guest: we have. we have had a long history of partnerships that cut across just about every industry in the u.s. that certainly includes farmers. we are actively talking with farmers right now. what we have to do with them. we're also appealing to the government to help us do that
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in a way that's sufficient. as i hope that your addence has seen there have been things we all agreed upon. we shouldn't have waste when people are facing hunger. and in the middle of the crisis i've seen quite a bit of bipartisanship consensus on trying to match it up and we're working now through a plan and hoping to get the logistics in place to deliver this quickly because there are people in crisis now and they can't wait. we're working very directly with farmers and work our way through. the federal government has a role to play and we're working on the dynamics of all those three. host: wild and wonderful. echoing your comments, every day the u.s. throws away enough food to feed a nation, it's a travesty. bill next in albany, georgia. good morning.
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caller: i appreciate you taking my call. how are you doing? host: you bet. caller: i'm a disabled vet, older and my mom is 90 years old on oxygen. we have nonworking cars and you can't ride transportation now and we can't afford a taxi so we are really stuck. i get food stamps but not nearly enough with the extension that they give right now. it's hard. and i don't understand why we have military bases here and a marine base town the road, why you can't have them guys for people like us who have no transportation and can't deliver m.r.i. boxes to the door and drop them off. they don't have to do anything, just drop them off the door and leave them there so we can have food. i called the food bank and no one will deliver no matter your
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situation. no one delivers food to you. we are stuck. e're in a bad situation. host: bill, good luck. guest: i recently visited albany, georgia. i was there last year. a remarkably resilient community who has had to deal with a lot of challenges coming on all at once. a lot of businesses have left the area. there are an inordinate number of children and elderly in albany. we've recently actually just refortified our efforts in albany in the hope of being ore helpful to that community. and what i'd encourage your caller to do is go to feedingamerica.org and put in your zip code.
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there's more than one set of food banks out there. he one i can put my name and recognition among is feeding america. there are a lot of wonderful ones out there but i have a personal relationship with feeding america food bank. feed america.org. there's a food locator inside that website. just put in your zip code and it will direct you to the food bank that serves that community you're in. you reach out directly and say aire babineaux-fontenot told me to do this. the caller also mentioned the military. i don't know if you've seen but there are lots of images of members of the national guard in particular coming out and elping us, one, with our
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distributions, our pack and distributions because of our lack of volunteers and also that can emphasis on safety and we are doing some direct deliveries and meals on wheels in fact is another remarkable organization and they do direct delivery to seniors. i bet there's a way for us to come up with a better solution for that family. i can hear in his voice how much he wants to be able to help his mom and he, if i heard correctly, he's actually a veteran himself. there's so many reasons -- there's no one in this country who should not know where they're going to get their next meal from, no one. i must admit i have a special place in my heart for the elderly and those who served with distinction. surely we'll find a way to help this caller and hopefully he'll do what i ask and if he can't find relief in that venue then
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try to find me, i'm the only babineaux-nont not i know that works in our whole network. so we'll try our best to find a way to help him and help his mom. host: there's a picture in "the wall street journal" on friday of a food distribution center in the nation's capital, a little help, provisions are packed at our food distribution center? washington, d.c. they point the nations fallen amid the outbreak. what about people who want to donate nonperishable canned goods and other nonperishables to their food distributors, what should they do. guest: we have 200 food banks. and not every situation is the same. those c.e.o.'s of those food banks know what they need. they know how they need it. they can be very, very helpful. when i say the c.e.o.'s, there are teams of professionals that work inside those food banks, the leaders of whom are the
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c.e.o.'s are executive directors, so in the washington, d.c. area, there's a remarkable c.e.o. at capital area food bank in d.c. who not only works on challenges of people eat drag but who has done some really meaningful work in a short period of time around understanding what the systemic causes are for hunger in her community and they've come up with programmatic design and efforts that were making progress before this crisis and we'll be leaning on activist crisis as well. feeding america.org, go to your food bank locator and put in the zip code. if you're in the d.c. area, you'll find that that capital area food bank is the one that it will likely send you to and ask them, what do you need and they will be able to tell you what it is that they need. host: gary calling from broken bow, oklahoma. hello there. caller: hello.
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couple comments and yesterday on c-span a lady gave out a phone number to help you get meals on wheels. what's amazing to me, she gave one phone number for the entire nation. the odds of getting through on that phone is more than winning the lottery. there's no access to let anyone know i'm a 67 years old, i have cancer, i can't hardly walk, i certainly can't walk to a grocery store. i can't properly feed myself. host: when is the last time you were able to get food delivered r have someone buy it for you?
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caller: i never have. i never have. can buy my own food but i don't have access to it. i leave my house once every three weeks to go get chemo treatments. i have cancer in my hip. i can't barely walk. host: you're seeking assistance from meals on wheels program in your area? caller: that would be a godsend for me. i did not eat yesterday. ost: you didn't eat yesterday? caller: so far today i have nothing to eat. i have food in the freezer but like i said, i can't stand up long enough to cook. host: we hope people hear this and i'll let you go here and
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hear from babineaux-fontenot. good luck. guest: i don't know what the proper protocol would be to able to zoom in in understanding exactly where this gentleman is and for privacy reasons i understand there would be things necessary to protect his interests. but i did hear that he's in broken bow, oklahoma, and feeding america has enjoyed a really, really deep and meaningful partnership with meals on wheels for a very long time. i know that they're really mission driven people who desperately want to be helpful for people, our aging population that work inside that organization. i will take it upon myself to reach out to the people that i know at meals on wheels and also reach out personally to the food bank that serves broken bow and see if there's a way for us to combine forces to
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make certain that we get to gary and to the other people like him who are out there. host: the good point on that, too. i'll ask our producer, claire, if you get that phone number and if it's ok to read on the air, assuming gary is continuing to watch, i'll ask our producer, perhaps we can get a phone number for the meals on wheels there in broken bow. he was talking i think perhaps of a nationwide toll-free he was unable to get through but if we can get a more specific phone number for broken bow or an email address, i think a phone number would be the best thing, gary, if you're watching, keep on watching and we'll try to do that before the end of the program. thanks for calling . let's get to larry in gladwin, michigan. you're on. caller: hello. host: go ahead, larry. guest: my whole discussion is i go to the store to buy milk and
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all the shelves are empty and upsets me the farmers are throwing the milk on the ground and eggs. our whole town, you can't even go buy eggs up town, i have to o get them from the amish. host: we've talked about this a bit. it must be hard -- you mentioned the farmers being really in a tough situation over this but they really have no choice in terms of being able to deliver to organizations like you in the right sizes and amounts, correct? guest: it's a real challenge, it really is. but what i know, to acknowledge that something's difficult is only the first step. we then have a responsibility to work through those difficulties. and we've never had more of a responsibility to do that than we do right now. so we are actively engaged and we have urgency to our engagement and it is happening on both sides and including the government in this as well.
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i think one of the things that i would -- you asked earlier .bout how people can help one of the things i implore people to think about, before this crisis happened, there were nearly 40 million people in this country who did not have consistent access to nutritious foods. 11 million of them were kids. almost six million were seniors. in a country that was throwing away 72 billion pounds of perfectly edible food a year and doesn't count household waste. there's systemic issues we need to address around food insecurity and what our estimations are, we've research scientists and remarkable people who work inside of our networks who have done impact analysis to try to understand what do we think based upon what is normal today, the impact of a tradable food system will be over the course of the next six months because
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of this pandemic. and our early estimates are that's about 1.4 billion dollars. we also estimate that there will be about $17 million people who will be added to that already almost 40 million people who are food insecure. so i ask people, no matter what your politics are, i ask you that you remember these challenges that people are facing today and that we not forget about them when the health side of this challenge goes away. there will still be a food crisis in this country and it actually will have gotten worse because of this health crisis. so people can be informed about what is happening and if they can use their voices to ask the people who they care about, the people they vote for, ask them what their positions are on some of these things. expect people to be bipartisanship and put all of the rest of it aside when it
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comes to making certain that the 22 million children in this country who rely upon free and reduced meals at school and for whom that meal is the only consistent access that they have to nutritious food in good times, i just hope that your listeners will join our network in being partners in ensuring that those kids can consistently rely upon food in the future as well when the pandemic, when the health scare is gone. and i'm confident in -- i have so much confidence in the american people and i've had people tell me, i must not be living in the same world they live in and i tell them you must not be living in the world i live in. i've been the beneficiary of remarkable generosity my whole life. i see it every day in this work. i see people give a dime when they only have a dollar. i see people with a lot of wealth give a lot of money.
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and i value every contribution equally. and i see all of this generosity and it's because of the american spirit and our resilience that i'm confident we will find our way past this really difficult circumstance. i want to be -- in terms of the health care side of it, and the economy will get going again and investing, by the way, in the most vulnerable members of society because they have no other options is a great way to actually have an economic stimulus is to make certain that you have people who need to spend their money to go buy food, etc., they help to stimulate the economy as well. i'm just so hopeful that one of the things that we learn as a result of all of this pain is to continue to think about our neighbors and to think about how do we address some of these systemic issues so we can help people to emerge from this crisis even better than they were before it happened. host: one more question for you. you mentioned the help of the
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u.s. military. barbara in cape girardo, have they reached out to the federal overnment to obtain from the distributing? guest: one of the supply is food we receive from the federal government. the number one source would be retail grossers, the second would be food we receive from the federal government. and then we are working on new innovative ways, public-private partnerships, how do we leverage the fact that there are these -- and leverage feels like the wrong term because it's a tragic circumstance but in this circumstance where we have all these restaurants who have to shutter and close their doors because they have low volume through their current ability to serve, how do we bring all of that to bear when
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we have a food crisis and we are definitely working on coming up with creative and innovative solutions to that, too. i thank your audience for sking that question as well. host: we thank you for being with us, claire theonday night on communicators, american economic leader founders sarah miller on big tech companies as monopolies. and the impact of corporate concentration. >> now there is essentially a couple of strategies if you are a tax startup. are you going to sell to facebook or google? what that has done is it has warped the ability of innovators in silicon valley to innovate according to market needs and according to ideas. instead, everyone is guessing, how can i develop something that facebook will buy or google will
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