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Nov 05, 2009 (Ventura County Star - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) -- Cash may be the new king as Ventura County's regional food bank kicks off its holiday drive today.

Oxnard-based FOOD Share is still asking for donations of staples such as rice, beans and peanut butter, but is banking on financial gifts as perhaps never before.

One sign of the trend: there won't be any big containers for customers to drop off cans and boxes of food outside nearly two dozen Vons stores, a visible symbol of the drive in years past. Instead, the grocer will be asking customers locally and throughout Southern California to drop change in canisters by the checkstands.

A Vons official said food banks prefer it that way.

"Food banks do better with hard cash as opposed to food," said Daymond Rice, a spokesman for the chain of supermarkets. "They are able to buy a whole lot more food with one dollar over having customers give $1 of retail food and drop it in a barrel."

The grocer decided to switch after testing the idea over the past two years in selected markets. Rice said the pilots were "wildly successful," with eight Bakersfield stores raising $29,000.

Every dollar donated buys $7.15 worth of food for the needy, FOOD Share officials said.

Other businesses are also encouraging customers to give cash for food.

The Crowne Plaza Ventura Beach Hotel, for example, will be kicking off its Just One Campaign today.

Staff will ask guests to donate $1 extra for each night they stay at the hotel, said Bonnie Weigel, CEO of FOOD Share.

"We're focusing on funds, not just food drives," Weigel said.

Feeding America, a national network of food banks, has been pushing for cash donations for five years.

Spokesman Ross Fraser said food drives give people the chance to show they're doing something tangible for the needy. But they require large amounts of labor to clean, sort and check food, he said.

"In terms of efficiency, cash is always better," he said. "The bottom line is that food drives are not efficient. It's not an efficient use of the donor's money and not an efficient use of food banks' manpower and volunteers."

In a departure from previous years, FOOD Share hasn't set a numerical goal for the number of pounds it is seeking to raise in the holiday drive. Weigel, though, hopes to raise $100,000 in financial contributions. Half of it came through this week with a donation of $50,000 from Wells Fargo Bank, she said.

The agency still is looking for donations of food through grass-roots drives in businesses, neighborhoods, churches, service clubs and schools. And they're asking for select items they say residents need most: namely rice, beans, peanut butter, canned meat and cereal.

With the unemployment rate at 11 percent in Ventura County, Weigel says thousands more people are turning to food pantries for help. This year, the agency is serving about 54,700 people a month compared with 40,000 a month last year, she said.

The new growth has come from people who have lost their jobs or seen dramatic cuts in hours, she said.

Volunteer Janet Pregent sees them lining up at Catholic Charities' food pantry in west Ventura.

"There are a lot of people that don't want to ask for food, but they're desperate," she said.

A client named Inez reflected the new demand.

The mother of three, who declined to give her full name to protect her family's privacy, said she was ashamed to have to ask for food. But the Ventura resident said she had no choice. She has been looking for work since June after losing the after-school job that supplemented her earnings as a part-time teacher's aide, she said.

"I would do dishwashing, cleaning toilets, anything, but there's nothing," said the 39-year-old mother. "I can barely buy food, let alone gas to take me to work."

FOOD Share distributes food through a network of 150 agencies, many of them food pantries like the one in Ventura. Managers of pantries say demand grew over the past year as the recession deepened and unemployment rose. The Catholic Charities pantry in Ventura, for example, served 6,600 people in the first three months of this fiscal year, up from 4,510 in the same period in 2008.

Weigel, though, says many contributors will find the money to keep people fed because it's a basic need.

She anticipates delivering 7.5 million pounds of food during the 2009-10 fiscal year, exceeding the 5.6 million pounds delivered last year.

To see more of the Ventura County Star, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to
http://www.venturacountystar.com. Copyright (c) 2009, Ventura County Star,
Calif. Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services. For reprints,
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Kathleen Wilson

Copyright (C) 2009, Ventura County Star, Calif.

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