In 2015, Jonathan Lawler’s son came home from school and told his father that one of his
classmates didn’t have food to eat. To feed themselves, Lawler’s son said, the classmate’s family frequented a local food pantry for whatever they could find. Unfortunately, this isn’t unusual in our country; according to nonprofit Feeding America, there were over 42 million food insecure residents in the US that year. But hearing it from his own son struck a chord with the Greenfield, Indiana farmer.
“To be honest, that pissed me off.”
Lawler says that if you leave his property, Brandywine Creek Farms, and drive to his son’s school, all you do is pass farms. Farms stocked with produce.
Lawler started to think about hunger in his own county, Hancock, and in the neighboring county, Marion, where Indianapolis -- the state’s largest city -- is located. In 2015, an estimated 300,000 Indiana children were food insecure.
“I had no idea there were thousands and thousands of people in Indianapolis that weren’t sure where their next meal was coming from,” he says. “That kids bought stuff from gas stations and that was their dinner -- or that they didn’t eat at all when they got home because the only time they ate was at school.”
That was it for Lawler. It was at that moment that he decided to give away everything he grows. Tomatoes, cucumbers, bell peppers, zucchini, watermelon, corn, and more. By the end of 2016, Brandywine Creek had donated 420,000 pounds of produce in total. https://www.thrillist.com/eat/nation/how-giving-back-revitalized-farming/food-and-drink
