Pilgrim’s to help stock food banks

By KRISTI E. SWARTZ

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

The Atlanta operation of chicken-production giant Pilgrim’s Pride received $ 31.3 million in federal stimulus money, part of a contract with the U.S. Department of Agriculture to help stock food banks.

The money will be used to buy whole-bag chickens.

The funds are part of $150 million in stimulus money that the USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service received to buy chickens, deli-style turkey breasts, eggs, sliced ham, canned pork, canned peaches and other foods to help stock food banks. Nationwide, food banks have been hit with the one-two punch of declining donations and an increased number of people turning to them for meals.

“When you think about it, we can’t distribute it if it doesn’t come in,” said Bill Bolling, founder and executive director of the Atlanta Community Food Bank.

But more than 860,000 pounds of stimulus-funded food has been distributed to the Atlanta Community Food Bank, Bolling said. Last weekend, the food bank fed 60 families in Acworth with food bought with stimulus money from the USDA’s program.

Prior to that, Bolling said the food bank had to buy food with donations because not enough was coming in to meet increased demand. The Food Bank cannot sustain such spending, he said.

“We always purchase some every year, but that’s difficult to get enough to purchase a lot of food,” Bolling said.

The stimulus money comes in addition to the regular amount the USDA’s marketing arm receives for federal feeding programs, spokesman Billy Cox said. About $100 million will actually go toward buying food; the remaining $50 million will be used to cover administrative costs, according to the USDA.

Pilgrim’s Pride, based in Pittsburg, Texas, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in December 2008. Multiple news reports indicate the company may be bought by Brazilian beef company JBS SA as early as this week.

The company has a sales and administration office in DeKalb County. It also has a hatchery, feed mill and chicken processing plants in Athens.

Pilgrim’s Pride spokesman Ray Atkinson referred questions about the stimulus-backed contract to the USDA.

Cox said it’s unclear whether the USDA’s marketing-service arm will get more stimulus money. Bolling at the Food Bank said he’s staring at another 18 months to two years of increased demand as unemployment continues to rise.

That said, 40 percent of the people who come to his agency during an emergency situation have full-time jobs.

The $787 billion federal stimulus package was designed to revive the nation’s economy. Agencies that receive the money must keep track of it, as well as account for the number of jobs that were saved or created.

Cox did not have a figure of how many jobs these contracts created but said there’s a downstream economic impact of food production. He said the additional amount of food produced was valued at $56 million.

“In order to produce $56 million worth of food, it’s going to take more and more jobs,” he said. “It’s going to take more manpower and longer working hours to produce the food.”