Figuring out how to feed a community

To further their effort to assist the Moorcroft and surrounding area community, the Moorcroft Interfaith Community has been trying to establish a local distribution center in cooperation with the Wyoming Food Bank of the Rockies.

Pastor Monte Reichenberg explained that the Food Bank of the Rockies can no longer fund the original bank they and the Interfaith community had planned, however, "What they would be willing to do would be to help us set up a 90 day emergency food supply in town that could be used in the case of an emergency and we are looking for a place to put it."

This distribution center is not affiliated in any way with the food pantry housed in the Moorcroft Senior Center, said Reichenberg, as he put forward a request for a separate storage area from the governing body at Tuesday night's meeting.

The situation was brought before the MTC board and it was agreed that, if the council allowed, space could be found to house the many tons of food that the MIC may eventually acquire. “It’s going to take a pretty big area to have that much of a food supply,” said Reichenberg.

Reichenberg explained the real need for Moorcroft to become “proactive” in this endeavor.

“When we were talking about emergency procedures, Crook County said that they would take care of Sundance and Hulett, but Moorcroft and Rozet can depend on Campbell County; when we talked to Campbell County, they said that they’ll take care of Gillette and Wright, but Crook County can take care of Moorcroft and Rozet. It became obvious that we need to be taking care of ourselves,” he said.

He said that the process without the funding from the Food Bank of the Rockies is going to take quite a bit of financing to purchase that amount of food so it will start small and build up and they “just want to get it implemented and get started working on it”.

Currently, according to the pastor, the town’s grocery store generally carries enough food to for two days, “So if we were in a blizzard or a tornado or something where transportation was shut down for even a week, we’d be basically out of food.”

For the time being, the council decided that a room at the MTC will suffice. The council and Reichenberg decided on a time to walk through the MTC to determine the best area in which to store the initial food supplies and he will contact of the Rockies to ask for clarification on the manner of assistance they are offering.