Farmers donate corn to food banks

Boise—Behind the wheel of this Semi-truck, you’ll find farmer Neil Durrant of the Big D ranch out of Meridian.

That refer truck is filled with just-picked sweet corn and it's headed to the Idaho Food Bank.

“Today we brought a semi-truckload of sweetcorn. We’re carrying about 1500 dozen so that's roughly 18-thousand ears of corn,” said Durrant.

That's right, 18-thousand ears of corn, Six thousand dollars worth, corn donated to feed Idaho’s hungry.

“Its some extra corn we had that due to the cool weather this spring, we had a bunch of corn come on at the same time and so we basically had two options, disk it under or donate it,” added Durrant.

Not only did Big D ranch donate the corn, but paid to truck it in, they did it because times are hard, people are out of work and hungry.

“To have such a great donation, a full truckload of fresh ears of corn is going to mean a whole lot. You know when this pandemic hit we committed to distributing 30-percent more food, which is about 2-million in additional pounds of food. And this is it, we are on pace to do that and this helps us to provide nutritious and fresh corn to Idaho families that are in need,” said Carlyn Blake, Development Manager of the Idaho Food Bank.

“It is helping the pandemic because there is a need for food,” said Durrant. “This is a way we can provide a healthy meal to Idahoans. Sweet corn is coming off real good and that's why we have a lot of sweetcorn and we’re selling more at our roadside stand. But with better yield, we still had some extra. Instead of letting it go to waste, we decided to donate it.”

Durrant and the farm took a big hit on the corn, lost money but profited by helping others.