29th Annual Gift of Produce

This year was the 29^th annual Gift of Produce. At this year's ceremony, we had the Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller as our guest speaker, Gina Gaston and Ilona Carson as emcees and we had a special appearance from Santa Claus. The children from Lovett Elementary Handbell Choir played their wonderful holiday songs before and after the event. The display this year was a little different than past years in that we incorporated a tractor (provided by Landsdowne Moody) and two farm trailers (provided by Dilorio Farms) loaded with fresh fruits and vegetables.

The Houston Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Association Gift of Produce donated a total of 2.8 million pounds or the equivalent of around 70 full semi loads this year! 2.4 million pounds were donated over the last three weeks, while 400,000 pounds were donated this past July for the first summer Gift of Produce.

We are very excited about the new summer Gift of Produce event! As you might imagine it will open donation possibilities up to a whole different variety of fresh fruits and vegetables that are not available during the normal December Gift of Produce period. The produce association had five brand new team captains volunteer for the July event.

We not only want to send out a big Texas "thank you" to the 16 Gift of Produce Team Captains this year, but want to be sure to thank the more than 150 growers, shippers, brokers and companies from across the United States that donated the produce and the freight companies that provided the transportation to the Food Bank!