The West Texas Food Bank hosted a grand opening dinner on May 2 to present the Volunteer Expansion and Innovative Gardens at their Odessa location. Speakers including The Honorable Sara Kate Billingsley, Thaimar Ramirez from OXY, Dr. Ray Perryman, Claire Babineaux-Fontenot of Feeding America, and Joni Hires from the FMH Foundation spoke at the event.
With the Permian Basin expected to see a population increase of nearly 200,000 by 2050, the demand for food bank services is anticipated to rise. The new facility of the West Texas Food Bank, equipped with enhanced capacity and storage capabilities, was designed to meet the growing needs. The project includes renovations to accommodate the distribution of 24 million pounds of shelf-stable food annually, with an estimated economic impact of $30.4 million in expenditures in the Permian Basin and 139 job-years of employment (a job-year is one person working for one year, though it could be multiple individuals working partial years).
“This new facility will permanently hold our Food 2 Kid BackPack Program, which feeds over 3,800 kids a weekend, and the commodities for our Senior Box Program, which feeds over 2,600 seniors a month,” CEO of the West Texas Food Bank Libby Stephens told Midland Times. “We also created more parking and an educational agriculture space, which includes a bird conservation area and our gardens. With these additions, we want to teach families that you can grow food here in West Texas, and that's what this educational space is designed to do.”
Stephens highlighted the organization's mission of serving its operational area, covering 19 counties across 34,000 square miles, and the role volunteers play. “Our volunteers are truly what make us able to do our work everyday,” Stephens said.
“We wanted to create a special space just for our volunteer workforce to continue to serve our 19 counties,” Stephens told Midland Times. “Because we needed to expand our dry capacity source, we actually lost our previous volunteer center during our growth, COVID, and the highest inflation rate in the past 40 years. Those factors caused us to rethink how to go about our work.”
According to the Perryman Group, the Perryman Group's analysis indicates that the current cost of hunger in the Permian Basin exceeds $1.2 billion in lost spending annually, along with the loss of 6,375 jobs.
Perryman's model also estimates that the West Texas Food Bank contributes $548.4 million and supports 2,919 jobs annually in the Permian Basin.
