The University of Washington Food Pantry, with produce from the UW Farm, serves as a free resource in response to food insecurity for UW students, staff, and faculty to visit and receive food assistance during the work week – open Monday through Thursday.
Aisling Doyle Wade supervises a harvest with volunteers at the Mercer Court growing site, which is one of three on-campus growing sites at the University of Washington in Seattle.
Locally grown, the UW Farm donates a portion of its harvest to the UW Food Pantry.
“…One of the number one things that people ask for is fresh produce… there’s just a huge need for produce,” said Doyle Wade, production manager of the UW Farm.
“…We donate about a third of the food that we produce, that was kind of last year’s statistics. We donate everything that we don’t sell. And so, the more food we grow, the more we can donate, and that relationship with the pantry, emerging over the last 10 years or so, that has become part of the mission for us to kind of help meet this food security need on campus,” said Doyle Wade. “Produce as much food as we can, so that we can donate as much food as we can.”
Doyle Wade took out her laptop to check the progress of the numbers on the amount of food that the UW Farm has donated so far this year.
“This year, so far, we’ve already donated 652 pounds, not all of that went to the pantry though – some of that went to volunteers and a couple other things,” said Doyle Wade.
Doyle Wade describes the partnership that the UW Farm has with the UW Food Pantry.
“We’re just proud of that relationship and of doing what we can to meet as much of that need as possible because food just keeps getting more and more expensive. Produce is really expensive, and if you’re really strapped for cash, produce is probably not high on the priority list in terms of the amount of calories you can get per dollar,” said Doyle Wade. “But that’s also a difficult thing because we know how important produce is for health, for proper functioning of our bodies, and just… both cognitive function and also just the health of the rest of our bodies. Nutrient-dense produce is really important.”
(Rochelle Dimalanta / University of Washington Student Journalist)
(Rochelle Dimalanta / University of Washington Student Journalist)
A 2023 report by Public Health – Seattle & King County found that 27 % of Hispanic/Latino adults experienced food insecurity—defined as not having enough to eat—compared to 10 % of all adults in the county.
Doyle Wade shares her insight into locally farmed produce and the value of its accessibility for people, as well as the impacts it has on the environment.
“I think we need more people growing it and making it accessible locally,” said Doyle Wade. “…
Even with not that much space and not that much resource, in an urban environment, you can grow quite a bit of food, and you can be kind of localizing or creating more access to food that otherwise is really expensive. Might not be available in your neighborhood depending on what grocery stores there are and has a big environmental cost because it’s coming from very far away and a lot of it is getting wasted and all these other things, and has a big, potentially social cost depending on the labor practices that are used on that farm – all of the people in that chain to get you that food.”
According to the UW Farm’s Instagram post titled, ‘UW FARM 2024 WRAPPED!’, their statistics show that the UW Farm grew 20,571 pounds of produce and donated 6,871 pounds of food last year amongst four entities: UW Events, the Colored Girls Garden Club South Seattle
Free Food Pantry, UW Farm Volunteers & Staff, and at the top of the list – their number one entity to donate to was the UW Food Pantry.
“At the food pantry, we typically provide between two to three days worth of food resources. We also provide hygiene products as well,” said Angelina Durbin, food recovery coordinator of the UW Food Pantry. “It really depends on how the specific visitor chooses to use their points. We do a point choice system at the pantry, so every visitor who comes in will get eight points per week unless they’re a parent or caregiver, they’ll get up to 13 points per week. And so, everything around the pantry is labeled with the amount of points it has.”
Durbin continued to say, “All of our ready-to-eat items from our food recovery program that I manage are all zero points, because we don’t have to pay any money to get those items and they’re recovered, we don’t want people to be using their points on them, is essentially the logic we use behind that. So, if there are a lot of ready-to-eats, a lot of produce, we also make zero points in the pantry. Sometimes you can get a lot more, but on days where we have a little bit less, it’s probably around two to three days worth of food.”
According to the UW Food Pantry’s Instagram post titled, ‘UW Food Pantry Wrapped – Autumn Quarter 2024’, their statistics show that in Autumn 2024, they had a total of 7,561 visitors and that they received 1,407 pounds of food from the UW Farm that quarter.
“We see around 700 visitors weekly, and so around 7,000 unique visits throughout the quarter. Every single year in Autumn, we see that number continue to increase – our visits have almost increased exponentially in the past few years,” said Durbin.
University of Washington students, staff, and faculty who experience food insecurity can visit the UW Food Pantry if they are interested in and in need of receiving free food assistance from this on-campus resource.
According to the UW Food Pantry website, for Spring Quarter 2025, the pantry is open on Mondays from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., Tuesdays from 1 p.m. to 6 p.m., Wednesdays from 11 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., and Thursdays from 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.
Cover Photo: The University of Washington Food Pantry, located at 1311 NE 41st St., welcomes students, staff, and faculty to receive food assistance. In response to food insecurity, the UW Food Pantry serves as an on-campus resource for anyone with a valid UW ID. (Rochelle Dimalanta / University of Washington Student Journalist)
For more information about the UW Farm, visit their website at
https://botanicgardens.uw.edu/center-for-urban-horticulture/gardens/uw-farm/, and follow them on Instagram at @uwfarm.
For more information about the UW Food Pantry, visit their website at
https://www.washington.edu/anyhungryhusky/the-uw-food-pantry/, and follow them on Instagram at @uwfoodpantry.
Rochelle Dimalanta is a student journalist from the University of Washington. She can be reached at rdima12@uw.edu.
Rochelle was one of the students in the “Media Responsibility in a Diverse Society” class, taught by Hugo Balta. Balta is the publisher of Washington Latino News.