A Farmer Fighting Food Insecurity

The harvest season renews our appreciation for farmers in Caroline County. In many ways, they are the local heroes who keep our world turning. But one farmer in particular stands out when it comes to combining her knowledge of the agricultural industry and passion for helping others: Amy Cawley.

If you haven’t had the pleasure of knowing Cawley, she is the fourth generation to work the Eastern Shore’s fields, and now helps her dad run Cawley Family Farm in Denton. She is equally well known for her position as the manager of the Farm to Food Bank program.

Cawley’s great-grandfather started the farming tradition, “and once it gets in your blood it tends to stay in your blood,” Cawley said. She found a second home at Clayton Farms in Denton, where she began working during the summers in her young adulthood. After graduating from North Caroline High School she went to Limestone College, then to the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, to study exercise and sports medicine. Even though she launched her career in the Carolinas, she kept coming back to Caroline - and back to Clayton Farms - every summer. The Shore was waiting for her in 2011 when she hit a snag, and it probably wouldn’t let her go again even if she wanted to leave.

Around that same time, Cawley’s sister-in-law had gone through an agricultural education program with Lead Maryland, during which she visited the Maryland Food Bank’s Baltimore branch. She gives her sister-in-law “a lot of credit for why I have this job.” “My sister-in-law was telling me that the Maryland Food Bank was looking for somebody to start this Farm to Food Bank program, where they were looking for produce that was going to waste to get to the food bank. And I said, ‘That's a great idea.’ I've seen produce go to waste in the fields when I pick,” Cawley said, “and so she gave me the name and number of the guy at the Maryland Food Bank named Butch. Butch came to mom and dad's, we talked at the kitchen table, and he offered me the job. And so I've been with the Maryland Food Bank as Farm to Food Bank Manager since June of 2011.”

Cawley explained that the Maryland Food Bank is not a stand-alone food pantry. Instead, it is their job “to procure food to feed people.” She and her colleagues work with their food pantry partners to make sure they are stocked. Cawley said the Maryland Food Bank was “founded in 1979 in Baltimore, ladies started handing out donuts. Fast forward…we have three branches, Baltimore, Salisbury, and Hagerstown.” Besides the obvious growth of the organization, they have also shifted their focus to more nutrient-dense foods, “We started out with donuts, right? Not the most healthy thing in the world. So we've developed this mission and goal of providing healthy food to the people that we serve,” she explained, “Because if you go to the grocery store, you know that produce is one of the most expensive things you can buy. And so people cut that out, right? They'd rather keep their lights on than have food in the cupboard. They have to prioritize. Do they take their medicine? Do they keep the lights on? Do they buy food?...So we started this Farm to Food Bank program with the goal of providing more locally grown, fresh, nutritious, nutrient-dense food to those who are facing food insecurity.”

Her position entails either buying, gleaning, or receiving donated produce from Maryland farmers to take to local food pantries for distribution. Once she has fresh produce in her truck, it’s up to her to coordinate with the Maryland Food Bank operations team or her own contacts to figure out where it could best be used. Most of the time, rather than taking the food to one of the three Maryland Food Bank locations, “I'll go to the farm, pick up the food, and take it direct to pantries” – this makes sure the produce is distributed as soon as possible rather than aging in a warehouse.

Cawley’s favorite on-the-clock activity is gleaning fields, which is the act of picking fields for excess produce that a farmer cannot use or sell before it goes bad. “Excess is a nature of the produce business, because a farmer can't sell what he or she does not have.” She gave the example of sweet corn, “farmers stagger their plantings weekly to bi weekly. So every two weeks they may have a new planting of sweet corn going in the ground, but they plant in April and May, when the weather is is questionable. It might be cold, and then all of a sudden it gets hot, then it gets cold. And so when it gets real hot, those two plantings that are planted two weeks apart may mature and be ready to pick at the same time. So that creates excess.”

Farmers will contact Cawley when they have extra product to donate, and she will schedule a gleaning, “The gleaning is my favorite part of my role with the Maryland food bank, but it's also one of the more challenging responsibilities that I have, because notice for a gleaning opportunity is often short…and I have to recruit volunteers.” She said that notice for a gleaning is usually about 48 hours, but it’s all worth it when she’s picking next to a group of community members trying to make a difference, “seeing the community come together…it's awesome. We're working alongside the farmer and his wife, his kids…everybody's coming together for a cause greater than themselves, and seeing that food being saved from the mower, it can keep you awake at night in a good way, because it's just so inspiring.” Gleanings can also be beneficial for the farmers, who can receive a tax credit for their donation. Cawley has gleaned anything you could possibly imagine: corn, tomatoes, cucumbers, pumpkins, apples, kale, collard greens, green beans, plums, butternut squash, blueberries, strawberries, blackberries, peaches, watermelon, cantaloupe, and more.

This produce will go to those facing food insecurity, which Cawley stressed is an ever-growing problem on the Eastern Shore. The current definition of food insecurity is “the condition of not having access to sufficient food, or food of an adequate quality, to meet one's basic needs.” Cawley said the older definition is a bit easier to explain, “they don't know where their next meal was going to come from. So right now, it's 10 o'clock in the morning, they wouldn't know where their lunch is going to come from, or where their dinner is going to come from. They just don't have that security,” she said.

“A lot of people have this stereotype that if people that are lazy, they just want to suck off the system. But I like to try to crack that stereotype,” she said. She pointed out that in reality, food insecurity is rarely a self-inflicted wound. For example, senior citizens living on fixed incomes are often taking advantage of food pantries, “I know one that's living in an apartment complex, and the rent keeps going up, but her monthly income is not going up. You’ve got seniors living on fixed income who have worked hard their whole life, but can't put food on their plate because they got to pay the rent,” Cawley said. She added that people often face sudden challenges like cancer, stroke, or brain injuries, which can impact their ability to work and afford nutritious food. “Everybody in the middle class knows that prices are going up, up, up… I say that most people are one paycheck away from facing food insecurity…it could be any one of us at any time that need a helping hand.”

Funding, unfortunately, is not keeping up with the rising need. Cawley specifically referenced a vital USDA grant that had provided $4 million in support, which is slated to be terminated due to federal-level budget cuts. “The Maryland Food Bank was able to use that to buy blue catfish, which is an invasive fish to our waterways…We could buy eggs, milk, chicken, ground beef, sausage, pork, and then I could use the rest of it to buy produce from Maryland farmers,” she said, “So that is a huge loss. The Maryland Food Bank is facing a budget deficit right now as I speak, which is going to greatly impact my ability to procure all this lovely produce from Maryland farmers.”

But giving up is not in Cawley’s DNA. She said her upbringing on her family’s farm and her summers working at Clayton Farms uniquely prepared her for this position. “A lot about what I know in regards to produce, how it's grown, when to pick it, how it's packed—all of which was very beneficial when I went to talk to a farm to get them to support the Maryland Food Bank.” The job, she said, has been a “natural fit.”

That “fit” is evident to those who work alongside her. Cheryl Beulah, owner of Aaron’s Place, said, “She's worth her weight in gold and 10 times over. If it wasn't for Amy, there is no way we would be receiving the amount of produce and stuff that we get, and just the connections with other partners, and the total collaboration of unity and working together. I can't say enough about her. She's just fantastic. We love her dearly.” Beulah said for anything produce-related, including planning Aaron’s Place community gardens, “She's my go-to.”

Faye Everett of the Millington-Crumpton Food Pantry echoed the same admiration. “She just has a way with people…plus she knows about the produce that she's bringing, and one of them she brought was a huge delivery, and she stayed around and even helped out for a while.” Everett specifically mentioned how important Cawley’s local perspective is, “Amy is very connected to the communities and knows what people need and the different areas. And sometimes the Maryland Food Bank doesn't have a picture of that, because most of their people are based in Baltimore, so I don't think they really connect with a rural area,” she said. “As far as I'm concerned, she's one of the biggest assets of Maryland Food Bank.”

For Cawley, the work is personally fulfilling. She said that she “just always loved being outside, always love helping people, always love teaching people what I can and so all those traits come together with this job.” She often finds herself trying to outpace the perishablity of the produce she gathers, “getting it from the farm to a pantry and neighbor as quickly as possible…Perishability is always a challenge,” she explained. But she said the rewards make it worthwhile, like being able to connect a farmer with 56 bins of watermelon that was turned away by grocery stores with a nonprofit in Baltimore, ensuring the fruit went to families who needed it instead of being wasted.

Cawley’s commitment to the local community doesn’t stop at her day job. She was inspired to start a Memory Walk for those who have lost loves ones to addiction in Caroline County after attending a similar event put on by a farmer in Southern Maryland. “That whole concept, whole idea, came from one of the Maryland Food Bank partners…they had a speaker that spoke, it was a little boy who lost his dad to overdose.” Cawley said with family members in recovery, “I felt that the memory walk should be something all over the Shore and in Caroline County because drug addiction has touched everyone somehow.” She also supports Farmers and Hunters Feeding the Hungry and other volunteer efforts when she isn’t working for the Maryland Food Bank or on the Cawley family’s Christmas tree farm.

“What brings me joy is helping other people and making them happy…I feel like my purpose in life is to serve others.” She lives out that purpose every day through her work, but she said she doesn’t and can’t do it alone – volunteers and donors are essential to keeping the Maryland Food Bank and its Farm to Food Bank program strong. For those who wish to help, she’s always looking for more volunteers for gleanings, “The Maryland Food Bank has a volunteer hub portal where you can go to mdfoodbank.org, click volunteer,” she explained, “When you sign up, there’s a box that says Farm to Food Bank Mid-Shore. By checking that box, you'll receive my email notification that a gleaning is going to happen.”

Last but not least, Cawley said she wants others to remember to “Support your local farmers!”