CHS fights rural hunger through March campaign

Working together with CHS locations across the country, employees, community organizations and businesses, and farmers and ranchers of CHS locations in central and western Montana joined the fight against rural hunger through the cooperative’s annual CHS Harvest for Hunger food, funds and grain drive. The annual campaign gathered more than $500,000 and 94,959 pounds of food to fight hunger in rural America. Locally, these CHS locations raised $16,059.51 and 4,892 pounds of food for local food shelves.

Donations and contributions will be arriving at food shelves and other charitable organizations in the local communities served by CHS in the next few weeks. Since 2011, CHS Country Operations, a division of CHS, the nation’s leading farmer-owned cooperative, has organized the campaign to gather money and food for local and regional food shelves across the country. With this year’s total, the cooperative has now raised more than $6 million and 4.5 million pounds of food in the nine years since the campaign was first launched.

The Montana CHS locations participated in the 2019 Harvest for Hunger drive held March 1-20 through a variety of fundraising activities, including having a booth at the Malta Ag Day event. In total, CHS Big Sky, CHS (Cut Bank Group), and CHS Mountain West raised $7,647.68 and 4,891.7 pounds of food for local food pantries across Montana.

“Often, local food shelves and food pantries are doing invisible work. They are feeding people in our rural communities who we would never imagine are going hungry,” says Mark Lalum, general manager of CHS Mountain West, Missoula, Montana. “That’s why it’s so important that we support these local organizations.”

“We are in the business of feeding the world, but we may never realize who is facing hunger right in our own communities,” says Kyle Koschmeder, general manager of CHS out of Cut Bank, Montana.

“These organizations have the system and contacts in place to make sure everyone has food on the table every day,” adds Keith Schumacher, general manager of CHS Big Sky, Fort Benton, Montana.