Sarah Rennie – LJI reporter

The Moisson Sud-Ouest food bank is now able to store and distribute significantly more fresh food, thanks to major investments in refrigeration infrastructure at its new Salaberry-de-Valleyfield location.

During a press conference on February 5, the food bank announced that the region’s four Caisses Desjardins would be contributing $125,000 to help finance the installation of a refrigerated section in the organization’s warehouse. This is in addition to an earlier contribution of $125,000 by the Caisse Desjardins du Haut-Saint-Laurent, Valleyfield, Beauharnois, and Vaudreuil-Soulanges as part of Moisson Sud-Ouest’s “Take hunger off the table” campaign.

“This announcement makes perfect sense today, given the rise in food prices on the market,” said Gino Napoleoni, the general manager of the Caisse Desjardins de Salaberry-de-Valleyfield, who referred to the donation as a gesture of hope and solidarity.

Yan Ouellette, Moisson Sud-Ouest’s director of development and philanthropy, explained that the food bank’s relationship with Desjardins goes back a long way. “They were with us at the beginning, in 2021, when we began to dream about a new building,” he said. The food bank was then gripped by an exploding demand for food relief. “It was during COVID, there was a lot going on, and the needs were enormous. The government and the public were there to donate food, to give money, but we didn’t have the space to handle that crisis, that volume,” he recalled.

Moisson Sud-Ouest purchased a warehouse in Valleyfield in 2023 and launched a new appeal for donations to cover the cost of necessary renovations to bring the building to code for food distribution purposes. The $250,000 from Desjardins is in addition to $1,775,000 provided by the provincial government through the Programme d’Infrastructures des Banques Alimentaires du Québec, as well as numerous contributions from area businesses and the public.

Now up and running, the refrigerated section “holds a lot more food,” said Ouellette, which is key for the stocking and distribution of perishables.

The section allows Moisson Sud-Ouest to store up to 66 pallets of refrigerated foods, as well as an additional 66 pallets of frozen products, which amounts to 39,600 kilograms of food. The previous building had a maximum capacity of 12,600 kgs of perishable food items.

Ouellette explained that this translated concretely into an additional $310,500 worth of fresh or perishable food (the equivalent of 62,100 more meals) that is now available to the network of 80 food pantries and community organizations in the Haut-Saint-Laurent, Beauharnois-Salaberry, and Vaudreuil-Soulanges regions currently served by Moisson Sud-Ouest.

Sylvie Racette, the director of the La Bouffe Additionnelle food pantry based in Huntingdon, said there was little doubt that Moisson Sud-Ouest’s improved capacity will have an impact on the types of food that are offered locally. “Fresh foods, such as milk, eggs, and vegetables, are all harder to access,” she explained. “If they have the capacity to buy fresher food, that means we are going to receive food that we can keep longer.”

Racette added that having access to a potentially greater amount of food will also be of benefit. The need for food relief in the Haut-Saint-Laurent continues to grow. Just last month, the food pantry was providing up to 80 food baskets to individuals or families per week.

“There is not a week that goes by that we don’t have three or four new families signing up,” said Racette.