A crop donation has provided a big boost to the Interfaith Food Bank Society of Lethbridge.
Farming Smarter, an agriculture innovation hub based out of Lethbridge, has gifted 17,000 pounds worth of potatoes to feed thousands of local families.
The spuds come from field trials by Farming Smarter, in which researchers observed the yield response to different fertility rates. Once the trials were done, results were analyzed and the potatoes were brought into storage, free to be shared with the community.
“We’ve got 200 different trials, we’re growing 30 different crops, but potatoes are sort of new to us, so most of the crops – we grow wheat or canola and whatever we produce – those are smaller, small-grain crops, so whatever we produce ends up getting disposed of as maybe animal feed or different things,” explained Lewis Baarda, a research program manager at Farming Smarter. “Now that we did potatoes, it was kind of like, this is a whole different ball game as far as the volume of what we’re producing.”
The potatoes were picked up between September and December 2025, and the food bank said that it has already made a huge difference for families in need.
“Donations coming in at any time [are] impactful, but it was really nice to have the volumes coming in the way [potatoes] did,” said Interfaith’s executive director, Danielle McIntyre.
Officials said the food bank usually packs potatoes into 10-pound bags, meaning the Farming Smarter donation provided enough to go out to as many as 1,700 homes.
“It’s stuff that doesn’t go to waste, and we’re able to find a good place for it, and people can appreciate it and use it,” Baarda added.
“This food bank connection has been pretty good. Everything that we’ve dug up that’s useful has pretty much gone to them so as long as they can find use for them, we’re happy to provide them, so we’ll keep doing that for sure.”
FOOD SHARE PROGRAM
Through its ‘Food Share’ program, Interfaith gives food to its own clients, but also shares surplus supplies with other area food banks, as well as schools, homeless shelters, soup kitchens, churches and other local community groups.
Interfaith operates two community kitchen programs as well, the Interfaith Chinook Country Kitchen, and the Co-Op Community Kitchen. Residents can learn how to cook good, healthy food on a budget.
McIntyre said she loves teaching the community about preparing potatoes because they are “belly-filling”.
“Sometimes, people can choose to just have a baked potato with toppings, and they can actually get a meal out of it. We find that a lot of families will take those potatoes and incorporate them into their meals – they can be sides or part of the mains,” she said.
McIntyre added that sharing food is especially important amid an on-going food security crisis. “We’re in a food security crisis right now. When we have so many people who don’t have enough food, the last thing we want to be doing is wasting the resources that our agriculture community has produced for us.”
In March 2025, it was reported by Food Banks Canada that the demand for food banks reached a record high, with over 2.16 million visits in that month alone.
More about the Interfaith Food Bank is available on the society website.
