Four days a week, Maile Auterson and one of her employees drive hundreds of miles across Kansas, Missouri and Arkansas to deliver fresh produce to food deserts.
Auterson’s nonprofit, Springfield Community Gardens, helps underserved schools, food pantries and senior centers. One center in Ava, Missouri, is the only place for many where they can get a hot meal.
Springfield Community Gardens is one of many organizations that relied on grants from the United States Department of Agriculture to distribute produce to schools and low-income communities through two pandemic-era federal programs. They provided about $1 billion in funding to schools and food banks to buy food directly from local farms, ranchers and producers…