By Hub City Times staff

MARSHFIELD – The Granton FFA Alumni recently made a donation to the Granton School District that was designed to provide support for local farmers, while encouraging others to do the same.

“Last Friday, as I was sitting and listening to the news about farmers getting letters to dump their milk or be told to slow or stop producing all together, along with a major reduction in the price being paid for the milk, was sad,” Cheryl Steinbach, Wisconsin FFA Alumni Association executive director and Granton Alumni vice president. “Also knowing that many of the families in our community, already struggling to make ends meet, were also being impacted with job loss or reduction and knowing how important the program of delivering breakfast and lunches to our school families is. I thought, how could we help?

“So, I messaged the other officers of the Granton FFA Alumni chapter and said, I have an idea. They immediately said, let’s do this.”

Steinbach called the Granton School District to see if they would allow milk to be delivered to families with lunch – who agreed to the donation – and got the number of families the school serves.

“I then called to order milk. The first store would not take an order but the next place I tried, which was Kwik Trip in Neillsville, said they could certainly help out and they placed the order for us,” Steinbach recalled.

FFA Alumni members, Tom Hasz and Char Johnson, and Granton FFA Advisor Katie Reider were also involved in the planning and delivery.

The milk was loaded into the school district vans that deliver lunch and breakfast daily, with tags on the jugs to inform the families that the milk was given in support of local dairy farmers.

The Granton Alumni group then challenged other chapters to do the same.

“We are excited that many have shared the challenge and were intrigued to see some others are giving cheese or coupons as well,” Steinbach said.

“We hope this catches on and that others will consider contributing to their food pantries or other programs also.  And most importantly, we want to create an awareness that we need to be purchasing all that we can to support our farmers in the community and to not take for granted the food on our tables.

“We are hoping we can do some additional promotions in the future.”