PERRYDALE, Ore. — About 300 Perrydale School District students ages 5 to 18 are taking part in the annual Food for All scramble that will benefit Oregonians around the state.

Going on a quarter-century, Food for All has continued its steady, successful march toward providing more than 300,000 pounds of fresh local produce to needy families throughout Oregon each year at Christmastime.

Technically called the Willamette District FFA Community Service Project, the Food for All drive joins Perrydale with students, staff and volunteers from seven other district schools to gather, pack and deliver produce from local farmers, farm businesses and others.

The collection effort this year was Dec. 5-12, and packing and distribution lasts through Christmas eve.

Perrydale FFA chapter vice president Izzie Keene, 16; sentinel Kaylee Clevenger, 17; president Johnathan Propes, 17, and student director Cora Gleason, 18, rolled up their sleeves to help during one of the first days of packing food at the Perrydale FFA building.

“This year we have raised our goals and we need the help and support of local farms like you,” noted a letter from one of Perrydale FFA’s Food for All “ambassadors” to growers, friends and supporters.

The letters are presented in person by one of the eight district schools’ student workers. They note the past decades of success — 320,000 pounds of food were collected and distributed last year. The target is 330,826 pounds this year, though Kirk Hutchinson, former Perrydale ag advisor and co-founder and coordinator of the Food for All program, said the actual totals for the past couple of years have topped 400,000.

The effort at Perrydale involves the entire school bagging apples, onions, rutabagas, potatoes and other fresh produce. The packages are then put in totes and loaded onto 18-wheelers for delivery around the state.

The 2020 Food for All program was truncated by COVID pandemic issues, and last year was a transition back to normal operations, Hutchinson said.

Hutchinson said he believes the Perrydale-led Food for All program is the “largest food drive in the United States, because no one does anything like this.”

Which is why the program has won so many awards, said Propes. “We’ve won national chapter awards, consecutively, for so many years.”

“A lot of the people we deal with that hand out food (fraternal and religious organizations, etc.) can’t access the Oregon Food Bank because they don’t meet USDA standards,” said Hutchinson. “So we have this little niche we can fill for some of those people.

“One of the things that is very important about Food for All is that all of the people working together make this happen,” he said. “There’s no way someone from United Salad or Montecucco Farm would find a family in Coos Bay that needed food.”

He said organizations such as the Knights of Columbus and others work to find the families, and the farms and businesses provide the food. Then the district’s students package the food, while still others coordinate the transportation.

“When everybody works together, you can achieve a lot more,” Hutchinson said.