Valley food bank kicks off annual citrus drive

PHOENIX — A Valley food bank is kicking off its annual citrus drive this weekend.

St. Mary’s Food Bank will be accepting donations of citrus at various places around the Valley as part of its Super Citrus Saturday program.

“There’s a lot of citrus out there on backyard trees — grapefruits, oranges, lemons — and we can really use that fruit at the food banks,” said Jerry Brown with the food bank.

While he hopes to get plenty of donations, Brown said none of them will go to waste.

“Not only can we take that citrus and hand it straight to folks to eat as fruit, but we do have a company in Tempe that juices a lot of the fruit for us and can turn it into orange juice and grapefruit juice that we can distribute well into the summer,” he said.

Drop-offs will be accepted Saturday from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the following locations:

• North Phoenix Baptist Church (5757 N. Central Ave., Phoenix)
• Shepherd of the Hills United Church of Christ (5524 E. Lafayette Blvd., Phoenix)
• St. Mary’s Food Bank, Surprise Location (13050 W. Elm St., Surprise)
• McDowell Mountain Plaza (10111 E. Bell Road, Scottsdale)

Last year, the food bank received about two million pounds of fruit.