Donate Your Fresh Produce

We’ve created a list of some best practices to help you as you gather the produce you’ve grown to donate to DMARC.

• Always harvest your produce before peak ripeness—we’ll need at least 24 hours to get it out into a food pantry.
• Properly clean and package your garden produce when it makes sense to do so—it save our warehouse staff time.
• Be sure you yourself would eat the food you’re donating—blemishes are okay, produce ripe past usefulness is not.

Where to Drop off Your Donation

Food donations may be dropped off at the DMARC Food Pantry Network Warehouse, located at 100 Army Post Road on the south side of Des Moines.

Monday – Thursday 8:00 a.m. – 4:30 p.m.
Friday 8:00 a.m. – 3:30 p.m.

Please call the DMARC Food Pantry Network warehouse at (515) 277-6969 for questions about food donations.

Want to start your garden but don’t know where to start? Iowa State University Outreach and Extensions has some great resources to learn more about growing produce safely to donate to local food pantries: