FSC’s Food Pantry is here to help you!

November 18, 2025

By Cal McCluskey

FARMINGDALE, N.Y. – Food pantries are a community based distribution center that provides food and other essential products to people experiencing hunger. Many students might not know about the one located on campus. So I conducted an interview to help spread the word. 

I interviewed Amanda Cataldo at the Food Pantry of Greenley Hall at Farmingdale State College. Amanda Cataldo is the assistant director for strategic initiatives for the office of student affairs and currently a part of it is to overlook the campus food pantry. 

The first question I asked was, “what do you do here in the food pantry?” Amanda Cataldo said, “We serve our community, who may be experiencing food insecurity at any time. Today, what you're seeing is our inventory restock day. We’re also here to accept delivery. We do get most of our inventory from Island Harvest, which is located not too far from campus. And so on Monday, we have our moving and trucking staff in the physical plant, go and pick it up at the warehouse in Melville, and they bring it to us. I am with the staff of student and staff volunteers to restock everything and get it ready for our community to start coming in during the week.”

The second question I asked was, “what does the food pantry offer for people who don't know?” She replied with, “We are not a full service food pantry in that we don't have freezers for meat or a large refrigerator for large refrigerated products. But we do try to solve a short term need for the meantime for individuals who then can get a long term solution. We typically have very few dairy items because we do have a small refrigerator. But we have a lot of as you can see non-perishable shelf stable items including milk, soups, beans, vegetables, things like that. One of the great things from Island Pantry we are getting fairly recently for the autumn season, is a lot of fresh vegetables and fruits like potatoes, onions, carrots, corn, things like that. So we’re trying to keep that soft as best as possible for our community.”

The next question I asked was, “when is the food pantry open?” Amanda Cataldo said, “So we currently operate three days a week for the community. Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays from 10am to 1pm and again from 4pm to 6pm.”

The next question I asked was, “can you share a bit about the history or mission of this food pantry?” Amanda Cataldo said, “So many many years ago, SUNY had started releasing some mandates for each of our SUNY campuses to help with what are called basic needs. So things like food insecurity, housing insecurity, other types of what they’re calling basic needs. And so in the last several years, SUNY has instructed campuses to have individuals on our campuses to be able to address these things. And recently, SUNY realized that all of the pieces were now. So then they sent kind of a mandate to back and create what are called the basic needs team, which kind of houses all of those individuals and all of those initiatives together in one place. And so what we try to do is to kind of be a short term solution to what we hope is a short term need. But if it is a long term need, we do then have mechanisms in place to get individuals in our community set up with a long term solution so we can kind of get them to where they need to be so they can have the support that they need.”

The last question I asked was, “is there anything else you would like to add to this interview?” Amanda Cataldo said, “So we are staffed entirely by student and staff volunteers. Occasionally there is a stipend funding for students who are able to spend some time in the pantry. We also operate with what's called our Empire State Service Corps, which is a SUNY initiative for student employees in the basic needs area. So that is a SUNY internship. One part of that whole basic needs section is food insecurity or food pantry. So we do have some students that are part of that internship program that do work here and earn some experience here is ours and what we try to do for the students and the staff that work with us is kind of provide an opportunity for them to, understand what food insecurity is, to be able to be a benefit to the community, a little bit more understanding, know all the way around of how food insecurity affects economic everyone and how anybody can be affected with it at any time. So we try to do all that, but as you can see, you know, each day brings something a little bit different. So right now we’re doing our restocking and our inventory rotation and getting everything ready for the opening hours on Tuesday and then starting on Tuesday then our community will keep coming in and taking what they need, hopefully looking to help get them through the week. And we hope we don't have to see them week after week because we hope they can get the support that they need. But we are here for when they do need that support and we will be here as long as we can be.”