The San Joaquin Valley — the most productive farming region on the planet — is America’s food basket.The valley grows more than 250 crops. When coupled with its weaker cousin in terms of farm production — the Sacramento Valley — the two combined produce 25 percent of this nation’s table food using only one percent of the farmland.It is against this background of plenty that the Manteca-based Second Harvest Food Bank is fighting the battle against hunger in San Joaquin, Stanislaus, and Merced counties along with five adjoining foothill counties. Some 350,000 unduplicated individuals were provided food in 2016 through the distribution center at 704 East Industrial Park that supplies 102 agencies that typically provide weekly food to struggling families and low-income seniors throughout the region.San Joaquin Valley’s poverty that earned it the moniker as “The New Appalachia” in a 365-page Congressional Reach Service report issued in 2005 is fed by high unemployment, a legion of relatively low paying jobs at the bottom of the agricultural food production chain, and California’s soaring cost of living fueled by the economic boom of the state’s coastal cities.Second Harvest operates much like the Ford Motors Small Parts Distribution Center located less than a mile away on Spreckels Park Avenue.