Gleaning a harvest for the needy by fighting waste

On U.S. farms, gleaning is making a comeback, as a national anti-hunger organization has turned to the ancient practice to help feed the poor. It also gives farmers a way to use produce that would otherwise be wasted. In the Old Testament, farmers are told not to pick their fields and vineyards clean, but instead to leave the edges for orphans, widows and travelers. In the modern day, gleaning is more about preventing would-be waste.

Food gets left in the field for all kinds of reasons. Two big ones are that mechanical harvesting misses a lot — and sometimes the crops aren't pretty enough for supermarket shelves. "The statistics are that 96 billion pounds of food are left — this is pre-consumer food — goes to waste in this country," says Linda Tozer of the Society of St. Andrew, an organization that coordinates farmers around the Southeast and out West.

And that food-waste estimate, from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, is going up, not down "What we are trying to do is build a network that will take food that would not make it to market for a variety of reasons," Tozer says, "and get it to agencies that are feeding the hungry." The Society of St. Andrew recently added an office in Tennessee. At Jackson Farms in Pikeville, volunteer Nathaniel Smart, 5, heaved a mesh bag of red and green bell peppers from a scale and dropped it on a growing pile. Read more...

This blog is written by Martin Little The Global Miller, published and supported by the GFMT Magazine from Perendale Publishers.