Did you know that almost 30 per cent of fruits and vegetables in Canada are not harvested and will not make it to someone’s table?
This is hard to fathom when we see headlines of how the cost of food is rising, the increased interest in local food, and the fact that the average Canadian is struggling to consume the recommended servings of fruits and vegetables per day.
To understand this situation, one needs to understand changes in commercial agriculture, even at the level of the household garden. If you have a home vegetable garden there are many reasons that the harvest does not get to the table. Vegetables may bolt to seed faster than you can harvest. You have too many of one crop to use – like the monster zucchini you discover hiding among your vegetables. Fruit trees may ripen just when you are on vacation. You may have traditionally planted a large garden for your family but your family household has shrunk. Or, pests may have found a home in your vegetable patch and picking off the creepy crawlies is just too bothersome.
At the commercial farm level, the harvesting of crops has evolved where machinery may pick the crop rather than people. Any fruits or vegetables that do not meet the size, shape or colour desired are left, discarded or downgraded. Our current grading system is based on looks, not nutrient value. Some may be sold as feed for livestock or a few farm stands sell lower grades but mostly those split carrots, bumpy potatoes or scarred tomatoes, while tasty and nutritious, are left behind.
Gleaning, traditionally practiced in days gone by, allowed gleaners to go through a farmers’ fields after they had harvested to pick any remaining crops. Gleaning is making a comeback today to recover some of these crops that do not make the grade. Wayne Roberts from Toronto Food Share many years ago talked about these unwanted crops as “untapped capacity”. They started a program with posters distributed to farmers in the Niagara area and local gardeners which pictured a split carrot with a forked root and the caption, “Bring us Your Cosmetically-Challenged Vegetables”. The campaign was a hit and farmers got a tax credit for their donation and local gardeners had a place to take their excess vegetables. Food Share in turn incorporated the bounty into their food programs.
Today, gleaning programs exist in communities around the interior. For example, Kamloops’ Food Bank can be called and a team goes out to someone’s home to glean their extra vegetables or fruit. One third of the harvest goes to the homeowner, one third may go to the pickers, and the final third goes to the Food Bank. In Kimberley, the Apple Capture Project allows people to borrow ladders to pick apples or fruit from trees that exist on common property or in the wild. In addition, juicers and dehydrators can be borrowed to process the free windfall.
In Merritt the idea is catching on! While we don’t have a full on gleaning program (yet) there are some volunteers gathering to pick fruit for the food bank. If you are interested in helping, or have some fruit to donate, please contact Sharon at 250-280-0407.
Submitted by the food security task force
