Food Waste to Food Security: Spain to Maine

This past visit to Barcelona I spent a lot of time working with Paco Muñoz-Gutiérrez: technician of the Environmental Office at the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB), expert on waste characterization methods for the Catalan Government Waste Agency, and a reference for the City of Barcelona in prevention, reduction and separation methods for organic waste. Paco is also co-author of the first Guide to Food Waste Prevention for the Hospitality Sector, and is working with a consulting company Spora Sinergies to implement an Integrated Practical Approach Pilot Project for the City of Barcelona. The goal is to have this pilot prove the potential of public-private partnerships to drive widespread behavioral changes and reduce the ethical, environmental and economic implications of food waste for generations to come.

Paco also recognizes the importance of working with social movements that have gradually become publicly recognized responses to the growing needs for food security organizations. During my visit in Barcelona, Paco asked me to come to a meeting of the Platform for Resourceful Food Use (PAA) to present on my experience leading food waste prevention efforts for Healthy Acadia’s Gleaning Initiative in Maine. The PAA has published a Manifesto Stop Food Waste and will hold a high profile public event in a public space next February 20^th, to bring together actors representing the different sectors working on food waste prevention and food security in Barcelona/Catalonia. Using a combination of purchased, donated and gleaned foods, there is clearly a global trend, from Spain to Maine, to unite people to recognize wasteful behaviors and begin teaching resourcefulness as a value with which to approach food insecurity for generations to come.

At the meeting, Alba, one of the organizers of the PAA, invited me to visit “El PLAT de Gràcia”: literally translated as The Plate of Grace, but actually referring to its location in the Barcelona neighborhood of Gràcia. Alba, is the most consistent part of this project, and explained this initiative as a community effort to serve a free Sunday lunch once every two weeks, to bring up the issues of food waste and food security. Apparently Alba never knows who is going to show up, but people always do; they come bearing food, laughter, and music to accompany the cooking and feasting. They come as hungry strangers and leave full-bellied friends. People in the streets stop and ask about the scene, and plates of leftovers are given out, as random passers-by are invited to join in the fun.  

An older couple who saw me with a camera came over to ask me what was happening. I explained it was a food recovery effort aiming to bring attention to the problem of food waste by serving meals cooked with gleaned food from stores and fields. “Oh, yes, gleaning. I used to glean almonds in my father’s hometown, down in Tarragona. They would shake the almond trees and put a blanket down under the tree to catch the almonds. I would go in afterwards and collect the ones they had missed. I got 30 cents for a kilo. A man in the town would buy them.” I can’t put into words how excited I was, as a modern day professional gleaner, to meet a traditional gleaner just walking down the street. I though to myself, how many more traditional gleaners are out there? I would love to capture their stories, and learn from tradition to inform today’s approach to gleaning.

Letter to the Editor

Healthy Acadia and the University of Maine Cooperative Extension would like to express our deep appreciation to the volunteers, farmers and gardeners that made the 2013 Gleaning Initiative such a success. Together, we delivered more than 10,000 pounds of locally grown fresh food to the meal sites and food pantries serving our Hancock County communities; food that would otherwise have been left lying in the fields.

The gleaning activities enabled community members of all ages to experience a healthy and educational farm activity, further strengthening the local food system’s community ties. The events provided an excellent opportunity for community members, some of whom were experiencing the need for food assistance, to learn more about the local foods available in our communities.

We were honored to have Backstage Farm (Blue Hill), 
Bar Harbor Community Farm (MDI), 
Beech Hill Farm (MDI), 
Clayfield Farm (Blue Hill), 
College of the Atlantic Community Garden (MDI), 
Four Season Farm (Harborside), 
Jackson Lab Community Garden (MDI)
, King Hill Farm (Penobscot), 
North Branch Farm (Monroe), 
Old Ackley Farm (Blue Hill), Star Root Farm (Ellsworth), 
Smith Family Farm (MDI), Tinder Hearth Bakery (Brooksville), and 
White’s Farm (Winterport) choose to serve Healthy Acadia’s Gleaning Initiative by opening their fields up for gleaning, donating food or providing strategic support.

We were equally touched by the support from our community members. We could not have done this without the loyal volunteer hours of Martha Bell (Blue Hill), Mary Hartley (Brooksville), Tina Keagley (Sedgwick), Donna Caldwell (Penobscot), Susan Walsh (Ellsworth), Mollie Heron (Orland) and Mary-Alice Hervitt of Farm Drop who provided the Blue Hill Peninsula Gleaning Team with an operations center at the Wineshop. We could also not have done this without members of the MDI High School Interact Club and the MDI Life Skills Class, as well as COA students, who helped make the October 16^th MDI Global Food Day a 400lbs gleaning success. And we extend our deep appreciation to the many other volunteers who participated in the gleaning activities throughout the year. Every bit of support increases our ability to make lasting improvements to health throughout Hancock County and beyond. Thank you again so very much to the volunteers, farms, and gardeners for your participation, dedication and support for healthy living. Together, your efforts help make our communities vibrant places to live.

With appreciation,

Hannah Semler

Happy 2014_NPR on gleaning

Until the Fifth Freeze

In Downeast Maine, the farming season is defined by first and last frost dates, but I've found that gleaning runs wild until the first or second or even fifth freeze! Three weeks ago, a gleaning team of four set out in two cars to Four Season Farm to rescue food from 20-degree-weather. Thinking this might be the last of the gleaning, we delivered 140 heads of lettuce, 50 pounds of carrots and 70 pounds of leeks to The Tree of Life and Bucksport Community Concern Food Pantries. To my surprise, just this morning I received a phone call from Barbara Damrosch, of Four Season Farm, to follow up with a conversation I had with Eliot Coleman at the Local Food Exchange (Mainescape 10am-1pm on Saturdays) about what might be left to glean. Barbara stated they had "a winter supply of carrots that have to get out of the ground before it freezes solid". So that is how gleaning in Hancock County made its way into the month of December. However, we most certainly have not gotten it all. I can't help but wonder how many tons of our food has been left to freeze on our Maine farms' fields out of sheer lack of community gleaning connections. How do other organizations do it?


In an attempt to gain a broader perspective of gleaning strategies in New England, this fall I visited and interviewed three organizations, to learn about their approaches, experience and lessons learned to be brought home to Hancock County's Gleaning Initiative in Maine.  



Salvation Farms, a gleaning organization in Vermont, has in their mission statement "to build increased resilience in Vermont’s food system through agricultural surplus management". Supporting their farmers and aligning the gleaning goals with the farming needs comes as a pre-requisite. The key outcomes of gleaning are food waste prevention and increased food security, but in some programs, such as Salvation farm's commodity program, individuals serving a sentence are given the opportunity to serve their community as well. Founded, directed, and reinvented after years of collaboration with the Vermont Food Bank, by Theresa Snow, Salvation Farms recognizes the role of gleaning in community transformation, and so looks for those inflection points where the activity can meet a set of combined needs. 

Willing Hands, an New Hampshire with whom the author harvested apples this Fall, primarily rescues food that has already entered the distribution supply chain. They have a truck that travels from store to market to farmstand picking up food that would otherwise not get sold in time to get used. They collect tons of food and redistribute them to food pantries and meal-sites, and have recently started collaborating with the Vermont Food Bank. In Quechee Vermont a crew of seven people gathered in a familiar and dedicated celebration of ensuring good food does not go to waste. 

Boston Area Gleaners in Waltham Mass is a gleaning organization that focuses on the concept of "harvesting for hunger". 'Duck' explained that they work with small farmers in the Boston Metropolitan area, providing surplus management for the farms they work with, to increase community access to food. Because of the urban area in which they work, it seems that farmers are more protective and tend to be careful about allowing gleaning but not attracting pilfering. It is a transitional area with more hired farmers than generational farmers. The relationship of the farmers with the gleaning organization is important as it evolves based on the needs of the community, but it is essential that a gleaning coordinator role be managed professionally. The farmers are provided with certificates that show the information and stats of what has been gleaned each time, and they get free publicity, through the organization, to show the public the farmers' interest in the well-being of their community.

We hope to bridge more collaboration between these New England gleaning organizations, to further the surplus management and food waste recovery efforts of our region, and ensure food security strategies that best support our local farms.

Happy (Belated) Thanksgiving, and may the abundance continue to be shared!

Root Gleaning @ North Branch Farm (Monroe, Maine)

Before I begin; a side note about what I have not written about.

I have not written about the First International Conference on Global Food Security where a poster of my work on food waste prevention was presented, earlier this month in Holland. Nor have I mentioned my address to 600 international food security academics, which seemed to shift the tone of the conference, calling for research to documentat and validate local food security initiatives that are working in different regions of the world. The conference was a perfect opportunity for diagnosing the beast while gleaning ideas and contacts, and working to identify what local initiatives related the problem of food waste to an opportunity for food security.

 Poster by Author: "Sustainability and Waste Management in the Retail Food Business."

I have not been able to talk about the October 16th World Food Day gleaning on Mount Desert Island (see the October 31^st edition of the Mount Desert Islander) where 15 volunteers in several teams gleaned 350 pounds of produce at Bar Harbor Community Farms, Beech Hill Farm, COA and Jackson Lab's Gardens.

                                Jackson Lab Team                             Bar Harbor Community Farm Team

Nor have I mentioned the Apple Gleaning Team that picked 5000 pounds of Honey Crisps at Johnston's Apple Orchard in Ellsworth two weeks ago, one apple was almost as big as Brian's head, putting us at almost 10,000 pounds of food gleaned since May.

Healthy Acadia Team                                      Emmaus Center Team

While much more could be written about all of those exciting projects, I will now turn my attention to the discovery of root crops this past Saturday as I browsed through the Mainescape Farmers’ Market in Blue Hill (Saturdays 10am to 1pm). This beautiful scene was developing before me. Vendors were hustling to get the last details of their stands ready, as the smells and energy blended together into a vision of fall to winter transition. Suddenly a voluptuous stack of multi-colored carrots and long beets caught my attention.

I introduced myself to Anna Shapley-Quinn of North Branch Farm, in Monroe, Maine, specialized in Fall/Winter crops. Having little hopes for any more leafy greens, and still unable to answer people’s inquiries of what I might be gleaning in the Fall, lights started to come on, illuminating my winter gleaning work plan: sorting root crops! We set a date for Monday.

On Monday morning, October 28^th, I picked up Mellie of Star Root Farm to go out to Monroe. I had worked with Mellie during the summer, when she had been surprisingly willing to guide me through new territory triangulating between customer food preferences, farmer constraints, timing and logistics, to make a subsidized Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) work for Emmause Center and Mariaville food pantry clients. So Mellie took pictures and helped with the sorting and lugging of carrots and potatoes, but she also helped me in making strategic decisions on how to establish a professional and mutually beneficial working relationship with North Branch Farm.

The author with Anna Shapley-Quinn @ North Branch Farm

It seemed gleaning was of particular interest to these farmers: Anna, Seth Yentes, and Ada Yentes-Quinn (age 3), Tyler Yentes and Elsie Gawler, and Miriam Goler and Mark Stonehill as apprentices make up the entire team. They are gleaners themselves, food rescuers on their own fields, unable to leave seconds just lying on the ground. The intimate attachment to the food they grow has them harvesting the seconds in the hopes they will get to eat them before they go bad. But Anna, who manages the vegetable production on the farm, had reassured them they would have plenty of seconds as the crates of squash, potatoes, onions, carrots, rutabaga, turnips went through the washing and sorting processes throughout the Fall. Some seconds have an expiration date and need to be donated.

        Mellie, of Star Root Farm weighing the gleaned produce

This time we had 300 pounds of carrots and potatoes the farmers had already sorted for us. We took all of it so we could experiment with our partner food pantries and meal-sites to see what they would decide to use. We needed their input to establish different quality and usability standards for root vegetables. In the future the Gleaning Initiative will coordinate volunteers to sort root vegetables on the farm based on these standards, as we work with farmers and receiving organizations to establish them. These standards will determine which vegetables remain with the farmers to be sold, or juiced, which are taken by the gleaners to be distributed to people experiencing need, and which should be rescued by being fed to pigs or turned into compost.

I look forward to developing an intimate relationship with these recently rediscovered root crops, which have the farmers and the gleaners, doing a completely different song and dance than with summer crops.