Food Rescue

With the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, local gleaning operations are working to provide food to those facing food insecurity.

Story by Kasey Cruz

December 11, 2020

The blaring roar of a train whistle cuts through the bustle of volunteers unloading, organizing and displaying the day’s fresh produce, pantry staples and frozen food in the Skagit Gleaners’ high-ceilinged market warehouse. Many ignore the piercing shrill, focused on their work. It is almost time to open and masked people are waiting in the lobby and outside the doors to start shopping. Most food is marked with signs detailing how much of one item a person may glean. But today is unlimited frozen pizza day. Members can take as many ready-to-bake pies as they need.

With a signal from Executive Director Morgan Curry, the first few members begin making their way around the various spreads of food, placing items in their grocery carts and preparing to weigh their food at large scales that resemble ones used to weigh airport luggage.

Practiced for hundreds of years and growing in popularity today, gleaning is a way for people to gain access to inexpensive food by gathering it off fields or from grocery stores and restaurants, when it would have otherwise been thrown out. Today, gleaning is often carried out by non-profit community gleaning organizations run by members and gleaning programs within food banks. With the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, Skagit Gleaners increased its operations in Mount Vernon, Washington to match rising needs in their community.

“When COVID came, we saw two things happen: an increase in families who needed an alternative option for grocery stores … and an overall abundance of food in the community,” Curry said. One way Skagit Gleaners tackled these issues was by expanding their distribution hours.

Food is wasted at every step, from production to consumption. Each year, around 40% of the world’s food goes to waste and in the United States, equaling about 180 kilograms of food for every American, according to the 2016 Report by ReFED, a nonprofit committed to reducing U.S. food waste. Produce is discarded at farms due to cosmetic imperfections and conditions which make harvest uneconomic. Almost double that is wasted at businesses such as grocery stores and restaurants, due to stocking practices and freshness standards. The weight of this food is roughly equal to 36 Great Pyramids of Giza, approximately 5.4 million metric tons each. Together, the value of the wasted food totals $72 billion each year.

Around the same time, in 2017, close to 40 million people in the United States lacked food at least part of the year, according to Gigi Berardi, environmental studies professor at Western Washington University and author of the book FoodWISE.

Gleaning has gained popularity over the years as a way to help combat these disparities. Currently, there are over 315 gleaning organizations in the United States and 16 located in Washington State, according to data from the National Gleaning Project.

Founded in 1984, the Skagit Gleaners aims to rescue and recover food that would otherwise have gone to waste, while creating opportunity for families to achieve financial freedom, sustainable lifestyles and a sense of community. Families originally traveled to local farms to glean food that farmers could not harvest, said Curry. They began focusing on gleaning from grocery stores and restaurants after seeing how much those places threw away. Today, they glean mostly from grocery stores or restaurants, accept donations from other food organizations, compost any leftovers and run a gleaning clothing and household item store.

Skagit Gleaners is more than just a gleaning organization, however. It provides a community for frugal, waste-conscious people to come together and work toward reducing food waste and gaining access to adequate amounts of food, said long-time member Dayle Forthun.

There is also a financial benefit. For only $39 a month and three and a half volunteer hours a month, someone can glean up to $500 worth of food for their family each month, estimated Forthun.

The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed many more people to food insecurity. It is estimated that across the globe, between 83 million and 132 million more people will be without adequate access to food in 2020, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.

The Skagit Gleaners saw an increase in families needing access to cheaper foods and alternatives to grocery stores because many people were laid off due to the pandemic, said Curry. In response, Skagit Gleaners expanded their distribution hours from three to five hours a day and limited the number of people allowed in the building at one time to follow public health guidelines.

They also saw an abundance of food diverted towards them from other local food-assistance organizations.

“Gleaners was getting, from April to up to August, a lot of food that would normally go to the food banks,” said Forthun. “Because the food banks run on volunteers only and a good majority of the volunteers at the food banks in the area are senior citizens, they had to shut down.”

Because of this, Skagit Gleaners has rescued a lot more food than usual. They have also been able to redistribute food to help support migrant workers, shelters and other organizations and groups in need.

Other gleaning organizations in Western Washington have not been able to expand their programs during the pandemic. In fact, two in Whatcom County have been forced to shrink operations. Both the Gleaning Pantry in Ferndale and the Small Potatoes Gleaning Project, based out of the Bellingham Food Bank, have had to reduce activities to accommodate social distancing and safety guidelines.

The Gleaning Pantry has followed similar operation plans as Skagit Gleaners, where it has moved from being open three days a week to six with fewer people allowed to come each day.

“There are things we’ve had to change,” said Jennifer Misner, president of the Gleaners Pantry. “There were members who were volunteering who were tapping out. They couldn’t do it anymore. So we had to figure out another way to do it, and that’s with smaller numbers of people and more gleans so there is less food that they are sorting through.”

As with most operations within the Bellingham Food Bank, the Small Potatoes Gleaning Project runs on volunteers, many of whom have been there for years, said Jessa Patton, gleaning coordinator.

This year, the Small Potatoes Gleaning Project asked anyone over the age of 50 to opt-out of volunteering. This lack of volunteers has limited operations, said Patton.

The COVID-19 pandemic will have a lasting impact on communities and on how gleaning organizations are run, said Curry.

“We are just seeing the beginning stages of economic crises in our community, and unfortunately, a lot of the people who’ve been laid off may not recover from this for many more years,” Curry said. “So I imagine that the need of families needing access to low-cost food is going to keep increasing.”

Kasey Cruz is a senior Fairhaven College student concentrating on the intersections between the environment, economics, and social justice.