Urban Harvesters Scavenge Backyards to Feed the Hungry

[Shallah Kali]

The idea is so simple: Trees produce more food than people can eat. Most of the fruit goes to waste. Get the food and donate it to those in need.
http://www.alternet.org/food/145875/low-hanging_fruit:_how_local_gleaning_groups_prevent_food_waste_and_feed_the_hungry_?page=entire

Matt Jurach, a gung-ho harvester, knows this feeling well. Under a bright sun on a warm Saturday morning in February, he role-plays for the rest of the group, explaining how to best approach homeowners who, like his dad, might be protective of their fruit trees. Jurach has volunteered at five fruit-harvesting events in the past year and knows what he's talking about.

"I'm such a sucker for efficiency," Jurach explains later. "It kills me to see all the effort people put into a tree and it produces all this fruit, then it falls onto the ground and rots. It's understandable, because we're busy people. But when you have a group, we complete the last step."

That last step involves salvaging excess produce from abandoned orchards and residential backyards, and donating the fruit to local food-assistance programs, helping to alleviate food insecurity and provide a substitute for unhealthy processed, canned or packaged food typically supplied to those in need.

On this Saturday, 25 volunteers assemble as part of Harvest Sacramento's http://harvestsacramento.wordpress.com/ tree-canvassing event, where they will spend the next four hours walking among the bungalows and Tudor houses in an affluent neighborhood, collecting names and addresses of residents willing to share the fruit hanging from their trees. The non-profit group touts more than 100 homes in its database and more homeowners contact them daily.

"It's already more than we can handle," says Stannard, the group's co-organizer. Harvest Sacramento has no funding, but it has the willingness of volunteers eager to help fight hunger in California's "City of Trees."

snip

Typically, a single fruit tree http://homeorchard.ucdavis.edu/why.html will produce 200 to 300 pounds a year, making community-gleaning groups the low-hanging fruit to addressing food access. And with the social benefit and personal satisfaction high, the idea has caught on like wildfire across the United States. Groups exist in Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Hawaii, Massachusetts, Florida, Kentucky, Pennsylvania and there are 14 in California. The Society of St. Andrew gleans all over the country.

Oregon
http://www.ourcommunityharvest.org/share/register.php?cid=1001

Washington http://www.facebook.com/pages/Small-Potatoes-Gleaning-Project/132788945963

Idaho http://www.backyardharvest.org/

Hawaii http://waste-not-want-not.org/index.php?content=home

Massachusetts http://www.bostonareagleaners.org/

Florida http://www.philanthropicks.org/

Kentucky http://home.insightbb.com/~igrowfood/LUGN/

Pennsylvania http://www.phillyorchards.org/

Society of St. Andrew http://www.endhunger.org/

[cutlassmama]

1. my grandma used to do this during the great depression

[HCE SuiGeneris]

2. K & R

[SoCalDem]

3. In my grandmother's neighborhood, there were apple trees lining the alley

and we kids would ride bikes down the alley, and grab an apple if we could..

All, but one cranky guy, approved..He would sit on the BACK porch to watch for kids "stealing" his apples.. he never bothered to clean up the ones that littered the alley..the ones that fell off the tree, unused..except for the occasional bird..

Lots of people around here don't ever pick their citrus..:(

[Hekate]

5. After he was grown my son told me he could eat his lunch on the way home from school off yard trees

I never thought of it that way, but it made me LOL. As an adult I won't go into someone's yard, but if there's a tree with branches hanging over a fence by the sidewalk, I feel like that fruit is fair game. I feel like the homeowners are being generous by not trimming the branches away from the fence.

I don't understand the mindset of that cranky guy at all.

Hekate

[bridgit]

4. Yep and thanks for posting these links n/t

[kestrel91316]

6. Fine, IF AND ONLY IF they have the owner's permission. People used to come into my FENCED yard

when I was in the house to steal my fruit and veggies that I worked very hard and spent a lot of money to grow. And they would pick stuff before it was fully ripe, before I ever had a chance.

Apricots, lemons, loquats, apples, figs, and of course tomatoes and peppers and squash and cukes. They managed to avoid the eggplant and root crops. I caught a woman early one Saturday morning - little old Persian grandma. When I ran her off, she said "Oh, are they yours, I didn't know", like she had no concept of private property. And yet she came back and I caught her twice more stealing lemons. She and her friends also used to steal my neighbor's oranges right our of their FULLY FENCED YARD, too.