Welcome to the Memorial Day weekend blog-a-thon for Feeding America! This weekend's series is the latest in an on-going community fund-raising project for our nation’s food banks that began in 2008. Since then, thanks to all of you, Daily Kos has provided a quarter-of-a-million meals to hungry Americans.
Part of the challenge to feeding so many people is dealing in perishable foods, such as fresh fruits and vegetables and those are so very important to any healthy and well rounded diet, especially in this age of cheap and unhealthy fast food.
Alternet had a very good piece to explain exactly Why Salads Are More Expensive Than Hamburgers.
This graphic was recently published by the Consumerist, with the few words, “This is why you’re fat.”
The New York Times had a little bit more to say about the graphic, which by the way was put together by Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine. The Times says:
Thanks to lobbying, Congress chooses to subsidize foods that we’re supposed to eat less of.
Of course, there are surely other reasons why burgers are cheaper than salads. These might include production costs, since harvesting apples is probably more naturally seasonal than slaughtering cows (even though both are in demand year-round). Transportation and storage costs might also play a role, as it’s probably easier to keep ground beef fresh and edible for extended periods of time, by freezing it, than cucumbers.
So the challenge has to do with getting fresh fruits and vegetables to the people who need it the most and yet there is a way to do so and it's economical, community based and environmentally friendly. It's fruit harvesting from public and private fruit trees and it can mean hundreds of thousands of pounds of fresh fruits for food pantries all over the US.
Imagine all the fruit trees you might find in Orange County, California. I can't tell you how many but I can tell you this, just like every other County around the Country, our food banks are facing shortages in resources to feed those who need help.
And so there goes the disconnect, when the fruit on those trees goes unharvested and falls to the ground, when it is uneaten and could serve to give much needed local fruit to those in nutritional need, something needs to be done.
But there in comes the difficulty, harvesting all this fallen fruit is time consuming and expensive. It takes an army of people who understand just how important the task is.
The City of Los Angeles has their own organization called, Food Forward which does this exact service.
FOOD FORWARD is an all volunteer grassroots group of Angelenos who care about reconnecting to our food system and making change around urban hunger.
We convene at properties we have been invited to and glean the excess fruit on their trees, donating 100% to local food pantries.
Our current receiving partners are SOVA Community Food and Resource Program, a program of Jewish Family Services, and MEND POVERTY. Combined, they distribute the food we glean to over 30,000 clients a month across Southern California.
It is our hope at Slow Food Orange County to start our own service program modeled after Food Forward and to make sure that all this fallen fruit reaches our local food Banks, such as Second Harvest Food Bank and The Orange County Food Bank.
We were inspired to start our own service project as a Slow Food chapter because Slow Food Los Angeles has partnered with Food Forward.
Food Forward continues to grow, reducing waste and helping to put fresh fruit in the hands of those who are most in need. Slow Food Los Angeles has been pleased to help spread the word about Food Forward’s work, and we are delighted that so many of our members have volunteered to pick fruit and to help in other ways big and small.
Big Sunday – Bigger can be better is an entry from one of their recent big picks...
Finally coming out of the aches, pains and citrus bliss of an incredible weekend…
We are proud to say the FF team grew by leaps and bounds this weekend, and they all should take a bow: whether it was Bari, Win and Byron holding down the forts as pick leaders in Reseda and North Hollywood or the folks like Wendy, Deborah, Robert, David, Judy , Martha, Charles, Emily, Luke, Rich and Elizabeth who helped coordinate the over two dozen properties we gleaned for Big Sunday weekend – or the over 100 volunteers who picked and picked – EVERYONE’S energy was amazing.
Riding up to SOVA Sunday to borrow their van (yes, FF STILL NEEDS A VAN!) I was once again enlightened to the diversity of who Food Forward serves. There sitting on the bench waiting for the pantry to open were Latino couples, elderly white men and women, Black mothers with babies, middle-aged homeless individuals, South Asian immigrant families…basically a huge cross section of LA – a sobering reminder that any one of us could be on that bench should the fragile systems that hold our lives and families together fail. That fact was driven home more as I arrived to our Northridge home based (courtesy of the Buratti family) to see volunteers arriving early – white, Latino, Asian, Black young, old…
Food Forward serves our community – and is made up of our community – a fact I am incredibly proud of. And the fact we, as a massive team inspired by the Big Sunday events, harvested nearly 12,000 lbs of fresh fruit that would have otherwise gone to waste, made it all the better.
What amazing work and energy? How much food goes wasted everyday in our Country because it merely rots on the tree or the ground? I didn't even attempt to find the statistics because I knew it would be far too depressing and wanted to focus on the positive aspects of this movement.
Food Forward is an important model and as Communications Chair for Slowfood Orange County, I can't tell you how excited I am that we are going to start on this venture (A huge thank you to our Committee Chair Heather S. for initiating this amazing project!) in the fall and give our Slow Food members the chance to not only live slow food principals but to practice them in the real world by allowing people in all economic circumstances access to local fruits.
Food Forward Shares Low Hanging Fruit...and then Some by Rick Nahmias
I've never thought of myself as a community organizer of any kind. But, a few months ago, having grown tired of seeing wasted fruit from my neighbors trees littering the yards and sidewalks of my neighborhood, and frustrated with the knowledge that in the last year alone food pantries across the nation have seen an over forty-percent up tick, I acted. I formed a grassroots all-volunteer effort that's since been named Food Forward. Its mission: to simultaneously alleviate urban hunger while fostering community interaction at a local level. In a nutshell, myself and a growing corps of Angelinos venture out weekly to glean people's excess fruit and donate 100% of it to local food pantries.
Though many know that LA's multi-million person bedroom community, the San Fernando Valley (home of "The Brady Bunch" and infamous Sherman Oaks Galleria) used to be endless fruit and nut orchards, few realize thousands of those trees planted decades ago which survived hideous strip malls and suburban sprawl each still bear upwards of a quarter ton of fruit annually. Unfortunately, most of this massive bounty falls to the ground and rots or is absconded with by a variety of well-fed rodents.
You know what, you could do this too, Food Forward has agreed to help us start our own program and walk us through the process, I doubt they would hesitate to help others. And here is where you can see if there is already another organization in your area, already doing this much needed work.
Stop letting that fruit go to waste and lets feed the people who need it the most!
This year, Feeding America conducted the largest ever survey of hunger in America: 2010 Hunger Report Key Findings. Download the Executive Summary and the entire report here.
49 million Americans: 1 in 6 American adults are hungry, and 1 in 4 American children are hungry.
Donate here, and ConAgra will match your donation dollar for dollar (up to a total collection of $250,000 in May.)
If you need to find a local food pantry, or if you want to volunteer your time you can find a nearby foodbank here.
Thanks so much for all you do.
All times Eastern!
Saturday, May 29:
Faces of Hunger (Introduction) by noweasels.
3 pm – Patriot Daily News Clearinghouse
6 pm – Chacounne
9 pm – teacherken
11 pm - Ellinorianne
Sunday, May 30:
10 am - rb137
1 pm – srkp23
4 pm – Timroff
7 pm - blue jersey mom
10 pm - boatsie