Gleaning and improving nutrition for food banks
Type of practice Reuse for food
Name of practice Gleaning and improving nutrition for food banks
Name of main actor Parker Farms
Type of actor(s) Farmers, Consumers
Location United States of America
Stage of implementation Consumption, Farm
Year of implementation 1989
What was/is being done? Parker Farms in Oak Grove, Virginia, USA,
has welcomed gleaning groups since the
late 1980s, to gather what is left after
harvests. According to the farm manager,
the biggest value to the farm is
that product raised for the purpose of
consumption is actually consumed. He
also explained that much of the food
gleaners do gather was initially left behind
for purely cosmetic reasons – a
curved cucumber or a sparse ear of
corn, even though once sliced, no one
would ever know it once was curved.
During warmer months, groups from
Bread for the City's programme
called Glean for the City travel to
Parker Farms with volunteers to
gather discarded or overlooked
produce, sometimes collecting
up to 900 kg in a single trip.
Outcomes and impacts This
collection of different kind of
produce such as apples, sweet
corn, squash and broccoli
greatly improve the nutritional
content of food shelter
meals, while making the
best use of the natural resources
used to create
this food. The FWF model
calculates that, given
the average footprint of
vegetables in USA at
the production level,
saving 900 kg of produce
is equivalent to
saving 2 173 kg
CO2eq and 85 000
m3 of water .