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 .