The useful business of gleaning and preserving

Tipo de pratica Reuse for food

Nombre la actividad profesional The useful business of gleaning and preserving

Nombre del agente principal The Gleaning Project

Tipo de agente(s) ONG

Ubicación United States of America

Etapa de la puesta en práctica Cosecha

Año de puesta en práctica 2011

Actividades realizadas o en vías de realización Learning that every year farmers plough under almost 50 percent of what they grow when market conditions make them unprofitable to harvest, pack and ship, a California man saw an enormous surplus of organic produce and an eager market looking to buy it, but a scarcity of good distribution options. He teamed up with Bi-Rite Market and several other California businesses to create minimally processed, shelfstable products out of this extra produce. He bought the surplus produce at a reduced price from California farmers, in an effort to “capture the food at its very best moment,” preserve it, and sell it under their new label: The Gleaning Project. One of the Gleaning Project’s first experiments was green garlic, a crop that’s less perishable than most, making it the perfect starter crop. After buying 127 kg of green garlic at US$2.75 per half kilo – US$0.50 lower than the target price but high enough for the farmer to pay for labour and still make a profit. The project sent the main portion to a nearby commercial kitchen where it became 260 jars of green garlic pesto. A smaller portion went to local preservers, where they turned it into 85 jars of green garlic pickles. Now, both products are being sold at Bi-Rite for US$9.99 per jar. According to Bain, “each of the partners got pretty close to equal portions of the final sale price of the product.” No one will see big money this year, but without the project, that 127 kg of green garlic would have become fertilizer in the fields. Plans are underway to turn apricots into jam and August’s booming tomato crop into sauce and then to look back and determine which products were most successful. The project’s success hinges on a number of factors and players, highlighting the interconnectedness and unpredictability of a local food system. The farmer may have only a few days to alert Bi-Rite of a surplus, and then there will be the need to find a commercial kitchen that can handle the pickling or preserving. Because many commercial kitchens have multiple week-long waiting lists, the companies associated with the project will play a crucial role by providing the space and skills for pickling on extremely short notice.

Resultados y repercusiones The FWF model estimates, based on the average footprint of vegetables in the USA at the production phase, that saving 127 kg of garlic is equivalent to avoiding 306 kg CO2eq and wasting 12 m3 of water.