I am Nita Kurmins Gilson.
I am one of the co founders of Produce Good.
We are a food recovery nonprofit.
We source, glean, and distribute excess
fruits and vegetables all over San Deigo county
and distribute those to the food insecure.
Gleaning has a lot of history.
What you really need to know
is that gleaning is the idea that those
who have surplus crops share with those who do not.
What we are doing here, we are bringing
gleaning into the twenty-first century,
so we are using that same concept
of harvesting excess and bringing it to those in need.
If you live in an area that has a long
growing season like I do in San Diego,
you know how much of the fruit around you
is going to waste, falling on the ground.
Actually 40% of all food is wasted in the US.
That is almost half.
While 1 in 6 people are food insecure,
which means they do not know where
their next meal is coming from.
It is a ridiculous and solvable problem.
What we are here to do it to try to solve that
by our work with gleaning.
What if I were to tell you that there is
more than enough food in the US to feed everybody?
The problem is not that we do not have enough food.
The problem is that we do not have enough
access to the food by the people who need it.
What we are trying to do here at
Produce Good is to solve that problem.
We are reducing waste and hunger
in one sweet step, as we like to say.
Our volunteers harvest excess fruit
and vegetables from orchards, backyards, and farmers markets.
They take that excess bounty to local food agencies.
We work with hundreds of back yard growers,
farmers, and volunteers to make this happen.
We also work at 4 farmer's markets in San Diego.
We collect all the produce the vendors cannot sell.
Our volunteers hand out branded bins
to farmers at the end of the market.
We collect all of this incredible bounty.
Then we transport and deliver to local feeding agencies.
Hungry people are receiving nutritious
fruits and vegetables that would
otherwise go to waste.
The farmers get a tax receipt for their generous donation.
These crops took time, water, and love to grow.
The farmers are so happy to have this option
to donate their bounty and not let it go to waste.
By sourcing, picking, and transporting
the fruit in the same community,
we are empowering communities
to feed themselves.
Our decentralized, community-based
model can be replicated anywhere
in the United States where there are
trees, farms, and people who want to share their bounty.
If you are interested in starting
a gleaning group of your own,
you might want to first check to see
if there is somebeody already doing the same thing
because you do not want to double your efforts.
First of all, see if there is an existing group.
Then, if you cannot find one, here are some good tips.
First you identify the grove or the trees
or the yard where the fruit is.
You need to find out where it is located.
Then you want to contact the owner of the trees
and make sure that it is okay that you come and pick the fruit.
You might want to also explain that there
is a Good Samaritan Act, a federal law
that protects them from liability so that
they can donate in good faith.
They do not have to worry about being sued.
You also want to make sure that you
have a place to distribute the harvest.
Unless you are going to be eating it all yourself,
you definitely want to contact a group
that can take this excess bounty.
I would check local churches, food pantries, shelters.
Those are great places to start.
Then you need to set up a time and a day for the gleaning.
Preferably morning. That is usually a good time.
You need to be able to let your gleaners
know what day and where to meet.
When you get to the property, be very respectful.
Remember this is someone's property.
You want to treat it as you would treat
your own and leave it as good
or better than you found it.
Sometimes the tree owner wants to
pick their own fruit and that is great.
Then you can act as the middle man
in picking up the fruit and you are taking
it to a local agency for them.
To start gleaning, you are going to need some equipment.
At the very least, you are going to need
a bag or a container to put your gleaned fruit in,
clippers, and gloves, if you have them.
Also, a picker pole.
These are wonderful if you have high
fruit and places that are hard to reach.
One of the easiest, and my favorite method,
to pick citrus is the pull and twist,
which is exactly what it sounds like.
You are going to pull and twist and if the fruit is ripe,
it comes right off in your hand and into your bag.
The second method is if you like to use clippers.
Sometimes you will need to use
them for more fragile fruits.
You will take your clipper, you will
clip it right at the base of the fruit,
so you do not have much stem showing.
That is the cleanest way to do that.
One of our favorite pieces of equipment
here at Produce Good is the picker pole.
If you are able to, it is a wonderful
thing to have to glean because it gets
the fruit that is very far up or out of the way.
This is how it works.
It is a telescoping set up, so you
pull and then you twist it.
Then you can reach that unreachable fruit.
TaDa! and there it is!
Since 2010 Produce Good has recovered
650,000 pounds of edible fruits and vegetables,
provided almost 2 million servings
to the food insecure of San Diego,
while keeping 325 tons of perfectly
edible produce from the landfill.
We have done all of this with 3 staff
members and thousands of volunteers.
This just shows what a good idea can do,
how powerful a good idea can be.
We can all produce good everyday.
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