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The U.S. throws away well over 100 billion pounds of food each year, wasting up to 20 percent of America’s entire food supply. At the same time, 49 million people, including more than 16 million children, are at risk of going hungry. The most reliable way to strengthen food security is for local communities to build our own strong and resilient local and regional food systems.
ForestRFeeds is the food security strategy of ForestR, which includes vegetable seedling giveaways, a 1,500 packet seed bank, a fruit gleaning program, and gardening and food security education. In the future, we plan to add harvest exchanges and food forest pocket parks.
Our gleaning program harvests several hundred pounds of excess produce each week, on average, from neighbors with fruit trees, for donation to local food banks. This prevents food waste, while providing healthy food to struggling families.
Since March of 2020, we have recaptured almost 10,000 pounds of fruit from neighborhood trees and diverted it to food banks. In 2020, a gleaning team of 2-4 volunteers averaged one harvest a week and donated 2,800 lbs of produce to food banks. In 2021, we averaged 1.4 harvests per week, and donated 6,850 lbs of produce so far. We aim to double those results in 2022. The gleaning program is limited only by the number of produce donors and gleaners we can recruit, train, organize, and manage.
We hope to expand all of our ForestRFeeds initiatives next year and over the next five years. We envision Gleaning Guilds, VeggiePaloozas, Seed Banks, Food Forest Pocket Parks, and an expansion of home gardens in every town in the Bay Area and beyond. We envision adding vegetable gleaning to the program from farmers markets, small farms, and wholesale produce recovery. And we also plan to undertake food justice advocacy to address the food desert problem in urban areas.
To volunteer or seek a green gig with ForestRFeeds, register here, and we'll get in touch.
To offer or help raise a directed donation, visit and share the ForestRFeeds GoFundMe at https://gofund.me/cce8f4ae.
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