Understanding the impact, potential, and scope of the Nationwide Gleaning effort on-farm food loss and residential food waste.

View the project report

Commodities

• Fruits: apples, cherries, citrus, grapes, melons, peaches, pears, persimmon
• Vegetables: artichokes, asparagus, beans, beets, broccoli, brussel sprouts, cabbages, carrots, cauliflower, cucurbits, eggplant, greens (leafy), greens (lettuces), onions, peppers, radishes (culinary), sweet corn, sweet potatoes, tomatoes, turnips

Practices

• Sustainable Communities: food loss and waste recovery/reduction, food sovereignty

The U.S. wastes enough food to feed 150 million people, yet thirty-five million Americans are food insecure.
(1)  Food waste has ripple effects that are both social and environmental. While the amount of food wasted post-harvest is staggering, most food waste reports do not consider pre-harvest food loss. While it is generally understood that significant food loss occurs on farms, the true scope of on-farm food loss is poorly understood. In addition to on-farm food loss, millions of fruit trees go un-harvested annually in cities nationwide. 

We can’t develop practical solutions to these problems without adequate data. Gleaners are uniquely positioned to gather the needed data. With over 200 organizations in 42 states, gleaning organizations have a vast reach across farm sizes, crop types, and geographic regions. The Association of Gleaning Organizations (AGO) is the only group working to unite gleaners from across the U.S. to understand the gleaning movement more fully and provide the needed support to grow its capacity. 

AGO defines gleaning as the act of gathering food from a plant or from someone who gathered it directly from a plant. Although many organizations do other types of food rescue, our support focuses on this type of gleaning. Our members’ tasks include leading volunteers to harvest unharvested produce from farms, post-harvest food rescue from farms and farmers markets, and harvesting underutilized fruit trees and community gardens. This funding will allow us to gather data on how much food is lost on farms and wasted from urban fruit trees and learn what gleaners are doing to address this form of food loss. 

We will use our vast network to gather over 2,000 data points on the type and scale of on-farm food loss. This data will be uploaded to a database. Once this information is collected, AGO will allow others to access the raw data in real-time. At the end of the project, we will compile this information into a report that details the findings. This information will be helpful not only to gleaning organizations around the country but also to policymakers and other NGOs like ReFED.

We will use the information gathered to update our 2020 Gleaning Census with a 2025 version. This report gives a view of the gleaning effort in the U.S. Other deliverables will include fact sheets about food loss and waste prevention, and training resources for gleaners. Lastly, these activities will be supported by three annual in-person gatherings of gleaning organizations held in different regions of the U.S. In conjunction with these activities, we will continue to provide training for gleaning organizations. Training will cover various valuable and timely topics, including how to gather reliable data about on-farm food loss, how to share that information with farms, how to offer resources to farms who wish to monetize this food loss, and how to better rescue these forms of food loss. This comprehensive response will reduce food loss and waste, increase community self-reliance, and improve outcomes for all involved.

1. Better understand the amount of produce that goes un-harvested on farms each year. Once there is more precise data from a national data set, more informed decisions can be made that will lead to reduced food loss on farms.
2. Help gleaning programs adapt and identify best practices to most effectively reduce food loss and waste. Specifically, we are focused on loss and waste before harvest and pre-wholesale. This will improve the effort of gleaners nationwide to minimize food loss and waste. To do so, we will gather up-to-date information on the gleaning movement's effort to rescue food in the US, analyze this data for the best practices, and share those best practices with the wider gleaning community.
3. Understand the potential impact of unharvested fruit trees on cities' efforts to promote healthy eating, food sovereignty, and food security. 
4. Improve profitability and decision-making for small and mid-scale farms across the US. We aim to help farmers better understand the amount of food not consumed in real-time and historically by crop type. In addition to this information, we aim to provide better information on how to monetize that produce. This information will lead to less food loss on farms and increased farmer profitability.
5. Increase the availability of fresh produce at small charity distribution sites around the country.