It's not always simple to give food to food banks. Exhibit A: The uproar over the deer population in Shawnee Mission Park this summer and concerns over a plan to donate deer meat to local food pantries.
Regulations are designed to ensure that the food is safe to consume and has been properly handled. To be accepted by Harvesters, game meat needs to be processed and stamped at the United States Department of Agriculture.
But two groups on opposite coasts hope to change the way food is donated to nonprofits like Harvesters, using social media and technology to connect volunteers with food pantries.
Food Forward, a collective in Los Angeles, uses e-mail, Facebook, blogs and Twitter to help bring together volunteers, fruit tree owners and food banks. The idea is to have people help harvest fruit trees in neighborhoods, where otherwise the bounty would go to waste. Filmmaker Elizabeth Dell tells the Los Angeles Times that what's satisfying is how easy this concept is to grasp:
"You understand the value of what you're doing. You just picked 1,200 pounds of fruit. And we all know that within three calendar days that will be in the hands of people all over Los Angeles who really need it."Last year, 30,000 pounds of produce were donated to area food pantries.
On the East Coast, Civil Eats has the story
of another approach to improving the diets of people without means.
Gaining Ground in Concord, Massachusetts, is a non-profit farm that gave 30,000 pounds of organic produce to needy families between April and October. The capital and labor for the farm
often comes from the same group of donors/volunteers.
"I'm not a farmer. I'm a farm enabler," says board member Stona Fitch.
There's
something to be said for communities finding ways to make it easier to
donate to food banks and families that need assistance. Granted, there
will always be less regulation around produce than meat, in terms of
food safety and handling. But it's nice to see that somebody may have found a way to improve society via social media.
[Image via Flickr: sflovestory]
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Your readers may want to visit www.AmpleHarvest.org - a site that helps diminish hunger by enabling backyard gardeners to share their crops with neighborhood food pantries.
The site is free both for the food pantries and the gardeners using it.
Over 900 food pantries nationwide are already on it and more are signing up daily.
It includes preferred delivery times, driving instructions to the pantry as well as (in many cases) information about store bought items also needed by the pantry (for after the growing season).
If your community has a food pantry, make sure they register on AmpleHarvest.org.
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