People who have attended fall festivals at area pumpkin patches may think that in late October, the fields have been picked clean. Look closely, and the unattractive pumpkins, imperfectly shaped or without stems, remain.
And the summer joke about locking your car so the neighbors can’t put the plethora of zucchini squash inside? Sometimes it’s not a joke.
Every harvest season, there’s produce that can be used but, for several reasons, isn’t. For centuries, gleaning has referred to the collection of leftover grain and produce that is left behind after harvest. The practice dates back to Old Testament times, when landowners were commanded to leave some of the harvest for the poor, orphans, widows and foreigners.
Today, the term largely has been replaced by two words: food recovery. Last fall, the ancient practice received a new twist in Sioux Falls when volunteers gathered to turn donated produce into salsa, marinara sauce and vegetable soup to feed families and individuals over the winter.
The food rescue system is a pilot project started through Sioux Falls Thrive, a cradle-to-career workforce development agency. The jars and bags of food were distributed through another Sioux Falls Thrive service, the Mobile Food Pantry.
Its goal is to ensure that produce no longer goes to waste, said Sioux Falls Thrive president Michelle Erpenbach.
“The data on food waste is crazy,” she said. “The USDA figures at least 30 percent, if not more, of the food that’s grown, even right here on farms, goes to waste before it even gets to the grocery store. Really what the goal is to find out, one, how to prevent some of the waste, then also help alleviate some of the issues we have with food insecurity with hunger in our town. We want to rescue it from being wasted and turn it into something that’s edible and people will enjoy.”
Sioux Falls Thrive’s goal of making sure every child has the same opportunities to succeed means it often must focus on making sure no one goes hungry, Erpenbach said. Food security is essential, and community meetings have been conducted to create equitable and sustainable access to food in every neighborhood.
“Some neighborhoods have it better than others, so let’s see if we can level it,” Erpenbach said.
One way could be to take surplus produce and turn it into accessible products. If someone has apple trees in their yard that produce much more fruit than they can use, it needs a system to get it into others’ hands.
For the pilot project last September, the volunteers ended up with 203 pounds of produce. Volunteer Arlene Brandt-Jensen started that day driving to Blue Sky Vegetable Co. near Worthing to pick up produce such as tomatoes, peppers and cabbage. Blue Sky is a family-owned farm-share company. Other produce such as squash also had been donated.
“I helped wash some produce, then I just kind of stood back and watched how the chefs talked amongst themselves,” Brandt-Jensen said. “They said, ‘well, we’ve got this and this, let’s do this with them’ and started chopping and roasting vegetables. I just kind of stayed out of the way and watched the amazing chefs do their thing.”
The chefs were recruited by another Sioux Falls Thrive volunteer, Amanda Viau Hopkins. By day, she’s the director of food service and interim director of environmental services for Avera McKennan and knows a network of chefs.
“I just sent out an email to some of the culinary people that are in my friend zone and world,” she said. “They’re friends of mine that have similar hopes for our community, and those who were able to make it did.”
Viau Hopkins said the goal of ensuring viable healthy produce not only doesn’t go to waste but also benefits those in need of support has her wholehearted support.
The actual day itself, she said, was “super-fun.”
“As I reflect back on it, there were moments of growth and camaraderie,” Viau Hopkins said. “No one knew each other, and by the end of it, people were finding out the connections they had. Volunteers were becoming friends. At the end, packing up the products in the freezer to be sure it was going to be held appropriately, I could see bags and bags, and it looked great.”
Brandt-Jensen, a master gardener since 2011, is president of the Minnehaha County Master Gardeners. She raises the usual tomatoes, peppers and onions and more unusual produce such as 40 pounds of sweet potatoes and edamame, or immature soybeans. Her food storage area includes pizza sauce, pasta sauce, chili base and frozen green beans and broccoli.
“I am very much a recycler, and I don’t want things to go to waste, which includes food, and I’m also a climate champion,” Brandt-Jensen said. “Food waste is one of the major contributors to greenhouse gasses. When food rots in landfills, it gives off methane, and that’s 20 times more potent a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.”
If Sioux Falls Thrive establishes a food-rescue system, that will help mitigate climate change and food waste and help people care for their neighbors, she said.
“We need to take care of the people that don’t have the resources we do, and we can offer food to those who need it.”
Brandt-Jensen is also a member of Thrivent. She received a grant from financial services company for $250 that was used to purchase spices, canning jars and lids — and pizza to serve the volunteers.
Wesley United Methodist Church, near downtown Sioux Falls, has a commercial kitchen in its basement that was used for the pilot project. The Boys and Girls Clubs of the Sioux Empire donated tomatoes to the pilot project; in return, it received some of the salsa.
Other donations were made to churches with food pantries in the Laura B. Anderson and Terry Redlin elementary neighborhoods. The marinara sauce was donated to the Mobile Food Market, where it was given away to customers.
“For one week, you got marina sauce if you bought pasta,” Erpenbach said. “You could buy most pasta for less than a buck, so you could have a full meal for almost no money.”
Determining how to distribute the produce from the food-rescue system is one of the next steps. Small supplemental food pantries don’t need 50 cases of tomatoes, the way Feeding South Dakota can use them, but 10 jars could make a significant difference, she said.
This winter, Sioux Falls Thrive will build a “tool kit” for the food-rescue system and reach out to people and churches that want to make it work, Erpenbach said. Groups that take care of neighborhood gardens also can take part. By tomato season in July, a system to take on the excess should be in place.
“We’ll have a place for the food that would otherwise not have a place to go,” Erpenbach said.
People interested in helping with this food-rescue program or other food-security efforts can email Sioux Falls Thrive at [email protected]. More information also is available here.
“My big question is always ‘Who is missing from this conversation?’” Erpenbach said. “Email us what you know that you think would help this project grow in effectiveness. The end result is we proved that we can do it, we proved that there is an appetite, a need for not only rescuing that food but turning it into something that didn’t need to be used right away.”
The bags and jars that emerged at the end of the pilot project day represented more than rescued produce, Viau Hopkins said.
“It was a family being served in our community,” she said. “That was pretty impactful.”
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