I volunteer at a food bank, and the company that sends us our food decides what we get. Last Tuesday they sent so much produce we could not fit it all into fridges. We were trying to give away cases of the food on Wednesday, but people were turning it down because they had no place to store a case of tomatoes, or cauliflower. This was what we had left after last Wednesday’s morning give away. Not pictured the 5000lbs of watermelons, the 2500lbs of onions (those will last a lot longer).
The company that supplies us wants to move from sending shipments every other week, to once a month. This would cause even more no produce loss.
It is so frustrating to have all this food for it to go bad. Even if we got the same volume of produce, but there was variation in what it is we could give it away easier.
Edit: I posted this in a comment.
Because of bureaucracy we have to request this. If it is found out we are giving away the food to unapproved recipients we can lose all of our funding. If we give to unapproved recipients and they in turn give us prepared food to give out, that is okay.
Word got out that we were loading up my pickup with food and taking it to the homeless camps. I did get a number of them to start coming to the bank to get food. But it was easier when I could take stuff to them.
We are not allowed to simply give it out to anyone. This is not like a church pantry where all of the food is donated by the community and’s parishioners. There is government funding, as well as private businesses, which I am guessing get their money back from the government for funding this. If we could simply give it to anyone we would not be in this situation.
I have been volunteering feeding homeless for a number of years and I was never happier than when I was tasked with throwing away compromised food. The sadism of it mixed with the altruism, sweet Jesus.
There isn’t a food shortage. There are significant problems of wastage created by marketing value and poor distribution. Many solutions have been brought up over the years. To deaf ears. Because your local grocer needs to put 1000 tomatoes out to mostly rot because it looks aesthetically pleasing.
You could give it to a pig/chicken farm, or compost it at the very least.
If I were in that situation, I would try quickly whipping up some homemade posters and put them at our market square, maybe in front of schools, and in front of grocery stores. I would make sure to specify why these are given away, otherwise people might be suspicious.
That would probably illegal, but …well… who’s going to sue a food bank over hanging a few posters for 2 days?
I’m sure there will be people salivating at the opportunity.
Well, I commented that before I learned that OP is in New Mexico.
In the US? Where we pour bleach on food that has been discarded to make sure that someone who is hungry can’t eat it?
But yes, this is a great suggestion. Also, looking for a local farm or farms that could feed these to their animals (specifically chickens or pigs).
GOOD! Spending money on that is SOCIALISM! Is would MUCH Rather my Tax Dollars go into Elon Musks BANK ACCOUNT!
Hopefully there is a process in place to recycle it into compost.
Trying to get it to animal farmers.
Contact some animal shelters too. There might be some of it they would take depending on the food and the animal.
You might try contacting restaurants and see if they have the capacity to cook ketchup (or something else with a longer shelf life) from the tomatoes. Technically, everybody can do that. I’m thinking of restaurants because of their bigger pots.
Speaking of restaurants: They might have a food dehydrator that can process some of the cauliflower, as well.
We have tried to work with restaurants in the past, giving them extra produce for free and they in turn have to prepare so many meals for unhoused and our volunteers and they refused.
We are looking at being able to use the community kitchen to process it ourselves. The issue then comes down to enough volunteer hours to do this.
extra produce for free and they in turn have to prepare so many meals
Nitpick: If you’re demanding that they do something in return, it’s not free.
In this case your two options are: A) Someone gets the food and puts it to use; B) it spoils. In this scenario I believe giving it away, no strings attached, might be the better option.
Because of bureaucracy we have to request this. If it is found out we are giving away the food to unapproved recipients we can lose all of our funding. If we give to unapproved recipients and they in turn give us prepared food to give out, that is okay.
Word got out that we were loading up my pickup with food and taking it to the homeless camps. I did get a number of them to start coming to the bank to get food. But it was easier when I could take stuff to them.
I hadn’t considered bureaucratic obstacles… that sucks.
The other obstacle is volunteer hours, as I mentioned in another reply, there is only so much we can do. Many of the volunteers are only there to get some extra food, others for community service (as required by a judge in restitution for a crime), others as required by their church. Most are ONLY there for the volunteer hours and do not care about anything other than getting their hours. They will not go beyond their basic duties.
There are weeks we barely have enough people to keep the doors open to give out food. I am no longer in a position to volunteer whenever they need me.
For the watermelons you might try to contact a local vintner. They may be able to process them into wine and/or liquor.
My initial thought was that the sugar content in watermelon would be to low to acquire any watermelon taste when made into a wine without an artificial flavoring added, apparently watermelon has more sugar that I thought. (More than peaches apparently, never would have guessed that). Twice that of strawberries…
Usually you try to aim for about 18g of sugar in 100 grams of product for the fermentation. Which I think people used that just because that’s what grapes hover around and they ferment very well without additives.
This is horribly frustrating mate. And thanks for what you do!
You have most of the ingredients for a gluten free spaghetti dinner with Cauliflower pasta and a watermelon heavy fruit salad appetizer. Cook it up and serve it up to your local soup kitchen. That or start giving it away to local restaurants. They’ll go thru a pallet of anything perishable in an afternoon. Whatever they cant plate or prepare will just get dumped into that week’s soup of the day! Lol
Also: Where is this? It’s a small world, some Lemming might pick up a cauliflower or two.
This same thing plays out at many major food banks countrywide.
Find out where the manufacturer’s warehouses and production plants actually are, and the nearest large food banks will be the recipients of their trash.
Rural nm
How rural? I found a Sikh temple north of Santa Fe that could maybe use it for their langar.
Where in North Madagascar?
Madagascar is pretty big.
North side of Main Street
Facebook canning groups are a great idea, as someone else mentioned. Them little old ladies can do pretty amazing things on short notice. Can I suggest hitting up local churches? The methodists, Episcopal and baptists are all particularly fond of doing drives and such, and may be able to do an impromptu canning drive for y’all
I take it “nm” stands for New Mexico. What’s the weather like there? Sun-drying might be an option, at least dried tomatoes are something people buy.
My first thought for some reason was “northern Manitoba” lol
I have gotten used to using the state abbreviation for New Mexico because a lot of people in the states see the “Mexico” and assume it is not a state. But they see NM and know that is a state. I forget that outside of the US people generally know our states better. Hell even our president does not realize we are a state.
That’s really funny and really sad at the same time.
Most Canadians know all US states, and I’m fairly certain I can match 95% of state postal abbreviations to their corresponding state (save for the ones starting with M, good luck lol). I’d like to see Americans try to put the huge landmass that is Manitoba (MB) on a map 😄
I don’t think I’ve ever been confused between what’s Mexico and what’s USA, and I feel like uneducated racist people may just be going off of the name, like Nevada / Arizona being spanish names and New Mexico referencing Mexico.
I think your server might contain a hint as to why…
Not that you’re necessarily Canadian or in Canada, but you probably get more Canadian-centric posts on your local feed.
Oh yeah no it’s a big, fat hint haha
Outside abq? If it’s near abq I’ll come get it
Messaged you
For the tomatoes you might see if there’s canning groups on Facebook for your area? It takes a metric fuck-ton of tomatoes to make a can of sauce so they’d likely be able to use quite a bit of them.
I think the bigger problem is that there are at least 50 trays of tomatoes there and it’ll take a bunch of kitchen space and time to process all of them, all of which has to be done on next-to-no notice. It’ll also take a lot of time and supplies to can them all - though at least whatever they have the time and space to process will be shelf-stable in the end.
The real question is who the fuck is this “company” that is supplying them with far more stock than they could possibly handle, and why the fuck are those incompetent morons handling so much produce at all?
What the food bank can manage would be known. All “excess” should be handled by the supplying company, instead of making their oversupply the problem of volunteers to manage and dispose of.
I’d be willing to bet the profits of the supplier are the reason for this entire situation.
Having volunteered at a church’s food distribution for over 25 years, I can say that some food banks are pretty special with how they do things. We purchase food from a large food bank for distribution once a month. If the food bank has a lot of produce or something they haven’t been able to move, sometimes they’ll throw a pallet or two extra on the trailer when we pick it up, so that they can get rid of it. When we get the trailer, sometimes it’s just a surprise what we end up with.
In general, we have some people that come that have extended families or neighbors that they give some of the surplus to. Then there’s the church that were hosted at. There’s some things that they’re able to keep for the next day to offer to the parishioners. Beyond that, there’s the occasional phone call to other churches to see if anybody could use it. In the end, the pastor knows a pig farmer where if we have a surplus of a surplus, some stuff will go to.
I think the “hit up local churches” suggestion from another commenter would help with that, since (larger) churches often have decent kitchens that are less likely to be getting used on a weekday.
If you’re nearish ABQ, I’ve got a pickup I’m happy to help transport with. I unfortunately don’t think I’m in the list of approved people, otherwise I’d be more than happy to take as many of those tomatoes as I could. Unfortunately I can’t get my kid to eat cauliflower to save their life, so I have limited uses for that.
It’s not the bureaucracy. It’s the capitalist that run the bureaucracy. In a society like this, it’s all about managing perception. It’s all about your brand. It’s about looking good and not doing good. As things start to centralize further and further, you’ll see what this is all about. In my town we have hoovervills. The homeless are there to remind you to work harder, or you’ll become homeless. Working inside the system will not work. Capitalism in the US Empire need overthrown.
The branding is one aspect, they definitely publicize the food bank donations and it’s often one of the few things food manufacturers do that sounds good. The rest is just profit and employing mass contract labor at near minimum wage.
If they threw out thousands of pounds of product it would look like a bad number if publicized… if they donate ten thousand pounds of tomatoes a couple days before they go bad they get to look like they donated ten thousand pounds of tomatoes in value, and then they get to write that off as a donation.
I’m pretty sure when they do said “donations” they get to write off the retail value, whereas if they just wrote it off as a loss to the business it would only be the actual cost.
Silly idle thought (for real): Suppose in a situation like this, particularly if people complain on the internet drawing attention to the fact that there’s 1000s of pounds of produce in a space that likely doesn’t have funding for strong security measures, a group of interested parties brought some trucks and took it without explicit permission or consent from the organization.
What’s the impact to the org in situations where this isn’t given away to unauthorized parties, but gets stolen instead?
I am in contact with someone now that may be facilitating something along these lines. Not to the extent with which you propose, but I am working on something.
Fair enough - glad you’re trying something to address this lot! Believe it or not, did actually mean this as a ‘what if/what are the ramifications for orgs like this if that happened’, but probably best not to entertain that yourself at the moment.
As a total aside, good song to keep spirits up today might be The Last Saskatchewan Pirate by Captain Tractor - very last line before final chorus is relevant :)
Good luck with what you’re doing!
If someone came and stole it all our parent entity would likely tell us we can no longer keep the door open to allow a breeze to come through the building. Or they would install metal bars on the doors.
I worked in the produce department at Jewel-Osco for some time. It was when I peaked in life. We never gave food away to anyone. It was either sold or found its way into the trash compactor. Kinda sad to waste so much food. But I was so lost in the produce sauce that I couldnt even process it
This is because if something goes bad from the food you give away the business will get sued for not having cold chain verification or a quality department to make sure the food was not altered in any way. Warehouses (aka ‘distribution centers’) typically have that kind of process, but retailers do not as Quality department employee salaries are typically several times what retail employees make, and often substantially higher than department managers, shift managers, and other low level retail management roles.
We are not allowed to simply give it out to anyone. This is not like a church pantry where all of the food is donated by the community and’s parishioners. There is government funding, as well as private businesses, which I am guessing get their money back from the government for funding this. If we could simply give it to anyone we would not be in this situation.
Yep. That’s really dumb. When people talk about government inefficiency, this is what they mean.
Is there any chance you have enough (wo)manpower to prepare and preserve it? Even watermelon can be pickled, dehydrated or made into a jam.
