At Dog River Farm on Tuesday, Allison Levin and three volunteers salvaged nearly 150 pounds of rainbow chard which would otherwise have been destroyed.
Next, staff at Community Harvest of Central Vermont, of which Levin is founding executive director, will deliver those vegetables to local groups which provide food assistance near the Berlin farm — Capstone Community Action in Barre and the Montpelier Food Pantry, among others. In Montpelier, people have been lining up for hours before Levin’s Tuesday morning deliveries, which represent a large fraction of the fresh produce offered by the city’s food pantry, she said.
Community Harvest is one of a number of such organizations in Vermont which work both to strengthen nutrition assistance programs and to lessen food waste. Often, they are nonprofits which receive little or no public support. But as food assistance becomes more stretched in Vermont, and public funding for farmed food dwindles, local leaders say gleaning is an important way to help meet the state’s needs.
With thousands of Vermonters potentially set to lose Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits over the next few years — an outcome of sweeping federal cuts to the program — Levin thinks there will be greater need for gleaning work in the state.
“The work that we’re doing is going to be in even higher demand,” she said.
Gleaning is the practice of retrieving produce, or food more generally, that would otherwise go to waste. The produce Levin collects consists of what farmers call “seconds” — a fraction of the yield that isn’t flawless enough to sell in most grocery stores. The vegetables are still safe and edible, they just have dimples, bends or other deformities.
George Gross, who owns Dog River Farm, said without the service Levin provides, he would have to simply till the abandoned plants back into the soil.
Waiting for gleaners to arrive can be costly for farmers, Gross said, because growing seasons are short and the small nonprofits “can only do so much.” Produce donors across the state have also told gleaners that public reimbursement for donated produce would be helpful. But for Gross, it is important that his produce goes to good use, and equally that it stays local in Levin’s small network of partners.
“I want this food to stay in my community,” he said.
Gabe Zoerheide, the executive director of Willing Hands in Norwich, said he combines field work and garden crops with in-kind donations and wholesale recovery to deliver roughly a million pounds of food a year.
Perishable food is a crucial part of any response to food insecurity, he said, not least because fresh products tend to be more expensive to purchase. Willing Hands provides nearly half the fresh produce at Upper Valley Haven, one of the largest food pantries in the state. In total, Zoerheide’s team delivers to about 80 recipient organizations in Vermont and New Hampshire.
“This can provide a source of nutritious food to (clients) that they can count on,” said Michael Redmond, the executive director of Upper Valley Haven, which also operates temporary shelters in White River Junction.
But in areas farther north, gleaning programs sometimes have a less robust presence.
Amy Hornblas, executive director at the Neighbors in Action food pantry in Cabot and Lyndonville, said agricultural gleaning feels like an untapped resource in the area. At the moment, Hornblas said, her organization doesn’t receive much gleaned produce, but she hopes to change that.
Neighbors in Action recently drew attention for drawing such high demand that the Lyndon selectboard grew concerned about the volume of traffic through downtown. Caledonia, Essex, and Orleans counties all show higher rates of poverty and food insecurity than the state averages, according to a 2023 Northeast Kingdom Human Services report.
“There is an abundance of food,” said Hornblas in reference to surrounding farms. “We just gotta move it.”
Hillary Hust-Barber, the gleaning manager at Salvation Farms, said her team of two full-time employees is currently covering all of Lamoille Valley and the Northeast Kingdom.
Hust-Barber is also the administrator for the Vermont Gleaning Collective, which onboards volunteers and shares information between the state’s food recovery organizations. Neighbors in Action will host an event Aug. 9 at Salvation Farms in Morrisville to gather volunteers for gleaning in the area.
Richie Hourihan, owner of Cabot Smith Farm and donor to Salvation Farms, agreed it was a matter of labor. Up to 20% of his yield can be seconds, but he can’t collect it himself.
And the food, he said, ought to be salvaged. “All vegetables are perfect,” Hourihan said.
Although gleaning networks can play an important role in bolstering food access across Vermont, their leaders acknowledge that local food assistance systems cannot fully replace the scale of federal programs. Even though the work he does is important, Redmond said, it is “dwarfed” by the resourcing behind programs like SNAP.
Zoerheide agreed.
“I’m not going to pretend that we can make up the difference, but we are committed as an organization to do everything we can to meet more of the need,” he said.
