How America’s Wasted Food Can Fulfill its Destiny
By Annaclaire Crumpton
December 8, 2019 at 3:30 pm
According to the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) a single American wastes 411 pounds of food per year. That’s approximately 133 billion pounds of food a year or 30–40 percent of the country’s entire food supply.
Meanwhile, 41 million Americans remain hungry.
However, hundreds of avid volunteers with food rescues across the front range of Colorado gear up their bikes and cars everyday to address this problem by delivering fresh, healthy food that would otherwise go to waste.
Flatiron Food Justice
Imagine following an orange from the tree its picked from in a sunny field in Florida. Next, its tossed into the back of a truck or processed in a mass facility to be prepared for consumption.
Eventually the vibrant fruit makes its way to shelves of grocery stores or individual retailers. Those that do not get picked up by an eager hand can be redistributed thanks to community collaboration.
“We are working towards a more just, less wasteful food system through food redistribution and participatory structures,” said Lindsey Loberg, the program director at Boulder Food Rescue. (BFR)
Among BFR’s goals is one to reduce food insecurity. In base though the term means to lack access to all of the foods you need in order to be nutritionally sound. The term has melded over the years to include a range of different definitions all to cover different spectrum of the economic ladder.
In order to reach those most vulnerable to food insecurity BFR flipped a traditional model of food distribution to low-income communities; today, the community is involved directly with their own food distribution.
Feedback on locations that would need the most fresh foods determine where that food is distributed. Volunteers then take to their bikes and sometimes vehicles for delivery. Last year, BFR distributed 545,000 pounds of food.
This food comes from cooperative relationships with local grocery stores, national grocery chains, and other stores.
Front Range Food Justice
An hour away in Denver, Amy Moore-Shipley, the development and marketing coordinator at Denver Food Rescue (DFR), emphasized their volunteer based program. They use ten bike trailers and sometimes vehicles to transport food to low income communities.
She said in a phone interview, “We lack so much education about our food and why we should eat whole grains and healthy fresh foods.”
Moore-Shipley emphasized the uniqueness of the structure of DFR, BFR, and CSFR are. “Places like food banks aren’t listening or talking to folks in the issue. We want to partner with what they need.”
Further South
Even further south, in Colorado Springs a similar food justice program thrives. Colorado Springs Food Rescue (CSFR) serves marginalized communities in the second biggest city in the state on bikes, in cars, and in gardens.
CSFR recently broke ground on a piece of land that will soon host their headquarters and community gardens.
An interview with a board member of CSFR (and the author’s father) spoke about his life as an Emergency Room physician who later found a calling to food justice through his oldest daughter.
Food Justice Frontlines
On a cold Thursday afternoon, mounds of bright orange peppers, onions and carrots stood in cardboard bins on the warehouse floor of FBLC. Patrons, who can shop there twice a week made their way through the fresh produce. Off to the side sat seasonal squash and some fresh pineapple displaying that FBLC was committed to distributing the same type of food as BFR.
The Food Bank for Larimer County (FBLC) helps thousands of people. Food banks could be thought of the macro level of food rescues — distributing food at a mass level that food rescues cannot. According to the food bank’s website, they have distributed 3.27 million pounds of fresh food so far in 2019.
Paul Donnelly, the communications manager said in an interview that at FBLC has an ingenuitive model as well, “very few food banks have walk in pantries…as part of Feed For America, we have a much more unique food sourcing that is almost like an online e-bay of food.”
We walked through the food bank’s warehouse, shelves stacked high with boxes upon boxes of food. He added, “this time of year we also see an extra influx of food coming in. We have lots of turkeys, pumpkin, cranberries and other seasonal foods being donated.”
One fridge was filled with Noosa Yogurt from the local Morning Fresh Dairy in Bellevue, Colorado. Other stacks of canned vegetables and graham crackers come in through partnerships with many organizations ranging from individual retailers, distributors, manufacturers, all the way to local food drives.
Donnelley introduced several of the food bank’s volunteers emphasizing the power that volunteering has for their organization. So far in 2019, volunteers have logged over 40,000 hours of service.
The Statistics
There are 40,200 food insecure people in Larimer County, 1 in 3 children or 33 percent in Larimer County are food insecure. Over half of those food insecure people have jobs and remain below the poverty line while either providing for themselves or others.
FBLC has a massive operation. But gaps of hunger in the community remain. In Larimer County, 33 percent of children are food insecure — a number that has not budged in over 5 years.
However, the efforts of the food bank among others does have an impact on numbers as well as people’s daily lives. The number of food insecure individuals in Larimer County has dropped over 1,500 individuals from its numbers in 2016.
Growing for the Future
In Larimer County, others still try to close the hunger gap. Larimer County has a program inspired by BFR called the Growing Project. Their distribution capacity is small compared to other food justice non-profits because they have a slightly different structure and a heavy emphasis on sustainable agriculture.
The Growing Project distributes food in seasons with free markets and community supported agriculture or large groups that invest in local farms and in return share the harvest.
The Fight Continues
While the food bank does store perishables safely, there is some produce that falls out of their reach of distribution. Where storing perishables can sometimes be a logistical problem for food banks, food rescue can fill in the gaps, redistributing it to marginalized communities while it is still usable.
BFR and its twins across the front range are starting a new conversation with the communities they serve about what food is most advantageous to eat and how to access it. The Food Bank for Larimer County has a unique distribution model and distributes an incredible amount of food to the hungry in Larimer County. It seems, the fight for food justice in Colorado is as strong as ever.
Moore-Shipley said, “It’s really cool to see different sectors and different groups come together to solve the same problem.”
