By Donna Cornelius
Gleaning” isn’t a word you hear often nowadays unless you’re listening to a church sermon about the Book of Ruth. In Old Testament times, hungry folks were allowed to glean – to go into farmers’ fields after harvests to gather up leftover crops.
The Society of St. Andrew, a national nonprofit hunger relief organization, is based on this tradition. Its Gleaning Network sends volunteers to farms and farmers markets to collect fruits and vegetables that might otherwise go unused but that are still nutritious and tasty. The food is then given to feeding agencies that can distribute it to those who need it.
SoSA started the Gleaning Network in 1988. Its Alabama office opened in January 2005.
Adrienne Standridge, Alabama Gleaning’s program director, said she “connects the dots” between volunteers, farmers and feeding agencies. She went to work for the program about a year and half ago.
“I found out about it through my father, who was a pastor,” Standridge said. “This was a God thing. I’d always served in my church, but I felt God wanted me to do something full time.”
While there’s always a need for free, fresh produce, the COVID-19 pandemic has increased the demand.
According to statistics in SoSA’s quarterly report, U.S. hunger doubled in March and April, and U.S. childhood hunger quadrupled in those two months. The Gleaning Network is doing its part to help. In March and April alone, the Society of St. Andrew and its partners rescued and gave away more than three million pounds of food across the nation.
“As of now, we’ve been able to rescue and distribute about 718,000 pounds of food this year in Alabama alone,” Standridge said. “The need is great.”
Jesse Hoyer, regional director for Alabama Gleaning, said social-distancing restrictions have changed the volunteer program a bit.
“If we go to a farm, the number of volunteers we can have depends on the size of the field,” Hoyer said. “If there are three rows of okra, we couldn’t have more than 10 people. But we can have more if it’s a tomato field that’s half an acre.”
After volunteers have picked or collected the produce, agencies can pick it up and distribute it.
“We work with a lot of ‘mom and pop’ agencies,” Standridge said. “They load up the produce and go into their communities. They know what the needs are – maybe it’s low-income people, senior citizens, those who have lost their jobs, church pantries.”
Crops have to be distributed the same day they’re picked.
“Farmers call at the end of the growing cycle, so time is of the essence,” Standridge said. “We have to operate on the fly lots of times.”
Hoyer said the Alabama Gleaning Network encompasses the entire state.
“We are definitely more active from Birmingham north, and we also have a solid presence in the Montgomery area,” she said. “Our goal is to reach out to agencies in urban areas that are smaller. We work really hard to reach out to rural areas, too. People there rely largely on processed food, canned food. And many times, the food available for them to buy is overpriced.”
She’d like to see Alabama Gleaning benefit even more people.
“Ideally, we’d do a huge reach in the Black Belt,” she said. “That’s been a challenge to connect with agencies there. We recently worked with a Marengo County agency for the first time, and we wondered how we didn’t already know about each other.”
Volunteers are needed and greatly appreciated. Sometimes groups of people, maybe from a religious or civic organization, come and work together, but individuals are welcome, too.
“I don’t care if it’s one person or 10 – everybody is beneficial, everyone is a blessing,” Standridge said.
Almost all ages can volunteer, as long as they’re able to bend and lift several pounds of produce.
“I really want to see the younger generation get involved,” Standridge said.
She often brings her children, who range in age from 10 to 17, to glean.
“They might complain,” she said. “But once they get out there, a connection is often made between younger and older volunteers.”
Donations also are welcome. The organization’s website says 95% of its total income goes directly into providing food, and money isn’t wasted duplicating the efforts of existing food banks and agencies.
Over the past three years, Alabama has had an average of about 40 farmers who participate in the program.
“Some seasons, certain farmers will take a hit – they might have too much rain, or too little – and some will give you large amounts,” Standridge said. “So what the farms can provide fluctuates from year to year.”
In Birmingham, farmers markets such as The Market at Pepper Place have been fruitful sources of produce for Alabama Gleaning. A new supplier is the Birdsong Farmers Market, which operates in the parking lot at Automatic Seafood and Oysters, at 2824 Fifth Ave. S.
All kinds of nutritious fruits and vegetables are gleaned. Large amounts of produce, usually potatoes, are given out through “crop drops,” with the vegetables being taken to a specific location to be bagged up.
“The first summer I was here, we got a call about eggplants,” Hoyer said. “We weren’t sure some of our folks would know what to do with them. I went online and found recipes that people could print off.”
While gleaning familiar Southern crops such as potatoes, tomatoes, peppers and squash is pretty standard, Standridge said the organization once was offered a pallet full of lemons. But they didn’t go to waste.
“One person ended up taking all of them,” she said.
To learn more about the Alabama Gleaning Network, visit endhunger.org. The website has information for farmers and food providers, feeding agencies and those interested in volunteering or making donations to the organization.
