About

Mission Statement

Our goal is to increase access to donated fresh produce and other healthy foods to area hunger-relief sites that serve the at-risk, food-insecure population by providing local farmers and food producers with free, effective delivery and distribution of their surplus.

The work of Rolling Harvest Food Rescue is at the intersection of food waste, hunger-relief, and better environmental stewardship. We continue to be motivated by just how much all people want to eat healthy and want to have better, more nutritious choices in what they serve their families. Yet those struggling with poverty have a much higher incidence of diet-related chronic illnesses, such as hypertension, diabetes, and heart disease. This problem and inequity has been decades in the making: the current U.S. Food System has been supported by government subsidies that benefit the largest commodity growers in our country and has contributed to a health system overburdened by high rates of chronic disease, making the least healthy, highly processed foods the only ones affordable for millions of us. These significant barriers to health were exacerbated by the pandemic, which has also exposed the huge inequities and disparities to healthy food access among people of color. So many people have also been further burdened with rising prices, inflation, gas prices, increased rents, and loss of some pandemic-era social safety nets. In fact, we now serve 20% more families and organizations than we did pre-Covid. It is so important for Rolling Harvest and our partners to continue to identify people and communities who remain under-served, advocate and create programs that connect them to access fresh, healthy food. And more and more, we are seeing the powerful impact of collaborating with other agencies.

Our recipient sites include food pantries, domestic violence shelters, low-income senior centers, children and family homeless shelters, and at-risk low-income adults with health challenges. 32% of the people we help are children; 12% are seniors. They are our neighbors.

Since 2010, Rolling Harvest has been focused on partnering with local farmers, making it easy for them to share their fresh, healthy produce with the food-insecure communities in which they live. Our dedicated volunteers help with daily pick-up and delivery schedules from 43 farms and food producers, assist with weekly distributions to more than 80 hunger relief sites, and glean (harvest) directly from our farm partners’ fields. We also conduct weekly Nutrition Education Outreach with Free Farm Markets at some of the sites to educate the recipients about nutrition, cooking and using the donated produce to their best benefit with no waste.

With even more local farmers and food producers on board for our 2023 harvest season from May through December, we are ensuring another year of tremendous growth and significant increases in both the number of people we are helping and the amount of produce we are sharing. We have exceeded the Four MILLION pound milestone of locally-grown fruits and vegetables, high-quality organic meats and a higher percentage of organic produce distributed to date. That’s more than 16 million additional servings of super-healthy food on the plates of thousands of hungry families! We continue to increase our impact and effectiveness through collaboration, projects and partnerships with other local social service agencies and food rescue organizations.

Turning food pantries into farmers markets remains the goal. With your continued help and support, we look forward to providing even more and impacting more lives 2023 and beyond.