“Rolling Harvest Food Rescue Fighting Hunger In Our Area”
By Lisa DeAngelis – March 27, 2018
The face of hunger has changed in our area, according to Cathy Snyder, founder and Executive Director of Rolling Harvest Food Rescue.
Food-insecurity used to be more noticeable. Now it’s less obvious but just as desperate a situation.
View this story article at http://www.timespub.com/2018/03/27/rolling-harvest-food-rescue-fighting-hunger-area/
Many of those who walk among us and seem to be doing all right are in fact underemployed, laid off, disabled, struggling with impending foreclosure, or working two jobs and still unable to make ends meet. In fact, almost 60,000 people in Bucks County are food insecure. Payments on mortgages, rent, vehicles, medical expenses, and utilities can be impossible to reduce and food often becomes the only place where it is possible to make budget cuts.
Often the foods that their budgets do allow provide little nutrition and are not what bodies need to maintain health. Consequently, more and more are less and less certain they can count on eating three meals a day. But a local organization is working to fix that. Rolling Harvest Food Rescue was founded in 2010 by Cathy Snyder.
The year before, she had seen the face of want firsthand as a volunteer at Fisherman’s Mark food pantry. Cathy made it a point to buy fresh vegetables from local farms for her own family, and she was curious about what farmers did with produce that didn’t sell that same day. When she was told that it went into compost heaps, she became determined to avoid this needless waste by devising an infrastructure to connect fresh produce grown by local farmers with the undernourished families in our neighborhood.
Today, Rolling Harvest works to turn food pantries into farm markets with donated food from over 35 generous farmers, whom Cathy calls “the true heroes in our growth.” Some of these farm partners are now going above and beyond sharing surplus, by growing much needed and desired extra produce on unused land specifically for donation.
With the help of 130 dedicated volunteers, Rolling Harvest delivers fresh food to over 50 community organization recipients who in turn provide food to over 20,000 people a month throughout the harvest season. Their recipient sites currently include food pantries, domestic violence shelters, low-income senior centers, children and family homeless shelters, and at-risk low-income adults with health challenges. Thirty-two percent of the people they help are children and 12% are seniors.
They do this primarily through “gleaning,” defined as “gathering leftover grain or other produce after a harvest.” Gleaning is a centuries old practice of harvesting crops directly from the farmers’ fields to the tables of those in need. Thereby the organization fulfills the Biblical injunction of Leviticus 23:22: “And when you reap the harvest of your land do not reap to the very edges of your field or gather the gleanings of your harvest. Leave them for the poor and the foreigner residing among you…”
Each year since 2010, Rolling Harvest has experienced tremendous growth and increase in both the number of people they are helping and the amount of produce they are sharing. They have surpassed their 1.5 million-pound milestone of locally-grown fruits and vegetables, high-quality organic meats and proteins, and a higher percentage of organic produce distributed to date. That’s more than six million additional servings of super-healthy food on the plates of thousands of hungry families. This growth is what makes it so important for Rolling Harvest to continue to increase their number of farm partners and volunteers.
Those who would like to help feed their hungry neighbors can do so in several ways. If you are a food producer with a surplus of produce, meats, or dairy, Rolling Harvest will pick up your surplus at your convenience. (Become a Partner.)
They are ready to provide a quick response Glean Team to pick the vegetables left in your field. Volunteers are needed to do the picking, as delivery teams to load and unload, and as drivers to travel from farms to distribution sites. (Join the the Glean Team.)
Volunteers looking for something more interactive with recipients can join the Nutrition Education Outreach Team that travels to Rolling Harvest’s food pantries and sets up a Free Farm Market on-site to provide tastings and cooking demonstrations that show how easy and delicious healthy eating can be. Volunteers at these events offer low-cost recipes and nutrition information in both English and Spanish.
Whether as an individual, a family, school, church or corporate/employee group, Rolling Harvest needs your help to continue their work.
One exciting step forward occurred in 2017 when the Bucks County Commissioners donated unused warehouse space for cold food storage, a missing link in food rescue and distribution in the County. This led to the launch last April of Fresh Connect, a free mobile farm market direct to low-income recipients in the underserved regions of Ottsville and Bristol. The program is a collaboration of United Way, Philabundance, Bucks County Opportunity Council, St. Mary Medical Center, and Rolling Harvest. Plans to expand to a third location for 2018 are currently in the works.
