Rolling Harvest Food Rescue, a Bucks County nonprofit that connects local farmers with people in need, has announced personnel changes and additions.
Cathy Snyder, founder and executive director of the organization for the last 13 years, retired effective Jan. 1 of this year.
Snyder founded Rolling Harvest in 2010, after volunteering at a local food pantry and noticing the lack of fresh fruit and vegetables available. She approached local farmers and began “gleaning” surplus, unharvested produce from their fields to supply it to food pantries. Since inception, Rolling Harvest has provided over 4 million pounds of fresh local produce to over 80 food pantries, soup kitchens, and other human service organizations in Bucks, Hunterdon, Mercer, and Montgomery counties.
Of her time at Rolling Harvest, Snyder said, “My passion for the work we do has not diminished. And, aside from bringing my two beautiful, amazing children into this world, leading this organization has been the greatest honor of my life.” Snyder said she will continue to serve the organization as a senior advisor and honorary board member.
Snyder is being replaced by Elyse Yerrapathruni who previously worked for New Jersey Farmers Against Hunger. “Her years of relevant experience and passion leading that organization make her well qualified to lead Rolling Harvest,” says Snyder of her successor. “I’m confident that she will lead with a wonderful combination of heart, compassion, and thoughtful strategy.”
Other changes to the organization include the addition of new board and advisory board members. Stacy Denton, director of TRIO Upward Bound at Mercer County Community College has joined the Rolling Harvest Board of Directors. Tim Philpot, recently retired from United Way of Bucks County has joined the organization’s advisory board.
BUCKS COUNTY – September 26, 2023 – Senator Steve Santarsiero (D-10) today announced $49,405 in state funds were awarded by the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) to Rolling Harvest Food Rescue to improve food storage and reduce food waste.
With the funds, provided through the Food Recovery Infrastructure Grant Program, Rolling Harvest will partner with Solly Brothers Farm to purchase a second 10 x 20 walk-in, outdoor refrigerated cooler to increase their safe food storage capacity and to use as a central Food Access Hub for food distribution in the region.
“The work of Rolling Harvest Food Rescue is critical to combatting food insecurity that affects too many individuals and families in Bucks County,” said Senator Santarsiero. “Through partnerships with local farms, Rolling Harvest helps reduce food waste and provide nutritious, local produce to those in need. I proudly supported this grant to increase the organization’s capacity to store thousands of pounds of fresh produce for community members in need.”
“On behalf of all of us with Rolling Harvest Food Rescue, please accept our sincere appreciation in helping us secure the recent $50,000 PA DEP Food Recovery Infrastructure Grant, said Cathy Snyder, Founder and Executive Director of Rolling Harvest Food Rescue. “One of the main barriers to being able to rescue and redistribute perfectly wholesome, healthy surplus food has always been a lack of available cold storage in Bucks County, and beyond. This grant helps remove that barrier by providing us with a new, large cooler facility in a central location, increasing our food recovery efforts with local farmers, food producers, and food retailers to benefit all of our neighbors in need struggling with food insecurity and lacking access to nutrition. Cold food storage means this precious and highly perishable food does not have to be left in the fields or sent to landfills.”
Rolling Harvest Food Rescue connects farmers with food pantries to eliminate waste and meet local demand. The organization works 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. Additional information about Rolling Harvest Food Rescue can be found on their website.
Food Recovery Infrastructure Grant funds are used for the procurement of eligible equipment to reduce food waste disposal from food retailers, wholesalers, agriculture organizations, farms and cooperatives by repurposing and redistributing apparently safe and wholesome foods to Commonwealth nonprofits that provide food to segments of the public.
For additional information on DEP’s action to reduce food insecurity click here.
For Cathy Snyder, the founder of Rolling Harvest Food Rescue, her big “aha” moment came one day when she popped over to the farmers market to do some shopping after volunteering at a food pantry in New Hope, PA. Seeing the abundance of produce from local farms on offer just half a mile away from the food pantry, where mostly everything was processed and packaged, really affected her.
“This was 12 years ago, and back then at food pantries there really wasn’t anything fresh; it was mostly items pulled off the shelves of supermarkets,” she remembers. “The disconnect was so striking. I wanted to do something about it.”
And do something, she did! Since 2010, Rolling Harvest Food Rescue has gleaned over 4.5 million pounds of produce from farms and distributed it via a complex and nuanced network that stretches across Bucks, Montgomery, Mercer and Huntingdon Counties. But, back in the beginning, it all started with a handful of casual conversations between Snyder and vendors at the farmers market.
Snyder began asking if the farmers had anything extra that she could bring to the food pantry, and soon learned a surprising fact: Farmers almost always grow surplus food in their fields, which often ends up going to waste. Snyder explains it like this: Largely to account for the unpredictability of weather patterns, farmers routinely plant 20% more crops than they’re going to need to satisfy their customer base. If there isn’t the time or labor to harvest the surplus, it can go unpicked and ripen and rot in the field.
After developing relationships with these local farmers, they’d tell Snyder that if she could come to their farm on a certain day and at a specific time, they would fill her van with produce that was perfectly good but wouldn’t fetch top dollar at markets. Thus, the groundwork for Rolling Harvest Food Rescue was laid.
Once Snyder realized that she could help create a bridge between the farmers with the extra food and her neighbors in need, figuring out the logistics of actually making that connection became a puzzle that’s constantly evolving.
“There wasn’t a good logistic infrastructure to capture the surplus produce and get it to people who are desperate for healthier food, but can’t get it because of a lack of transportation or money,” she says. “We realized we needed trucks, coolers and hundreds of volunteers.”
Over the next few years, through Bucks County’s tight-knit communities, Rolling Harvest amassed a huge group of dedicated, diverse volunteers who often will often gather with just a few hour’s notice to glean food from local farms.
“It’s just been an incredible experience!” Synder notes. “We tell farmers, ‘Give us a day and we’ll be there with a team, we’re just that crazy.’”
Generally, the way it works is this: A farmer might text Snyder, letting her know that he has four pallets of corn that he wants to get out of the fields but it’s going to be too ripe to sell. Synder will alert the Rolling Harvest driver, who will head over to pick it up, then might go from there to a nearby orchard that’s got three pallets of surplus peaches. Or sometimes, a whole crew of Rolling Harvest volunteers will show up at the farm and pick in the fields for a few hours. After that point, it’s almost like a triage to figure out the best and fastest way to distribute that produce, rather than have it sit around for too long.
“The trick, and our passion, is to find the right fit for the right product,” Snyder says. “It’s hard because you have to say yes to everything and drop everything at a moment’s notice. At the end of the day you say, ‘Wow, did we really just make that happen?’”
Over time, Rolling Harvest has built out not only its network of farmers, but also its distribution partners, which currently hover around 80 organizations. For food that’s not as fresh, they’ll deliver to the Trenton Area Soup Kitchen which prepares 1,700 meals a day and sets up a small free farmers market. Some produce goes to Fresh Connect, a free mobile farmers market that serves upwards of 1,200 families in the largest pockets of poverty in Bucks County. And, so much of the produce goes to food banks and food pantries, like the one Snyder originally volunteered in, helping to diversify the food supplies there with nutrient-dense fruits and vegetables.
Along the past decade, there have a been a few major turning points for Rolling Harvest Food Pantry. One major one was the creation of what Snyder and her team call “The County Cooler,” a large walk-in refrigerator and freezer that the Bucks County Commissioners donated to local food and hunger relief organizations in 2018.
“It has been a game changer! We now have the equivalent of a well-run and impactful food distribution headquarters that we share with other nonprofits,” Snyder says.
They also received an emergency grant from the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection during Covid to aid with their efforts to keep local farmer’s food (which was, sadly, in extra surplus then, with so many markets and restaurants closed) out of landfills. Rolling Harvest used those funds to purchase refrigerated trucks and another cold storage box, which now lives permanently at Gravity Hill Farm, right over the PA border in Titusville, NJ. The dual locations mean that Rolling Harvest can let their food bank and pantry partners know what’s available, and regardless of those organizations’ storage capacities, they can come pick up fresh produce an hour or two before their distributions.
“We’ll send out an email blast and say, tomorrow morning at this location come with your largest vehicles and strongest volunteers and take what you need,” Snyder says. “In less than 24 hours, we can move thousands of pounds of food as quickly and respectfully as possible. Sometimes it’s that fresh: produce picked up in the morning being distributed to families that same afternoon.”
The Rolling Harvest team has grown to include a handful of paid employees, including Snyder, a full-time food distribution manager, a program director and a nutrition and culinary team that oversees education and outreach programs. But the heart of Rolling Harvest Food Rescue remains the farmers and the volunteers, who’ve created a symbiotic relationship that’s benefited thousands of food-insecure people over the last decade.
“Those are the heroes, the farmers, the volunteers,” Snyder says. “You’re seeing the best of humanity!”
WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 14, 2022 By Jenna Intersimone | MyCentralJersey.com | USA TODAY NETWORK
New Jersey rents have gone up nearly 33% in the last year alone.
Food costs went up more than 11% in 2022, the largest annual increase in over 40 years.
And gas prices, although finally falling, are still averaging about a dollar more than they were in 2019. In the post-COVID world, many families are struggling to make ends meet. But that’s a reality that Rolling Harvest Food Rescue, a non-profit organization serving New Jersey and Pennsylvania counties, was fighting a decade before the pandemic.
The food rescue organization connects local farmers with food pantries and other food recipient sites to share their produce with food insecure communities.
“The first thing that families have to sacrifice is healthy food, which happens to be more expensive food,” said Cathy Snyder, founder and executive director of Rolling Harvest Food Rescue.
“It’s a scary time. Forty percent of the people we’re helping now could not have imagined two years ago that they would go to a community meal or a food pantry,” she continued. “We’re not going to cure hunger, but we can certainly alleviate some budgetary pressure and provide healthy, basic food. Maybe it means you can pay your heating bill because we’re helping you out on the food end.”
By partnering with over 40 farms and 200 volunteers, Rolling Harvest Food Rescue harvests seasonal Garden State produce, such as corn, tomatoes, strawberries and asparagus, for 80 food pantries across Hunterdon and Mercer counties, and Bucks and Montgomery counties in Pennsylvania, to feed 34,000 people each year. And it starts with one text.
“Farmers just text us and say, ‘We have broccoli, tomatoes, etc. left in the field, come and get it,’” Snyder said. “Usually within a day we have organized a dozen gleaners, and we come with our crates, take everything and distribute immediately.” Produce is distributed through Fresh Connect, which gives food directly to families in need through four free farmers’ markets in Bucks County, or through local food pantries such as Flemington Area Food Pantry, Fisherman’s Mark Food Pantry in Lambertville, Frenchtown Presbyterian Church, and the Delaware Valley Food Pantry in Lambertville.
The reasons why a farmer would not want to harvest all their grown produce include a lack of labor or high costs of labor; time and weather, in case an impending storm will make it difficult to harvest an entire crop; or even a few ugly ducklings.
“If it’s not perfect, they can’t sell it,” said Snyder. “If a carrot has two legs, it’s just as delicious. And if a tomato has a little bump on it, it’s just as delicious — but they can’t sell that so they won’t go to the expense of harvesting it.” It all began when Snyder was volunteering at a Lambertville food pantry. One day, she had an epiphany as she left her volunteer shift to head to a farmers’ market.
“I could load up at the farmers market, come home and serve this wonderful, local, healthy meal to my family, and I would go back to the pantry the next day and it wasn’t the kind of food I was seeing,” Snyder said. “I just had that ‘aha’ moment that this was so wrong. And that was the start of it.”
A new partnership between Gravity Hill Farm in Titusville and Rolling Harvest Food Rescue helps the nonprofit continue to serve families in Hunterdon and Mercer Counties.
Nearly a year into the Covid-19 pandemic, which has disrupted food systems around the world, the hunger crisis has only intensified. Cathy Snyder, founder of Rolling Harvest Food Rescue, has watched the pressures impact families throughout New Jersey and Pennsylvania. “There is not a single zip code spared,” she says.
Food insecurity and hunger in the United States have existed long before we felt the stress of the coronavirus. In fact, well before we shuttered our doors and sheltered in place last spring, more than 35 million people struggled with hunger in the United States, including 10 million children. In the wake of the pandemic, with job loss at an all-time high, the number of people struggling with food insecurity has grown to more than 54 million people, including 18 million children. “This is unsustainable for us as a country,” says Snyder. “We could do so much better.”
In most cases, the hunger isn’t caused by a shortage of food. “There is a surplus of healthy food right here, it’s just a matter of creating the logistics to get it from where it’s grown to the people who need it and keep it out of landfills,” says Snyder.
Since 2010, Rolling Harvest’s team of more than 200 dedicated volunteers have visited local farms and harvested crops that would otherwise be composted or discarded after the initial commercial harvest. They then distribute this fresh, local produce to food-insecure communities in five counties throughout western New Jersey and eastern Pennsylvania, including food pantries, domestic violence shelters, low-income senior centers, children and family homeless shelters, as well as to at-risk low-income adults with health challenges. “What we have found in doing this for 10 years is that the underlying food system is really stacked against people with limited income,” says Snyder.
Rolling Harvest, headquartered across the Delaware River in New Hope, Pennsylvania, currently works with over 50 farm partners and food producers. But one Garden State farm, in particular, has been with them since the beginning. Gravity Hill Farm in Titusville regularly donates thousands of pounds of food, and has allowed the nonprofit to house their permanent coolers and delivery trucks on their farm.
In late 2020, Gravity Hill Farm and Rolling Harvest announced a new partnership. Gravity Hill Farm will transition to a full-scale farm-based education operation and their available land will be dedicated to growing food specifically for donation. Rolling Harvest will enlist volunteers to come out and help with planting, weeding, and harvesting up to five acres of donation crop that will feed families and recipient sites in need.
The new merger with Gravity Hill Farm will also allow food pantries to come directly to the farm and pick out the exact kind and amount of produce they need, enabling more food banks and pantries to offer fresh, seasonal produce suitable to their guests.
“One of the things we try to do is to show people the respect and the compassion and the dignity that we all need by giving them the choice,” says Snyder. “Not everyone likes okra, not everyone likes Swiss chard. Why not let someone choose for themselves and for their family?” Allowing people to shop for their own food not only provides freedom of choice, but it also helps to significantly reduce food waste.
Snyder and her team also developed an educational nutrition program. At no additional charge to their partner organizations, the program offers on-site tastings and cooking demonstrations that show patrons how to store and prepare seasonal produce. Each demonstration ends with recipe handouts available in both English and Spanish, and all recipes can be found on Rolling Harvest’s website.
For Snyder, a Philadelphia native, advocacy and food justice are inherent to her character. “I was always very active in community service,” she says. “It’s in my DNA.”
Snyder is aware of the discomfort that can be involved with asking for help, but hopes that by turning food banks into farmers’ markets, we can begin to reframe the narrative around food insecurity. “I want people to know that there should be no shame in asking for help. If you’re struggling, if you are having trouble paying your bills and putting healthy food on your table, so are so many of your neighbors,” she says.
“Sally Quigley is not a farmer. But today, at a food distribution event in the parking lot of CURE Insurance Arena in Trenton, she could fool anyone.
She looks down at a table heaping with butternut squash and recalls wistfully how she planted this squash and later got to harvest it. Today, she’s proud to hand it over to families that will eat it for dinner.
It is mid-October and Quigley is a regular volunteer with Rolling Harvest Food Rescue, a nonprofit organization that rescues produce that would otherwise go to waste and distributes it to food pantries and food-insecure people throughout Bucks, Montgomery, Chester, Hunterdon and Mercer counties.
Rolling Harvest’s food rescue operation is centered around gleaning—harvesting produce that farms aren’t able to sell, either because it’s surplus or because it doesn’t match customers’ aesthetic expectations.”
George Legette, left, a Second Baptist Church food pantry driver, takes a case of fresh produce from Ian Bell, a Rolling Harvest Food Rescue volunteer, during an emergency pop-up food distribution at Solebury Orchards, in Solebury Township, on Tuesday, December 15, 2020. [photo credit: Michele C. Haddon / Photojournalist]
Story by Marion Callahan, Bucks County Courier Times [link to story]
This past Thanksgiving, food pantry manager Kizzy Wright saw a sight she’s never witnessed.
“Our line was out the door. We’ve never experienced that demand — ever,” said Wright, who continues to see a surge in families turning to Bread of Life Community Pantry in Bristol for food.
The coronavirus has been the perfect storm for Bucks County neighbors trying to make ends meet. Facing job losses and unpaid bills, families who are feeling the economic fallout don’t have the money to pay for groceries. Spikes in homelessness have also created more demand at Bucks County food pantries.
“This pandemic has spared no ZIP code, almost no household,” said Cathy Snyder, founder and executive director of Rolling Harvest Food Rescue. She said food pantries in the region are experiencing a 40% hike in the number of families turning to them for help, and “many of them up until very recently were living very comfortable middle-class lives.
Jay Quilty, left, volunteer driver with Rolling Harvest Food Rescue, and Jamie McKnight, program and development director, load cases of whole cooked turkeys into a van during an emergency pop-up food distribution.[photo credit: Michele C. Haddon / Photojournalist]
Pantry managers, however, can’t fight hunger alone. Fortunately, Snyder said: “With a collaborative community response to hunger, they don’t have to.”
On Tuesday, pantry managers from across the region and from church ministries across the county headed to Solebury Orchards in Solebury to pick up crates of fresh vegetables, turkeys and toiletries provided during a food distribution pop-up event sponsored by Rolling Harvest Food Rescue and United Way of Bucks County.
Businesses including McCaffrey’s Market, Traugers Family Farm, Pennypack Farm and North American Produce Co. also pitched in, donating thousands of dollars in food and produce to help neighbors in need.
Wright said needs are greater than ever. Pantries had pivoted to deliver food to many elderly residents who are unable to venture out, she said. With kids home, mothers are unable to provide enough food for their household. After her trip to Solebury to load up on fresh produce and turkeys, Wright said the fresh donations will make a big difference to families in Bristol, she said.
“When you have an opportunity to get real good fresh vegetables, it’s amazing,” said Wright. “We don’t want to just give out pasta, sauce or junk. We want to give out good food.”
Mike Cerino, left, Warminster Food Bank president, Brian Dempsey, center, Lester Bahrt Food Bank co-director, and Ian Bell, a Rolling Harvest Food Rescue volunteer, carry cases of fresh produce.[photo credit: Michele C. Haddon / Photojournalist]
Loading boxes of Brussels sprouts and peppers into the bed of his pick up truck, Brian Dempsey, of Lester Barht Food Pantry in Fairless Hills, said the donations will bring a great deal of joy to those relying on donations for meals. “We take care of 350 to 450 a month from our pantry,” he said.
Looking at the flurry of activity, Snyder watched as volunteers loaded crates onto trucks and vans coming from all corners of the county. She lauded the generosity of businesses and groups that made the food pop-up possible.
Tuesday’s pop-up food event was made possible by a $5,000 COVID-19 Recovery Fund grant provided by United Way of Bucks County to Rolling Harvest, which purchased food for emergency feeding programs for pantries in Bucks County.
In total, with donations from McCaffrey’s Food Markets, area groups distributed $20,000 worth of whole cooked smoked Lancaster Farm turkeys. Rolling Harvest also provided pantries with Solebury Orchards apples and a variety of fresh seasonal produce gleaned from local Bucks County farms.
Snyder praised McCaffrey’s, a Bucks County-based supermarket, for donating its surplus of cooked turkeys and credited Solebury Orchards for offering storage space and a site for pick up and distribution of the food.
“Traugers Family Farm and Pennypack Farm went into the fields and harvested this — just for us,” she said. “It’s more important than ever that social service and nonprofit organizations join forces to accomplish solutions to a problem whose scale is well beyond the scope of one individual organization.”
Ian Bell, a Rolling Harvest Food Rescue volunteer, unloads cases of turnips and sweet potatoes from Trauger’s Farm during an emergency pop-up food distribution at Solebury Orchards, in Solebury Township, on Tuesday, December 15, 2020. [photo credit: Michele C. Haddon / Photojournalist]
Snyder said people are heading into the new year with even more uncertainty about their jobs, housing, and health. “The hardest hit seem to be those with children, and our neighbors from predominantly African-American and Latino communities,” she said.
Tim Philpot, the Bucks County United Way’s director of Financial Stability and Health, said that with support from Penn Community Bank, the United Way of Bucks County launched the Bucks County COVID-19 Recovery Fund in March to help area nonprofits meet their clients’ COVID related needs.
Initially, he said, basic needs like food, shelter, and PPE were primary targets. Since it began, the Recovery Fund has provided over $395,000 in the form of 76 grants to agencies in Bucks County, he said.
“We’re so pleased that Rolling Harvest was able to leverage our grant funding for greater impact. So many more people are food-insecure now than at this time last year,” said Philpot. “Dynamic partnerships like this will help ensure we can meet the increased need.”
Food pantries at Tuesday’s event included County Commons in Bensalem; Pennridge Community Center in Perkasie; Bread of Life Food Pantry in Bristol; Lester Bahrt Food Pantry in Fairless Hills; Warminster Food Pantry; Bux Mont Church in Warrington; Soulful Blessing in Bristol; Revivals Outreach Center and Food Pantry in Perkasie; Philadelphia PARX Thoroughbred Horsemen’s Association in Bensalem; and the YWCA in Bensalem.
Grants will allow food banks, shelters and soup kitchens to cover the costs of equipment purchases necessary to prepare, transport and store food acquired from retailers, wholesalers, farms, processors and cooperatives. Examples of eligible equipment that will be funded include refrigerated or non-refrigerated box trucks, industrial-sized refrigerators, pallet jacks and/or dollies. Installation and shipping costs were also eligible for support.
Increased demand on the charitable food system related to COVID-19 has demonstrated an immediate need for resources to support additional cold storage space, and more flexibility and changes to this grant program. The changes made in April encouraged partnerships between nonprofit organizations such as food banks and farms, processors and cooperatives that continue to experience challenges within the food supply chain as a result of the COVID-19 emergency.
“Many people across the state are feeling the strain of losing jobs or other income related to the COVID-19 crisis, and this will help provide a safety net to ensure that our fellow Pennsylvanians are not going hungry,” said Governor Tom Wolf. “This program also helps ensure that our farmers are not in a position where they have to waste the food and dairy products grown on their farms because of market upheavals.”
“Our goal when expanding the Food Recovery Infrastructure Grant was to quickly get money to the people that could do the most to help, and the charitable organizations of Pennsylvania responded,” said Department of Environmental Protection Secretary Patrick McDonnell. “These grants will help guarantee food security to our residents that need it.”
“These grantees have demonstrated their commitment to feeding Pennsylvanians and simultaneously supporting agriculture,” said Agriculture Secretary Russell Redding. “This grant program is our trifecta, a win-win-win for our commonwealth: allowing food banks to keep fresh produce and dairy stocked and provide it to those in need, eliminating food waste, and preventing losses for our hardworking farmers who have had to deal with so much uncertainty.”
The recipients of the 145 awards include food banks, soup kitchens and churches from across the commonwealth.
Based on the most recent survey in early May, Feeding Pennsylvania member food banks are reporting an average increase in demand of 55 percent over what they were seeing one year ago today. Unused or unsold food ends up in landfills, where it can biodegrade and release greenhouse gases like methane. The EPA estimates that in 2015 (the last year when information was available), more than 30 million tons of food waste went into landfills nationwide.
Funding for the grant was made available for Pennsylvania nonprofit organizations for grant assistance for the proper management and operation of food waste reduction pursuant to the Pennsylvania Municipal Waste Planning, Recycling and Waste Reduction Act of 1988, Act 101.
Cathy Snyder, founder and executive director of the organization for the last 13 years, retired effective Jan. 1 of this year.
Over time, Rolling Harvest has built out not only its network of farmers, but also its distribution partners, which currently hover around 80 organizations. For food that’s not as fresh, they’ll deliver to the Trenton Area Soup Kitchen which prepares 1,700 meals a day and sets up a small free farmers market. Some produce goes to Fresh Connect, a free mobile farmers market that serves upwards of 1,200 families in the largest pockets of poverty in Bucks County. And, so much of the produce goes to food banks and food pantries, like the one Snyder originally volunteered in, helping to diversify the food supplies there with nutrient-dense fruits and vegetables.
