This is an article I wrote an article for the SM Observer on the Santa Monica Farmers Market Panel Series on Gleaning and Foraging in Los Angeles!
Gleaning and Foraging: The Food Around Us
Fresh
food is abound, if you know where to look for it. From Farmers Markets to backyards to empty lots, there is a
variety of edible food in our midst.
This agriculture
abundance was celebrated last Thursday night at the Santa Monica Library’s
quarterly Farmer’s Market Panel Series.
This free event, entitled Gleaning and Foraging: the Food Around Us, was held at the Martin Luther King Jr. Auditorium
at Santa Monica’s Main Library and moderated by Sarah
Spitz.
Sarah Spitz is a
long-time former producer for Santa Monica public radio station KCRW. She is certified Master
Gardener and Master Food Preserver through the UC
Cooperative Extension where she volunteers in service to the community
teaching gardening and food preservation and safety which focuses on low-income
LA county communities which includes the Saturday Santa Monica Pico Farmers
Market.
On
stage, Spitz was joined by panel of volunteers and experts who are
helping to find and distribute L.A.'s hidden bounty of food. These five gleaning and foraging practitioners,
including: Transitional Gastronomy chef and forager, Mia Wasilevich, Naomi
Curland of Westside Produce Exchange, Joanna Wheaton a UCLA Senior who was a
key part of bringing a farmers market to UCLA along with being a active
dumpster diver, Richard Weinroth of the food bank MEND Poverty, and Mary
Baldwin, manager of Food Forward's Farmers Market Recovery Program.
Spitz
opened with some statistic from a recent report by the Nation Resource Defense
Council that 40 percent of food in the United States today goes
uneaten. That is more
than 20 pounds of food per person every month. Not only does this mean that Americans are throwing out the
equivalent of $165 billion each year, but also 25 percent of all freshwater and
huge amounts of unnecessary chemicals, energy, and land are being wasted.
Moreover,
almost all of that uneaten food ends up rotting in landfills where organic
matter accounts for 16 percent of U.S. methane emissions. Nutrition is also lost in the mix, food
saved by reducing losses by just 15 percent could feed more than 25 million
Americans every year at a time when one in six Americans lack a secure supply
of food to their tables.
Spitz
capped off these stark statistics by noting that the five people who joined her
on stage emanated Gandhi’s statement of “being the change you want to see in
the world.” All of these people
looked at the world around them and recognized waste is just another word for
abundance that has yet to be utilized.
Each and every one of them found a unique way to employ this unutilized
abundance for good for themselves and the people around them.
The
most extreme form of utilizing excess food (and also the end of the line in the
food chain) is dumpster diving. UCLA
Senior Joanna Wheaton explained how she became involved in this subculture of
food conservation and petty crime, “I got started dumpster diving while working
in an office where we screened a movie called DIVE. I wanted to do it, but it took a month to actually get up
the courage to dive in. Now I’m constantly
driving around looking for dumpsters at midnight.” Wheaton noted that in the beginning of her trash journey the
thing she found the most of was old 8 tracks, but as she continued doing it she
became schooled in where the best dumpster bounty was located. “Friday is the most consistently
bountiful day. There’s no way me
and my 3 friends could us all of the food, so we all kept bringing more and
more people. I’ve brought over
seventy people diving now.”
For
each person there’s a Big Question that must be settled before the adventure
can begin. “Each person makes a
decision about what’s safe in a dumpster,” explained Wheaton. Usually the food has been tossed because
the grocery store received a new shipment, but it can be hard to tell whether
things have mold on them in the darkness of a metal container at midnight. Wheaton noted how everyone has his or
her personal food litmus tests. “With
eggs, you can put it in a glass a water to see if it’s good or not. If it floats it’s bad; if it’s in the
middle you can bake with it; and if it falls its good.”
There’s
also a question of safety when rummaging through someone else’s trash on
private property. “There’s usually
security guards, but we just wait until they leave; it’s obvious we’re just
trying to dumpster diving. At this
point, I know most of the closing staff.”
Many
times Wheaton would find a glut of a good thing “I once found 50 frozen Eggplant Parmesans that had just be thrown out and were
still completely frozen. I invited
a bunch of friends over and we had a party.” And so slowly she converts the uninitiated one person at
time. “People who come dumpster
diving with me usually never think afterwards that it’s unsafe to each food out
of a trash can.”
For
those looking still looking for adventure, but not the peril or unpleasantness
of going through waste bins there exists the world of foraging. Chef Mia Wasilevich is one of the heads
of Transitional Gastronomy, a full service Wild Food Lab specializing in
foraging, classes, consulting, culinary research & development and private
events. Wasilevich and Pascal
Baudar created TransitionalGastronomy.com, and coined the phrase, as a response
to friends, family and fellow wild food foragers’ curiosity about their passion
for exploring local wild foods and creating gourmet cuisine using transitional
methods. She explained, “At
Transitional Gastronomy we look at the things in nature as a food source. Because of the economy, we’ve had quite
an increase in the number of people coming to our classes in the last few year
so they can learn about the food that exists in their immediate environment.”
As
with dumpster diving, safety is a number one priority. “You don’t learn about
foraging from Google or a book; it’s an oral tradition. You can only eat a bad mushroom
once,” noted Wasilevich. “Be
smart, don’t pick the weed at the bus stop. You’re 30 minutes from Angeles National Forest, which will
have everything you need.
Ninety-nine percent of foraged plants are invasive plants that parks
want to eradicate. By now Pascal
and I have relationships with rangers.
They will call us and say, ‘we’re going to plow down acres of nettles if
you want to grab them.’”
But for those looking
for a less rugged way of utilizing the abundance around there are produce
exchanges. Similar to a CSA,
produce exchanges are opt-in exchanges among neighbors who want
to share what they're growing in their gardens. Gardeners and cooks bring vegetables, fruits, herbs,
eggs and baked goods from their gardens, chicken coops, and kitchens.
“I’m originally from
Minnesota,” noted Naomi Curland,
founder of the monthly Westside Produce Exchange, “I grew up with farmers markets and food waste
reduction. When I moved to Los
Angeles seven years ago, I saw so much food is wasted with orange trees and
because of it I got into Fallen Fruit.
And then Food Forward. And then since I loved to organize, I started The
Westside Produce exchange three years ago.”
For
the Westside Produce Exchange, participants drop off bags of produce between
9:00 AM and noon on Saturday at the Learning Garden at Venice High School; volunteers
redistribute the bounty; and will then deliver a cornucopia of local foods
right to your doorstep.
For
those look to share abundance not only with themselves, but also with others
through the act of do-gooding there’s Food Forward and their Farmer’s Market
Recovery Program.
Food Forward
“Glean Team” volunteers arrive at the market ready to collect in their bright
blue caps and khaki aprons and issue donation boxes ornamented with the Food
Forward logo to the farmers. The
farmers fill the boxes with their unsold excess produce. At the end of the market, the Food
Forward volunteers collect the boxes and distribute them to their receiving
agencies.
With 128 farmers
markets held on a weekly basis across Los Angeles County, Food Forward’s
Farmers Market Recovery Program offers the only formal market-endorsed donation
system for farmers wanting to help fight hunger with their unsold produce. FMR Program Manager Mary Baldwin
stated, “we’re connecting people to agencies within
five miles of market. We work with
the big picture; we don’t want to get into the business of individuals. Instead we work with 501c3 receiving
agencies, collecting excess produce and giving it to these organizations that
can use all the food within 3 days max.
I’m not a chef, I’d rather give it to a kitchen who help people on a
larger scale.”
And the numbers
show how this big picture thinking is a success! The Program averages 15,000
pounds of fresh free produce per month, has over 150 volunteers, works with 210
farmers, and has 25 different receiving agencies. Since their launch nine months ago, Food Forward's Farmers
Market Recovery Program have successfully gleaned over 100,000 pounds of fresh
produce from local farmers markets and donated 100% of it to hungry Angelenos.
One
of the largest receiving agencies that Food Forward works with is the food bank
MEND Poverty. MEND is the biggest
non-profit anti-poverty agency in the Valley where Richard Weinroth has been
the Executive Director for the last five years. MEND now services 20-25,000 clients per month (a rate that
doubled in 2008).
“With
the produce we receive from Food Forward we give the perfect fruit to the
people, and then ‘broken’ fruit we ‘process’ it in our kitchen.” Weinroth has consciously changed the food
bank model so now MEND sees canned food as a last resort. “Every day we send out volunteers to
gather fresh food that would otherwise be thrown away. So much effort has been put into something
that might be thrown away because it has a spot. We now gather around 100,000lbs of fresh food and vegetables
each month. This goes to families
so they can do things like buy shoes for their kids and save for college.”
“Our
distribution center is open 4 days a week. We have a kitchen, but we don’t only feed our clients, but
send everyone home with 2 cans of soup, 2 cans of tomato sauce, pasta, yogurt,
frozen meats and dairy, and fresh foods and vegetables. Usually a box for a family weighs 75
lbs.”
For several
years, MEND has run a small but popular after school program called Seeds to
Supper, in which school children learn to grow, harvest, and prepare vegetables
from MEND’s small parking-lot garden. “We teach
kids how to grow organically, and then teach them how to cook without cutting
off their fingers.” MEND is
now implementing a new Home Gardening Training Program that will go much
farther, teaching 72 families over the course of 2013 how to grow their own
food on a sustainable basis in the backyards of their homes.
Weinroth
is constantly working on ways to make the abundance extend just a bit longer;
at the moment he’s going through Food Forward’s preserving program. “We got 40,000 lbs of strawberries today. I can’t wait to teach my clients and
volunteers how to can and preserve these fruits and vegetables.” Until that happens MEND gives food to the
other thirty organizations in L.A. area trading strawberries for tomatoes. “We make a few phone calls with other
food banks and we share what we get.”
And
as attendees shared the small bites created by Mia Wasilevich for the
post-panel reception, which included lambs quarters (aka wild spinach)
empanadas and white clover cocktail with watercress and cattails, there was a
buzz abound on sharing the wealth.
Of utilizing one of the first lessons learned in kindergarten: sharing
with your neighbor. Because as Mary Baldwin stated, “there’s no end to the need for the food.”
Kat
Thomas is a Santa Monica writer who is lucky to be surrounded by a wealth of
food and abundance in the Santa Monica food community and plans to share any
time she can.
