I volunteer at a food bank, and the company that sends us our food decides what we get. Last Tuesday they sent so much produce we could not fit it all into fridges. We were trying to give away cases of the food on Wednesday, but people were turning it down because they had no place to store a case of tomatoes, or cauliflower. This was what we had left after last Wednesday’s morning give away. Not pictured the 5000lbs of watermelons, the 2500lbs of onions (those will last a lot longer).
The company that supplies us wants to move from sending shipments every other week, to once a month. This would cause even more no produce loss.
It is so frustrating to have all this food for it to go bad. Even if we got the same volume of produce, but there was variation in what it is we could give it away easier.
Edit: I posted this in a comment.
Because of bureaucracy we have to request this. If it is found out we are giving away the food to unapproved recipients we can lose all of our funding. If we give to unapproved recipients and they in turn give us prepared food to give out, that is okay.
Word got out that we were loading up my pickup with food and taking it to the homeless camps. I did get a number of them to start coming to the bank to get food. But it was easier when I could take stuff to them.
We are not allowed to simply give it out to anyone. This is not like a church pantry where all of the food is donated by the community and’s parishioners. There is government funding, as well as private businesses, which I am guessing get their money back from the government for funding this. If we could simply give it to anyone we would not be in this situation.
American Charity*
*Terms and conditions apply
For the company it is a tax write off and getting rid of their surplus. They don’t care what happens next.
I wonder if your food bank can set up some kind of relationship with farms in your region. Those farms may be open to taking lots of spoiled produce as animal feed and compost material. In exchange they might share their crops with you.
My workplace used to donate all its leftover food to a local meal service charity, daily. But they refused to take fresh fruits and vegetables because they just spoil too fast. It was sad because those are the foods people need the most but they are logistically very difficult to deliver, as you are witnessing.
Get somebody else to take a truck to you?
Seems kinda wasteful
This is what we have been telling the company that sends us food, stop sending huge shipments of fresh produce.
it would be kinda cool if food panties could also pickle + can things
food panties
grins in dog
Tomatoes, dont need any cooling, storing them in the fridge does prolongs their live but they taste like shit afterwards.
Greetings from a German Italian who cries often when people put tomatoes in fridges.
As an Italian American I would have so much fun jarring all those tomatoes into sauce.
Just waiting a couple more weeks for my step-dad to harvest all his tomatoes so the fun can begin.
Don’t they get their taste back when they reach room temperature again?
Afaik they don’t. Something about storing them at low temp changes the thickness of the skin. At least that’s what I’ve been told working on produce.
The ones I took home on Wednesday were moldy and a mess Friday evening when I got home from work.
You can freeze them if you plan on cooking with them. I ended up with an obscene amount of tomatoes one year that were amazingly tasty and I was so sad that I couldn’t process them before they went bad. My aunt told me to freeze them - it was perfect! They also make for great weapons when frozen, and when you thaw them the skins come right off!
The edit makes me think this is done on purpose to try and force a slip up so they can justify taking away your funding and it’s making me hella mad.
Contract mutual aid orgs they well come get it
Also: Where is this? It’s a small world, some Lemming might pick up a cauliflower or two.
Rural nm
Where in North Madagascar?
Madagascar is pretty big.
North side of Main Street
For the tomatoes you might see if there’s canning groups on Facebook for your area? It takes a metric fuck-ton of tomatoes to make a can of sauce so they’d likely be able to use quite a bit of them.
I think the bigger problem is that there are at least 50 trays of tomatoes there and it’ll take a bunch of kitchen space and time to process all of them, all of which has to be done on next-to-no notice. It’ll also take a lot of time and supplies to can them all - though at least whatever they have the time and space to process will be shelf-stable in the end.
The real question is who the fuck is this “company” that is supplying them with far more stock than they could possibly handle, and why the fuck are those incompetent morons handling so much produce at all?
What the food bank can manage would be known. All “excess” should be handled by the supplying company, instead of making their oversupply the problem of volunteers to manage and dispose of.
I’d be willing to bet the profits of the supplier, or lack of funding to distribute the stock over a larger area, are the reason for this entire situation.
Having volunteered at a church’s food distribution for over 25 years, I can say that some food banks are pretty special with how they do things. We purchase food from a large food bank for distribution once a month. If the food bank has a lot of produce or something they haven’t been able to move, sometimes they’ll throw a pallet or two extra on the trailer when we pick it up, so that they can get rid of it. When we get the trailer, sometimes it’s just a surprise what we end up with.
In general, we have some people that come that have extended families or neighbors that they give some of the surplus to. Then there’s the church that were hosted at. There’s some things that they’re able to keep for the next day to offer to the parishioners. Beyond that, there’s the occasional phone call to other churches to see if anybody could use it. In the end, the pastor knows a pig farmer where if we have a surplus of a surplus, some stuff will go to.
I think the “hit up local churches” suggestion from another commenter would help with that, since (larger) churches often have decent kitchens that are less likely to be getting used on a weekday.
Facebook canning groups are a great idea, as someone else mentioned. Them little old ladies can do pretty amazing things on short notice. Can I suggest hitting up local churches? The methodists, Episcopal and baptists are all particularly fond of doing drives and such, and may be able to do an impromptu canning drive for y’all
How rural? I found a Sikh temple north of Santa Fe that could maybe use it for their langar.
If you’re nearish ABQ, I’ve got a pickup I’m happy to help transport with. I unfortunately don’t think I’m in the list of approved people, otherwise I’d be more than happy to take as many of those tomatoes as I could. Unfortunately I can’t get my kid to eat cauliflower to save their life, so I have limited uses for that.
I take it “nm” stands for New Mexico. What’s the weather like there? Sun-drying might be an option, at least dried tomatoes are something people buy.
My first thought for some reason was “northern Manitoba” lol
I was thinking North Macedonia or something, but then I remembered that the post referenced pounds
I think your server might contain a hint as to why…
Not that you’re necessarily Canadian or in Canada, but you probably get more Canadian-centric posts on your local feed.
Oh yeah no it’s a big, fat hint haha
Outside abq? If it’s near abq I’ll come get it
Messaged you
At the food bank where my mother works, she finds pig farmers are a good source to get rid of almost gone food. While it’s not solving the feeding people part, it does help with disposal. Good luck, hopefully you can pickle some of it too.
If I were in that situation, I would try quickly whipping up some homemade posters and put them at our market square, maybe in front of schools, and in front of grocery stores. I would make sure to specify why these are given away, otherwise people might be suspicious.
That would probably illegal, but …well… who’s going to sue a food bank over hanging a few posters for 2 days?
In the US? Where we pour bleach on food that has been discarded to make sure that someone who is hungry can’t eat it?
But yes, this is a great suggestion. Also, looking for a local farm or farms that could feed these to their animals (specifically chickens or pigs).
Where we pour bleach on food that has been discarded to make sure that someone who is hungry can’t eat it?
What the fuck? Seriously?
Yes, grocery stores sometimes do this because they are afraid of being sued by someone who gets salmonella or something from the dumpster.
This is what they tell the public.
In reality they just don’t want homeless people near their dumpsters.
I’m sure that’s a reason too.
I’m sure there will be people salivating at the opportunity.
Well, I commented that before I learned that OP is in New Mexico.
GOOD! Spending money on that is SOCIALISM! Is would MUCH Rather my Tax Dollars go into Elon Musks BANK ACCOUNT!
I take it the most pressing issue right now is cooling. If that is right, you might have yet another avenue to explore: Ask facilities with cooling needs if you can store one or two pallets there. I’m thinking schools, (yet again) restaurants, ice cream parlors, ice skating rinks (not sure how they work exactly – is the whole building cooled or just the rink itself?), butchers. You could ask an outdoor gear shop (I mean a place where skis and winter jackets etc. are sold) if they know of a place where one can test jackets. They might know a cool place, too.
Second the pickling idea. Read a similar story that a food bank had a lot of excess fresh material. Thry had set up production through a commercial food processing site, had put labels on them, and were selling them online and at farmer’s markets. The proceeds were going back to the food bank. Zero wastage. They were also making things like sauerkraut, kimchee, and kombucha. Watermelon can also be juiced and the rinds pickled.
I imagine for food safety and liability reasons, you wouldn’t want to do it in someone’s kitchen. Plus, licensing fees. But you have a great story to tell (good health, zero waste, help food bank).
Quick search since you mentioned NM: https://www.newmexicofma.org/food_processing_permits.php
