Volunteers Visit Baxter Farm To Rescue Food

The Society of Saint Andrews gathered a group of volunteers Friday to visit Baxter farm to rescue waste food.

Waste food consists of crops that are thrown away because they did not sell or have imperfections. Society of Saint Andrews Program Coordinator Cecelie Eiler said the food being thrown away can be eaten by people who battle hunger.

“These people do have access to food through a bunch of different helpful avenues but a lot of the time that food is high in starch, or it is processed, or it’s like pasta and chips, and it’s not anything fresh,” Eiler said. “Nothing fresh then like what you can get from a farm.”

The process is called Field Gleaning which is a term that refers to a biblical time when farmers would allow the public to scavenge the leftover crops. Eiler said often slight imperfections will cause produce to be thrown away.

“Everyone at the grocery stores are looking for the really nice stuff,” Eiler said. “And all of that food that doesn’t meet this marketable criteria, it ends up getting wasted out in the field.

Eiler said the volunteers who help out play an essential role in providing food for those in need.

“I can only get so much on my own,” Eiler said. “I can only be in so many places at once and so volunteers really make it so that instead of me being able to get two bins in two hours, if we have ten people we can get twenty bins of food in two hours. That is going to be a much bigger donation and a much bigger impact than if it was just me doing it.”

The volunteers rescued food from a farm near Little Creek Produce. Eiler said the organization has events planned and looks forward to preserving more food in the Upper Cumberland.