Growing up, Eleu Navarro says he and his family dealt with food insecurity a lot. They came to the U.S. from Mexico in the early ‘70s.
“As a child and my other siblings, it was our job to either recycle cans or dumpster dive,” he told LAist.
Navarro says the experience made him realize that he wants to do his part to help others. Now, as the program director for Growing Hope Gardens, he’s helping fight food insecurity.
Every week, he and hundreds of other organizations partner with the North Hollywood nonprofit Food Forward to pick up fresh produce that feeds the community.
Gleaning at the markets
At the Santa Monica Farmers Market, Navarro picked up hundreds of pounds of free food. This kind of gathering is called gleaning, which is when excess food in public areas gets harvested.
That produce helped Growing Hope Gardens, a nonprofit that runs food gardens in Los Angeles County, feed more than 50 families in Santa Monica and residents at a workshop in Boyle Heights.
“ We make sure that whatever we glean from here doesn’t go to waste,” he said.
This is Food Forward’s farmers market recovery program, one of multiple ways they rescue good produce and get it into the hands of needy residents. On this day, dozens of boxes were stuffed with romanesco broccoli, fennel, white cauliflower, rainbow chard, artichokes, kale and more.
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The nonprofit’s system is simple. Volunteers show up to markets in L.A. and Ventura counties with boxes and distribute them to farmers who’ve joined the program. Then, as the market nears closing time, they put in whatever produce they’d like that didn’t sell.
Samatha Teslik, Food Forward’s community programs director, said the boxes get collected, weighed, sorted and picked up within the hour. Weighing is how they track how much gets donated, which ends up as a tax write-off for farmers later on.
On a good day, the Santa Monica Farmers Market alone yields upward of 5,000 pounds. On a slow day, they still get at least 1,000 pounds of fresh produce.
“ There is a little bit of physicalness to it for sure,” she said. “But we work really hard to provide a fun and engaging experience for our volunteers so that they leave feeling really good and want to come back.”
Helping Angelenos
Food insecurity affects about 1 in 4 L.A. County households, according to Food Base L.A. Largely low-income residents struggle with this, since it’s often tied to economic issues, but recently, more higher-income residents are also experiencing food insecurity.
Most of Food Forward’s fruits and vegetables goes to L.A. County, according to founder Rick Nahmias. He said they make it clear that the goods need to get passed along to someone who’s self-identified as being food insecure. They don’t check tax returns or citizenship.
“That produce can end up in soups at a soup kitchen,” he said. “It can end up in grocery bags being given out in MacArthur Park. They can go into boxes being given to veterans.”
Residents can sign up to be part of the glean team at farmers markets or become a backyard harvester. These volunteers pick fruits from registered trees on private property, as well as public and commercial orchards. The minimum age for farmers market recovery is 12, while kids as young as 5 can join the backyard harvest program.
“Whether food waste is a big issue for you, food insecurity or just wanting to do something good in this world where sometimes we’re not feeling super great,” Teslik said, “[it’s] an hour-and-a-half to two hours where you can really make a tremendous impact.”
