In an odd coincidence, there are about as many people in America who garden (42 million) as are food-insecure (37.2 million).
That works out well for AmpleHarvest.org, a website that seeks to match the abundance of produce grown by home gardeners with local food pantries that could use it. So far, the site has relationships with more than 8,600 food pantries in all 50 states, and it wants to greatly expand that number. Any pantry can sign up and it’s free to do.
“There are gardeners across America and there is hunger across America,” said Gary Oppenheimer, Founder and Executive Director. “We need to get more and more food pantries to join.”
Gardeners often end up growing more food than they can use, and it generally ripens all around the same time. Rather than let the food go to waste, they can enter their zip code into AmpleHarvest.org’s website to find the location and hours of nearby pantries that can take it. Ideally, gardeners deliver the produce just in time for distribution, eliminating the need for storage or refrigeration.
At Snohomish Community Food Bank in Washington state, AmpleHarvest.org is one of several ways the pantry gets fresh produce in the door. The pantry participates in a community garden, which provided it with about 2,000 pounds of produce last year. Backyard gardeners gave it another 2,000 pounds. And a partnership with the local farmer’s market resulted in nearly 3,500 pounds of produce donations.
“No matter how it happens, it’s a blessing for the amount of fresh stuff we get in the growing season,” said Elizabeth Grant, Executive Director.
While Grant does not know which backyard-garden donors found out about her pantry through AmpleHarvest.org, she gives the organization credit for spreading the word about garden donations. “We benefit from the idea that AmpleHarvest.org educates people that this is a good thing to do,” she said.
AmpleHarvest.org is continually fighting messaging that pantries only want non-perishable food, Oppenheimer acknowledged. “People have to be told that fresh food is accepted,” Oppenheimer said. Meanwhile, “the pantries know fresh is best.”
Oppenheimer estimates that 3.9 million gardeners are currently donating their surplus produce to pantries — most though AmpleHarvest.org and others because they found out about the possibility through word of mouth. “There is a huge viral component to this,” Oppenheimer noted.
One aspect of the program that could be refined has to do with setting expectations for the food pantries that sign up. Pantries sometimes assume that AmpleHarvest.org itself will be delivering the food. “They don’t get the idea that we’re not giving the food. We’re connecting them with people in their own community who want to give food,” Oppenheimer said.
Some pantries may wonder why, in the middle of the winter, they are not getting any fresh produce. While supermarkets have set the expectation that fresh produce is available 365 days of the year, gardening of course does not work that way. “A food pantry in Maine needs to understand that it’s going to get a lot less food than a pantry in Georgia, where the growing season is a lot longer,” Oppenheimer noted.
While AmpleHarvest.org has made huge progress in uniting gardeners and pantries, vast potential remains. Enough excess produce exists in America’s gardens to feed 28 million people for a year, Oppenheimer estimates, and so far, AmpleHarvest.org is supplying about 700,000 people with their annual allotment.
Every time another food pantry signs up at AmpleHarvest.org, another 250 square miles of nearby gardens and gardeners opens up for possible donations, Oppenheimer said, adding, “We need to put more pins on the map.”
