Contributed Story – Special to the Sydenham Current
Vern and Elizabeth Toews spoke at the Rotary Club of Wallaceburg on November 27th about the Gleaners in the Leamington area.
Vern began by telling us that if you have food on the table and a roof over your head, you are richer than 75% of the world. Gleaning is a Biblical concept in which God commanded farmers to allow the poor to gather food from the fields that had been harvested.
In Ontario alone, millions of pounds of fruits and vegetables go to waste every year. Farmers often produce more than they are able to sell to the processing plants. Today we can feed the hungry through gleaning surplus and non-marketable produce that may be too big or small, slightly blemished, or too close to the expiry date.
Today there are about 7 billion people in the world, and an estimated 1 billion will be hungry tonight. The population could be up to 9 billion by 2015. The farmers will need to double their production to meet the demand. It will become an increasing challenge to feed the world.
There is hunger in the world, hunger in Canada, and hunger locally.
An estimated 30% of children in Leamington area schools don’t have enough food; many other communities may have similar numbers.
Surplus fruits and vegetables are dried, sliced and made into dehydrated soup mix and fruit snacks ready for distribution.
The dehydrated soup mix and fruit is packaged and distributed free to local community partners and reputable relief agencies worldwide. They donate many bags to area schools. Each bag costs about $5 to produce, and can feed up to 100 people.
This is the third Gleaners operation in Ontario, and the seventh in Canada. The organization is staffed entirely by volunteers. They need 150 volunteers every week, or about 30 per day, to help process the produce. They are always looking to add more volunteers. They are not supported by any church, government organizations or service clubs.
They hope to expand and add more equipment, so they can process more produce. The produce is there, but sometimes they need to turn down donations because they can only process so much in one day.
Here are a couple of photos from the event:
