The Gleaning season is over the year, but check back in 2012. The Salvation Army has been able to hire a student gleaning coordinator for the last two summers and may be able to offer this service again.

Gleaning is the collection of surplus or unusable food crops from commercial growers, market gardens, or backyard gardens and fruit trees. It is estimated that about one half of all food produced ends up wasted. This provides enormous food recovery opportunities, particularly for accessing the fresh fruits and vegetables needed for health.

Community Gleaning Programs are typically organized so that volunteer teams of pickers are called out to harvest crops offered by a donor. The harvest is then shared three ways between the pickers, the donor, and charitable organizations. Most recently this program was delivered by the Salvation Army in 2010 when funds enabled the hiring of a student. Unfortunately Gleaning Programs are difficult to sustain because of a reliance on volunteers and/or a lack of funding to hire a coordinator. Often there is a need to have processing or cold storage abilities because the food can come in volumes, is very ripe, and needs to be preserved or eaten right away. The Food Action Society is interested in helping to facilitate a sustainable gleaning model for the community.

Glean Canada is a new website developed by a UBC-O student who lives on an orchard. He was inspired to develop this resource because he saw first hand how perfectly good food was not being utilized simply because of a minor flaw that destroys market value--but it was still perfectly good to eat. The resource is very simple. A person with surplus food simply advertises its availability for free. A person or organization in need of food can check the listings and contact the donor to make arrangements for harvesting. This becomes a direct transaction between the donor and pickers so it alleviates the need for coordination. The Food Action Society wants to help promote the use of this resource.

North Okanagan Valley Gleaners Society gleans large volumes of surplus crops and donated foods to process into dehydrated soup mixes and apple chips for shipment to impoverished nations. They have access to a large former ginseng dehydration plant in Lavington and are in the process of doing test runs of product. They are willing to help out the food insecure in the community, but due to the small variety of product, and their consideration to local retailers, its community use would be limited. Volunteers are welcomed.