4w ago

All this produce is going to spoil at the food bank where I volunteer

I volunteer at a food bank, and the company that sends us our food decides what we get. Last Tuesday they sent so much produce we could not fit it all into fridges. We were trying to give away cases of the food on Wednesday, but people were turning it down because they had no place to store a case of tomatoes, or cauliflower. This was what we had left after last Wednesday's morning give away. Not pictured the 5000lbs of watermelons, the 2500lbs of onions (those will last a lot longer).

The company that supplies us wants to move from sending shipments every other week, to once a month. This would cause even more no produce loss.

It is so frustrating to have all this food for it to go bad. Even if we got the same volume of produce, but there was variation in what it is we could give it away easier.

Edit: I posted this in a comment.

Because of bureaucracy we have to request this. If it is found out we are giving away the food to unapproved recipients we can lose all of our funding. If we give to unapproved recipients and they in turn give us prepared food to give out, that is okay.
Word got out that we were loading up my pickup with food and taking it to the homeless camps. I did get a number of them to start coming to the bank to get food. But it was easier when I could take stuff to them.

We are not allowed to simply give it out to anyone. This is not like a church pantry where all of the food is donated by the community and's parishioners. There is government funding, as well as private businesses, which I am guessing get their money back from the government for funding this. If we could simply give it to anyone we would not be in this situation.

208 comments

Also: Where is this? It’s a small world, some Lemming might pick up a cauliflower or two.
- Rural nm (edit NM is the state abbreviation for New Mexico, a lot of US residents, our president included, think we are actually Mexico, but they still recognize the postal abbreviation NM. Using it is a work habit I have.)
  
  For the tomatoes you might see if there’s canning groups on Facebook for your area? It takes a metric fuck-ton of tomatoes to make a can of sauce so they’d likely be able to use quite a bit of them.
  
  I take it “nm” stands for New Mexico. What’s the weather like there? Sun-drying might be an option, at least dried tomatoes are something people buy.
  
  Facebook canning groups are a great idea, as someone else mentioned. Them little old ladies can do pretty amazing things on short notice. Can I suggest hitting up local churches? The methodists, Episcopal and baptists are all particularly fond of doing drives and such, and may be able to do an impromptu canning drive for y'all
  
  How rural? I found a Sikh temple north of Santa Fe that could maybe use it for their langar.
  
  Where in North Madagascar?
  Madagascar is pretty big.
  
  Outside abq? If it's near abq I'll come get it
  
  If you're nearish ABQ, I've got a pickup I'm happy to help transport with. I unfortunately don't think I'm in the list of approved people, otherwise I'd be more than happy to take as many of those tomatoes as I could. Unfortunately I can't get my kid to eat cauliflower to save their life, so I have limited uses for that.
- This same thing plays out at many major food banks countrywide.
  Find out where the manufacturer's warehouses and production plants actually are, and the nearest large food banks will be the recipients of their trash.
Seldom have I seen a better example of why universal basic income is so preferable to food banks.
- Except for the fact that a lot of these people aren't capable of managing money.
  They are on the street because they have serious issues
  
  Turns out that money is one of those things that the less you have of it, the harder it is to manage.
  
  And who's supporting them?
  Clearly not you.
  
  Yeah, some of them need assisted living as well. Not all of them, though, and there's also a lot of food (and other) insecurity among the housed.
  
  Yeah, but the crux of it would probably lie in the fact that they've never had money to manage. From what I've seen, everyone mismanages their money. If we had basic income, I would guess 90%+ would eventually get their shit together. 10 people needing food because they can't manage money is better than 100 people needing food because they don't have money.
- Please explain how that would solve the issue of people not wanting to eat their vegetables.
  
  People shouldn't downvote you, it's an educational experience.
  Edit: Nah, fuck this guy.
  People should be able to buy what they need, not be at the whims of what a capitalist entity dumps in a food bank.
  Not everyone has the ability to store, prepare or even cook vegetables. Due to lack of utensils, food storage or even something to heat with. For many, vegetables would just be a liability and force you to choose between other necessities as you battle limited carrying capacity.
  
  i cast ten thousand watermelons falling on top of you
At the food bank where my mother works, she finds pig farmers are a good source to get rid of almost gone food. While it's not solving the feeding people part, it does help with disposal. Good luck, hopefully you can pickle some of it too.
If I were in that situation, I would try quickly whipping up some homemade posters and put them at our market square, maybe in front of schools, and in front of grocery stores. I would make sure to specify why these are given away, otherwise people might be suspicious.
That would probably illegal, but …well… who’s going to sue a food bank over hanging a few posters for 2 days?
- In the US? Where we pour bleach on food that has been discarded to make sure that someone who is hungry can't eat it?
  But yes, this is a great suggestion. Also, looking for a local farm or farms that could feed these to their animals (specifically chickens or pigs).
  
  Where we pour bleach on food that has been discarded to make sure that someone who is hungry can’t eat it?
  What the fuck? Seriously?
- I'm sure there will be people salivating at the opportunity.
  
  Well, I commented that before I learned that OP is in New Mexico.
American Charity*
*Terms and conditions apply
- For the company it is a tax write off and getting rid of their surplus. They don't care what happens next.
  
  It does help food banks significantly. I'm not complaining
  
  Tax write off of retail value (donated retail product), instead of tax write off of actual cost. I wouldn't be surprised if the writeoff is net zero for them from retail value.
- America has always been a place where transactions matter more than people. At least, it has been that way ever since European discovery. Native Americans were nowhere near this inhumane
  
  The victims of the Aztecs would beg to differ. Lots of people were fed to the sun god, to quench its thirst for blood, all to delay Armageddon. Like any other continent, Native America had genocidal maniacs and the Five Nations that resembled a federation. Good and Evil has no homeland, just the feelings that grow inside of people.
pickle pickle pickle!
2% salted water brine, spices, glass weights to maintain under water in not-too-tight closed jars with co2 escape. keep at room temperature, and here you go!
- The jars likely cost more than the volume of produce it could store.
  Also - have to arrange logistics for labor, supplies, and a kitchen to do the boiling in. Now that you are making a cooked food product, your kitchen also likely needs a license.
  And insurance in case your rushed pickling operation creates any jars that go foul and anyone gets sick.
  Also -- ew. Not even the destitute want pickled cauliflower.
  
  I was nodding along until
  Not even the destitute want pickled cauliflower.
  It's great!
  
  Yep food pantries will repackage food but rarely process or cook it because that's a whole different animal.
  But, many food pantries I've worked with had ways to offload large amounts of things creatively, it's how I got the best pear gelato I've ever had in my life.
  
  Use 20L food safe buckets.
  
  Pickeled cauliflower sounds so incredibly bad
  
  You need to teach people how to do it themselves instead. They can do it in small groups helping each other making the event more joyful.
  
  hmm no big deal, but either i expressed myself wrong, or you are mis-informed about pickling :)
  there are several pickling techniques, the most common is lacto-fermentation and:
  1/ it doesnt require any boiling. you could be boiling your jars to disinfect them, but thorough wash with soap and/or vinegar is more than enough. so no "cooked food", no license, thanks.
  2/ the labour is barely more than any other preparation of that food. actually much less, as no cooking is involved. cut the goods (sometimes even by hands with cauliflowers, no knife is needed for most of the job), immerse them in salt water and that's it. it scales very well.
  3/ the cost of the jars can be minimum, by recycling existing ones, and/or investing in 10, 20, 50L crocs that can be used hundreds of time. their cost is thus divided by the number of fermentation cycling....
  4/ like for previous point, this is assuming that the people confronted with that question are not here at their first rodeo, and that they may face that problem again, so it's more like an investment.
  5/ with a little experience of fermentation, you see and smell immediately if something went bad (mold), and discard those batches. the other do look and smell good and there is no way anyone gets sick. it has worked like this for centuries, way before fridges or the notion of microbiome were invented... I also imagine that people getting food for free have an expectation to use at their own risk, no guarantee, etc... but maybe everyone sues everyone in 'murica, i dunno?
  6/ for the taste of pickled cauliflower... well it seems you may never have tried it? like with anything lacto-fermented it is deliciously complex, sour, and goes with everything as a condiment, minced and mixed with other things, or lightly cooked like sauerkraut... it brings vitamins and probiotics that the body craves for, and usually rather tastes "woaa" or "hmmm" than anything else... even if you dont like cauliflower in the first place... do you think the "destitute" want rotten raw cauliflower, or no cauliflower at all, more than the pickled one?
  7/ pickling/lacto-fermenting is a practice of autonomy. the labour could be contributed by the people themselves who will benefit from it, who will thus learn a very simple and accessible technique that will enable everyone in the future to conserve food ie. deal with stocks in excess, when they are cheap, abundant, etc. and save them in ways that benefit the body for times when they are not. seems pretty compatible with the objective of anyone collecting and re-distributing unused food!
Tomatoes, dont need any cooling, storing them in the fridge does prolongs their live but they taste like shit afterwards.
Greetings from a German Italian who cries often when people put tomatoes in fridges.
- The ones I took home on Wednesday were moldy and a mess Friday evening when I got home from work.
- As an Italian American I would have so much fun jarring all those tomatoes into sauce.
  Just waiting a couple more weeks for my step-dad to harvest all his tomatoes so the fun can begin.
- You can freeze them if you plan on cooking with them. I ended up with an obscene amount of tomatoes one year that were amazingly tasty and I was so sad that I couldn't process them before they went bad. My aunt told me to freeze them - it was perfect! They also make for great weapons when frozen, and when you thaw them the skins come right off!
- Don’t they get their taste back when they reach room temperature again?
  
  Afaik they don't. Something about storing them at low temp changes the thickness of the skin. At least that's what I've been told working on produce.
I'm one of the returns clerks in a Costco. First thing we do every morning is process stuff to send the food bank. It irks me how much stuff we aren't allowed to send because the manufacturer won't allow it. Even despite that we send a lot every day. Everything that does spoil at the food bank goes to a local pig farm, who donates pig products back to the food bank whenever he can.
- We are trying to find one place that will consistently take our spoilage.
  We get a lot of expired stuff from Walmart and the grocery store in town. But Walmart takes forever to get it to us. Usually when we get it, it is a week expired. Where the grocery store we get it a day or two before it actually expires.
- Thank you pigs! Also compost piles.
- It irks me how much stuff we aren't allowed to send because the manufacturer won't allow it.
  Name and shame. This is such bullshit. I'm sure it's some to protect brand value, but IMO you earn more value through kindness and generosity.
  
  Well, all the Nestle stuff gets sent back to them. Pretty much all the big name cereal outfits have orders that damaged products are to be sent to a salvage company.
  Happily most cheese and sliced meats can be donated, plus we generally send 8-10 shopping carts of baked goods and produce directly from us to them every day
- yet another reason to really dig costco. huzzah, respect
I take it the most pressing issue right now is cooling. If that is right, you might have yet another avenue to explore: Ask facilities with cooling needs if you can store one or two pallets there. I’m thinking schools, (yet again) restaurants, ice cream parlors, ice skating rinks (not sure how they work exactly – is the whole building cooled or just the rink itself?), butchers. You could ask an outdoor gear shop (I mean a place where skis and winter jackets etc. are sold) if they know of a place where one can test jackets. They might know a cool place, too.
I wonder if your food bank can set up some kind of relationship with farms in your region. Those farms may be open to taking lots of spoiled produce as animal feed and compost material. In exchange they might share their crops with you.
I am working at an Amazon company's warehouse that specifically stores food items.
The amount of shit we throw in trash just because "packaging is slightly off" makes me angry and just one day of bad management spoils enough food to feed entire family.
There is no air conditioning or fridge. It's summer in Texas so if we delay a single day, half the items go bad. There are dairy products here. (And people in border of heatstroke but that's another topic.)
- That's fucking crazy and frankly also what I expected/why I would never order perishables from Amazon. Of fucking course they neither store it properly nor even keep the facility cool.
  
  Amazon perishables are mostly whole foods. The UNFI cyberattack is going to cause likely hundreds of tons of spoiled product nationwide as they have no idea where to ship anything, and the production line doesn't just stop having fresh product to process.
Contract mutual aid orgs they well come get it
You might try contacting restaurants and see if they have the capacity to cook ketchup (or something else with a longer shelf life) from the tomatoes. Technically, everybody can do that. I’m thinking of restaurants because of their bigger pots.
Speaking of restaurants: They might have a food dehydrator that can process some of the cauliflower, as well.
- We have tried to work with restaurants in the past, giving them extra produce for free and they in turn have to prepare so many meals for unhoused and our volunteers and they refused.
  We are looking at being able to use the community kitchen to process it ourselves. The issue then comes down to enough volunteer hours to do this.
  
  extra produce for free and they in turn have to prepare so many meals
  Nitpick: If you’re demanding that they do something in return, it’s not free.
  In this case your two options are: A) Someone gets the food and puts it to use; B) it spoils. In this scenario I believe giving it away, no strings attached, might be the better option.
GOOD! Spending money on that is SOCIALISM! Is would MUCH Rather my Tax Dollars go into Elon Musks BANK ACCOUNT!
For the watermelons you might try to contact a local vintner. They may be able to process them into wine and/or liquor.
- My initial thought was that the sugar content in watermelon would be to low to acquire any watermelon taste when made into a wine without an artificial flavoring added, apparently watermelon has more sugar that I thought. (More than peaches apparently, never would have guessed that). Twice that of strawberries...
  Usually you try to aim for about 18g of sugar in 100 grams of product for the fermentation. Which I think people used that just because that's what grapes hover around and they ferment very well without additives.
Not being funny, but what the fuck is a homeless person going to do with a raw cauliflower?
I often see carrier bags of dry pasta, tinned tomatoes and stuff just dumped at the roadside, because the person they'd given it to has no way of doing anything with it. Apparently they're supposed to give only food they can prepare, but that clearly doesn't always happen.
Food waste is part of the system. It's fine. It's what stops a shortage from becoming a famine.
- Not everyone who comes through the food bank is homeless.
- I'm unsure I get your point, how does waste prevent a shortage from becoming a famine ?
  Also, both raw cauliflower and tinned tomatoes can be eaten almost as is.
  
  how does waste prevent a shortage from becoming a famine ?
  Making the expected production a higher number than the expected need will give the headroom necessary to deal with a shortage without people starving.
  If you're aiming to produce food for a population of 100,000, but have the capacity to make food for 200,000, then you can afford to waste half of your food without starvation. You can also accommodate a 50% drop in production without starvation.
  So that buffer is expected waste, but it's also starvation resistance.
My workplace used to donate all its leftover food to a local meal service charity, daily. But they refused to take fresh fruits and vegetables because they just spoil too fast. It was sad because those are the foods people need the most but they are logistically very difficult to deliver, as you are witnessing.
it would be kinda cool if food panties could also pickle + can things
Second the pickling idea. Read a similar story that a food bank had a lot of excess fresh material. Thry had set up production through a commercial food processing site, had put labels on them, and were selling them online and at farmer's markets. The proceeds were going back to the food bank. Zero wastage. They were also making things like sauerkraut, kimchee, and kombucha. Watermelon can also be juiced and the rinds pickled.
I imagine for food safety and liability reasons, you wouldn't want to do it in someone's kitchen. Plus, licensing fees. But you have a great story to tell (good health, zero waste, help food bank).
Quick search since you mentioned NM: https://www.newmexicofma.org/food_processing_permits.php
It's not the bureaucracy. It's the capitalist that run the bureaucracy. In a society like this, it's all about managing perception. It's all about your brand. It's about looking good and not doing good. As things start to centralize further and further, you'll see what this is all about. In my town we have hooverviles. The homeless are there to remind you to work harder, or you'll become homeless. Working inside the system will not work. Capitalism in the US Empire need overthrown.
- The branding is one aspect, they definitely publicize the food bank donations and it's often one of the few things food manufacturers do that sounds good. The rest is just profit and employing mass contract labor at near minimum wage.
  If they threw out thousands of pounds of product it would look like a bad number if publicized... if they donate ten thousand pounds of tomatoes a couple days before they go bad they get to look like they donated ten thousand pounds of tomatoes in value, and then they get to write that off as a donation.
  I'm pretty sure when they do said "donations" they get to write off the retail value, whereas if they just wrote it off as a loss to the business it would only be the actual cost.
Unfortunately, you guys aren’t going to be able to use or give everything away. But, it all looks fresh. You’re going to learn quite a bit about how long certain foods take to spoil, and there’s some solace in that.
- The tomatoes I took home Wednesday were moldy and unusable by Friday. I had planned to cook them Sunday morning.
  
  That’s deeply unfortunate. It’s just hit after hit
There isn't a food shortage. There are significant problems of wastage created by marketing value and poor distribution. Many solutions have been brought up over the years. To deaf ears. Because your local grocer needs to put 1000 tomatoes out to mostly rot because it looks aesthetically pleasing.
- Okay but to be fair it's very pretty
Silly idle thought (for real): Suppose in a situation like this, particularly if people complain on the internet drawing attention to the fact that there's 1000s of pounds of produce in a space that likely doesn't have funding for strong security measures, a group of interested parties brought some trucks and took it without explicit permission or consent from the organization.
What's the impact to the org in situations where this isn't given away to unauthorized parties, but gets stolen instead?
- I am in contact with someone now that may be facilitating something along these lines. Not to the extent with which you propose, but I am working on something.
  
  Fair enough - glad you're trying something to address this lot! Believe it or not, did actually mean this as a 'what if/what are the ramifications for orgs like this if that happened', but probably best not to entertain that yourself at the moment.
  As a total aside, good song to keep spirits up today might be The Last Saskatchewan Pirate by Captain Tractor - very last line before final chorus is relevant :)
  Good luck with what you're doing!
If you’re willing to go there, you might post on local facebook groups.
- The woman who runs the bank has been posting on Facebook. We have to be careful because we can lose our funding if it is discovered we give food to anyone And not only those in our system approved to get food.
  
  Truly bureocracy manifest.
  
  That's the most messed up policy. They want your org to shut down.
Do you have a Sikh temple nearby? They cook for the community.
You could pickle it with vinegar and salt
- Just salt works too.
I work for a produce delivery company as a courier and yeah fresh produce is ass for storage and transit. I'm legit thinking about jury rigging a small air conditioner into the back of my truck for summer cooling.
Have you seen if there's any way for your foodbank to do canning?
They do this because they can write off the "donation" (e.g. garbage disposal)
All of this produce was going to go bad, they know what date it's going bad, but they overproduce or customers cancelled orders or under ordered.
UNFI, the massive breached company, is going to have this same thing play out across the board from product wasting away in their warehouse.
Not pictured the 5000lbs of watermelons, the 2500lbs of onions (those will last a lot longer).
That's brutal. This time of the year has festivals pretty much every weekend for the next few months, so can these be donated to those events, so that it doesn't go to waste?
You have most of the ingredients for a gluten free spaghetti dinner with Cauliflower pasta and a watermelon heavy fruit salad appetizer. Cook it up and serve it up to your local soup kitchen. That or start giving it away to local restaurants. They'll go thru a pallet of anything perishable in an afternoon. Whatever they cant plate or prepare will just get dumped into that week's soup of the day! Lol
This is horribly frustrating mate. And thanks for what you do!
The edit makes me think this is done on purpose to try and force a slip up so they can justify taking away your funding and it's making me hella mad.
We are not allowed to simply give it out to anyone. This is not like a church pantry where all of the food is donated by the community and’s parishioners. There is government funding, as well as private businesses, which I am guessing get their money back from the government for funding this. If we could simply give it to anyone we would not be in this situation.
Yep. That's really dumb. When people talk about government inefficiency, this is what they mean.
Is there any chance you have enough (wo)manpower to prepare and preserve it? Even watermelon can be pickled, dehydrated or made into a jam.
Trade it to a restaurant in exchange for stuff they might have you actually want. Shouldn't be hard to move tomato and onion
- I don't think restaurants are going to want hundreds of pounds of product at the very end of life in terms of freshness. This is the product the manufacturer couldn't sell to a store for various reasons.
  
  You saying some Italian joint couldn't turn those tomatoes into mommas ragu 🤌🤌🤌
  If you think restaurants only use stuff at peak freshness and of the highest quality buddy I got bad news for you.
I have been volunteering feeding homeless for a number of years and I was never happier than when I was tasked with throwing away compromised food. The sadism of it mixed with the altruism, sweet Jesus.
You could give it to a pig/chicken farm, or compost it at the very least.
Seems kinda wasteful
- This is what we have been telling the company that sends us food, stop sending huge shipments of fresh produce.
I would set up a food collection spot just a few feet outside and ask people if they are kind enough to consider taking a case or two to donate there. This way I can redistributed the way I want with that second charity.
Thank you for your service ʘ‿ʘ
You're doing your part, but someone else isn't. Everyone should learn as part of their upbringing that wasting food is bad - just like littering and thousands of other things. Unfortunately we live in a world where someone has to be fined for them to realise they're doing something wrong.
Tax Churches Into Oblivion. A society that runs off a charity is a society that doesn't function. Christians always side with the fascist when they come to power. The private businesses are the fascist. The United States supported the Nazis during World War II. This was all to weaken the Soviet Union. America is an imperialist empire and fascists are the useful idiots of empire. The bureaucracy is just basically how things work. And there are rules for things for a reason. Trump and Elon Musk love bureaucracy. They just want it to work for them. Capitalism is a wasteful system. It prioritizes the profit incentive and sometimes over producing and outpacing your competitor until you corner the market. Charity is just one way to manage perception especially if you get less taxes. It doesn't make sense on purpose because fulfilling people's needs is not its purpose. Charity is a business and it's not about helping people. Even if it's a Christian church. We no longer produce our own food, and big agriculture is the only thing we got. We have enough to make sure people don't go hungry. But the capitalist wants you to go hungry. Or pay the highest price possible. But less than the guy down the street, that's competing with them. The nonsensical madness that surrounds me on the daily is just, it makes sense if you know how things work.
- this has nothing to do with churches.
  This is companies maximizing their tax deduction by donating at retail value instead of writing off the loss of actual cost.
I have a large ice chest and a heavily restricted diet due to medical issues and my food banks won't give me fresh produce unless I show proof of residency (they want you to have a refrigerator). The little daily snack pack with oreos and soda they give you otherwise isn't worth the trip.
This happens ( was exposed) at our local foodbank. (London, UK)
Hopefully there is a process in place to recycle it into compost.
- Trying to get it to animal farmers.
  
  Contact some animal shelters too. There might be some of it they would take depending on the food and the animal.
  
  Banned from ML
I worked in the produce department at Jewel-Osco for some time. It was when I peaked in life. We never gave food away to anyone. It was either sold or found its way into the trash compactor. Kinda sad to waste so much food. But I was so lost in the produce sauce that I couldnt even process it
- This is because if something goes bad from the food you give away the business will get sued for not having cold chain verification or a quality department to make sure the food was not altered in any way. Warehouses (aka 'distribution centers') typically have that kind of process, but retailers do not as Quality department employee salaries are typically several times what retail employees make, and often substantially higher than department managers, shift managers, and other low level retail management roles.
Usual trick I would think of is to make a simple veggie broth and freeze it after reduction. Tomatoes and cauliflower stems should be good for that and watermelon same but juicing it and freezing it.
At least it stores better and longer and reducing the air and space it takes up reduces it as well once it's just a liquid. Freezing in baking pans helps it go quicker to even though it is more smaller batches.
If you have the volunteers for it, can you process and can any of it to last longer? Portion and freeze vegetables for pan frying later, dice (or blend with some onion and garlic) the tomatoes to can them, etc.
Send in Newman, he can make a room full of muffin stumps disappear.
I don't get it, if this is government funded, when you guys submitted the funds request, or when you discussed your contract with the company that sends you the food, shouldn't you have added like, in a contract, what happened not only when you receive the produce, but the expected amounts and what procedure you will follow if those amounts did not match, either exceeding or lacking?
Seems like a HUGE oversight to me. Did it ever occur to them that you could either not receive anything or receive too much?
Unless you all did and it exceeded your calculations by far (and even then I'd argue that whoever did your calculations fucked up and you lot should have either review it again or rejected the offer altogether) this is all on whoever said "that sounds like a great idea let's do it"
Unless it didn't matter? In which case why the worry? This surely must have happened thousand of times by now in that case
- Last year our bank's ability to place orders was taken away from us. Now we get what we get.
  Before that happened we did not have issues like this every delivery. The previous delivery we received frozen falafel in wraps, but so many that all of our freezers were full of it. Volunteers were taking it home by the case. We turned away multiple pallets of the stuff because we were out of room. My chest freezer is so full of them I have a 50 pound bag of rice sitting on top to make sure it stays closed.
  We also went from not having milk for months, to having no room to place it all.
  
  You guys SERIOUSLY need to re think your logistics and storage :/
Get somebody else to take a truck to you?

208 comments