Autumn Equinox Updates
The autumn equinox brings a chill in the air, falling leaves, and the sudden recognition that summer is totally over. Luckily, the Salvation Farms calendar is non-stop! Enjoy reading our fall newsletter update and join us for Salvation Farms Aid in October!
Salvation Farms Aid Benefit Concert
It’s October 16, 2022. You walk in the doors of the Double E Performance Center in Essex, VT and the first thing you see is a table filled with vivacious colors – locally-grown food made entirely from surplus produce. This “Serving of Salvation” is made from food that was collected from our local farms after the harvest, food that otherwise would have been lost.
As you munch, you wander around the lounge, nodding to the smiling faces all around you. There’s an excited buzz in the air. Along the side of the lounge there’s a table laid out with intriguing items from local businesses. A getaway for two. A basket of delicious food. Local gifts and products from places like Butternut Mountain Farm, Piecemeal Pies, Ursa Major, and more. It’s a silent auction. After writing your name down and crossing your fingers for that gorgeous limited edition photographic art by Jim Westphalen, you walk back out and see the cash bar is open and friends you haven’t seen in months are there, calling you over.
Suddenly everyone stops talking. A guitar has been strung from the T-Rex Theater and the sound echoes out into the lobby. The first musician is starting to play on stage. The music is about to begin! Everyone files into the theater. You settle into your cushy seat and see the full line-up displayed on the theater’s giant screen: John Fusco & Friends covering Gregg Allman & Friends, Blues for Breakfast covering The Rolling Stones, The Art of DonnCherie covering Tina Turner, Tessa Gordon covering Rhonda Vincent, etc., Dale Cavanaugh covering John Prine, Swale covering Black Sabbath!
This is going to be a great night.
GET YOUR TICKETS HERE!
This event is presented by Front Porch Forum, with support from Cabot Creamery, Skinny Pancake, SunSoil, WIZN, Farm Credit East, NOFA-VT, and Seven Days.
A Kindred Spirit
In the mid-1980’s, my brother and I were starting Earth’s Best Baby Foods. Organic growers bemoaned that their small, sometimes blemished fruits and vegetables had no market and just rotted on the ground. We had a solution. Organic baby food would feed the best to babies and dramatically reduce waste. It was a game-changer. Salvation Farms is a game-changer right here in our community. As drought afflicts so much of the country, our food supply grows more expensive and vulnerable. We know this. More than ever, we need to strengthen the resiliency of what is local. This means increasing the use and value of local farm surplus. It means building shorter supply chains and developing production, harvesting, and processing infrastructure to make us all more self-reliant and food secure. We need this kind of impact now. Please support Salvation Farms as generously as you can.
What Does Surplus & Wasted Food Have To Do With Resilience?
A Conversation with Dana Gunders of ReFED
This summer, Salvation Farms had the pleasure of connecting with Dana Gunders of ReFED, a national nonprofit dedicated to ending food loss and waste in the U.S. by advancing data-driven solutions. Dana has led ReFED for almost three years. She is the mother of two, loves biking, skiing of all kinds, and “finds reading only medium-quality fiction to be an indulgence”.
How did ReFED come to be?
ReFED launched in 2015 as a collaboration of more than 30 industry, nonprofit, foundation, and government leaders committed to reducing food waste in the United States. We were formed to create A Roadmap to Reduce U.S. Food Waste by 20 Percent, the first national economic analysis and action plan to tackle the issue at-scale.
What led you to a career reducing food waste and loss when this topic is new to many?
When I was 27, I spent eight months biking across Asia. Exhausted near the end of my trip, I stopped to recharge and volunteer for about six weeks in a subsistence farming community in the Indian Himalayas. The people who lived there mostly grew their own food and traded for what else they needed, so they had previously had no need for money. But when rice – which couldn’t grow locally – was introduced, community members needed to earn money to buy it. This completely transformed their lifestyles. Instead of farming his own food, the father of the family I was staying with became a teacher to make money, and the children were sent away to school in a town several hours away so that they, too, could someday earn a living. During my time in this community, I realized how food is absolutely fundamental to the way our lives are crafted, and that food is at the center of so many things I love and care about – health, resource use, justice, and our sense of community.
I returned from the trip knowing that I wanted to be a part of that field, and while working on a sustainable agriculture project for the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), I was put in charge of learning more about waste on farms. It was at that point that I discovered the degree to which food was going to waste. I couldn't believe no one was talking about it! I would go to the farmers and food companies I was working with and say, “this report says approximately 40% of food is going to waste, and 25% of our water is going to grow it – could that possibly be true?” They would think for a moment, nod, and say, “yeah, that sounds about right.” But they didn’t seem to think that was a problem. This lit a fire under me. There we were, trying to get farmers to be 5-10% more efficient with their water, but we weren't even using more than a third of the food in the end. It was like energy efficiency, but for the food sector—except no one was even talking about it, let alone doing anything.
I began researching incessantly and ultimately published a report called Wasted: How America Is Losing Up To 40% Of Its Food From Farm To Fork To Landfill which was released by NRDC in 2012. It made breaking news headlines and lit a fire under others as well. From then on, it was like drinking out of a firehose, as so many people were interested in taking on the issue. I spent the rest of time at NRDC focused exclusively on the issue, including testifying before Congress on the topic and partnering with the Ad Council to develop the “Save The Food” campaign, which helps consumers address waste in their own kitchens.
What exactly is food waste and loss? Why is it something that needs addressing?
ReFED defines “food waste” as uneaten food and inedible parts that end up being landfilled, incinerated,
disposed of down the sewer, dumped, or spread onto land. It’s a subset of “surplus food” – which ReFED defines as all food that goes unsold or unused by a business or that goes uneaten at home – including food and inedible parts (e.g., peels, pits, bones) that are donated, fed to animals, repurposed to produce other products, composted, or anaerobically digested. Some surplus food is inevitable, but the goal of food waste reduction efforts is not only to get food out of landfills. It’s also to make sure food is going to its “highest and best use” – that is, being eaten by people.
At the highest level, we need to address this because we are overproducing food, which unnecessarily creates enormous climate and resource impacts. The World Resources Institute predicts the world will need to produce 56% more food in 2050, which will require the conversion of rainforests and native grasslands into farmlands unless food systems become more efficient in using the food already produced. Cutting food loss and waste in half could reduce that demand by >20%, saving natural ecosystems from conversion into agricultural land and saving massive greenhouse gases. Co-benefits of this would include reducing freshwater use by 13%, reducing projected biodiversity losses by up to 33%, and avoiding conversion of natural ecosystems for a land area the size of Argentina.
Salvation Farms works to reduce food loss on farms and build resilient local food systems. What do you think about pairing these two big goals in one mission?
I think there’s a lot of logic to pairing those two goals. While there hasn’t been much research to quantify it, it makes sense that local food systems can help reduce waste by having shorter supply chains, more direct relationships, and the flexibility to respond to last minute surpluses. On the flip side, wasting less food can improve resilience by increasing local supply and helping local producers earn as much income from their land as possible.
Given the increase in unpredictable weather events, rising temperatures, and droughts – is ReFED prioritizing the management of food resources to build reliable, local food systems that can withstand disruption?
At its core, creating systems that waste less involves creating a certain amount of flexibility in the system, which also helps with resilience.
What possibilities do you see for the work of organizations like Salvation Farms to make real and lasting change in people’s relationships with food?
Awareness and appreciation for everything it takes to get food to our tables seems to have grown quite a bit lately, especially with the pandemic and increasing food prices. I think people are more receptive to organizations like Salvation Farms and more committed to their vision, creating a wonderful opportunity for the future!
* Salvation Farms refers to “waste on farms” as food loss
Some Thoughts from Vermont’s Vegetable & Berry Specialist - Vern Grubinger
I’ve been working with fruit and vegetable farmers in Vermont for over thirty years. These folks are smart, work hard, make efficient use of resources, and have strong connections to their communities. That’s what keeps them in business. But farming is unpredictable – problems with weather, markets, labor, and equipment can result in crops not getting sold as planned. Finding ways to get those “farm surplus” crops to eaters, using alternative supply channels, increases the supply of local food, and thus our food security. It also improves the return on resources used to produce that food – energy, management, and capital, to name a few. In addition, redirecting otherwise “lost” food resources can increase access to local produce for more people, as these crops are often donated to food shelves and other charitable entities, or sold at low cost to institutional meal programs. Better management of surplus foods from farms has multiple benefits, all of which can help make our food system more resilient.
2022 Annual Fund Goal
Salvation Farms has an ambitious Annual Fund goal for 2022. We aim to raise $236,580 through donations like yours to support and strengthen our important work. Last year we captured and moved more than 196,500 servings of locally-grown, nutritious, surplus produce. That wholesome food would have otherwise gone uneaten. With our expansion into the Northeast Kingdom, we are on track to do more, but we need help. Every gift, big or small, is important to advance our mission – working toward a future where communities are increasingly fed by local farms. We envision a future where our food system is more resilient, sustainable, and less dependent on foods from far away. If you know someone who might be interested in and value the work we do, we hope you’ll send them our way.
MAKE YOUR DONATION TODAY! Give online here or send a check payable to Salvation Farms to P.O. Box 1174, Morrisville, VT 05661.