After a farmer’s market last year, Bloomfield Farms of Sonoma County, Calif. had 40 pounds of organic broccoli left that would soon spoil if it wasn’t used. According to Danielle Venton of High Country News, the farm’s general manager, Nick Papadopoulos, quickly posted a message to Facebook: “We’d love to get this produce to you at a bargain price – who’s in? Text me.” Minutes later, the broccoli found new customers. This experience sparked Papadopoulos’ idea for CropMobster, a start-up that uses social media to prevent food waste and organize donations to food pantries from California growers. CropMobster aids in the organization of gleanings, posting calls for volunteers on its website and through its free app. On January 16, volunteers picked 792 pounds of Satsuma tangerines, which they delivered to seven California food pantries. CropMobster also aims to support farms by helping them sell excess meat and produce at a discount—recent offers include half-price organic beef bones and a bargain on three rams a family farm is looking to sell as it switches its focus to grass-fed beef. So far, CropMobster has saved about 110,000 pounds of produce and generated more than $50,000 in revenue for farmers. Papadopoulos and other volunteers update the CropMobster website from a converted turkey barn on Bloomfield Farms, keeping them close to their agricultural roots even as they focus on technology.
MORE: Why One Man’s Trash is Another Man’s Fertilizer
Tag: Food & Agriculture
Kelp: The Sea Weed That Could Save Mankind
Bren Smith blends into the New England seascape, a waterman decked out in waders tooling around on his boat in the Long Island Sound. On this hazy July morning, he’s motored out aboard the Mookie III from a Stony Creek, Conn., dock to check on his oyster beds scattered between the Thimble Islands. Another boat putters by, and Smith raises his arm to point, his hands cloaked in rubber gloves to protect against the barnacles. “That guy,” Smith says, “is only catching about five pounds of lobsters a day. He doesn’t even pay for half his fuel with that.” And with this observation, Smith shatters the illusion that he’s just another fisherman chasing his catch.
Smith, in fact, is a genuine revolutionary, a man who sees powerful currents of change in the choppy waters off the Atlantic seaboard. And his neighbor, chugging past with his nearly empty hold, is proof that the end of a way of life is looming—and the beginning of a new one is at hand.
Climate change has affected the fishing beds. Ocean acidification, a product of rising atmospheric CO2 levels, kills off coral reefs, causes toxic algae blooms and dissolves the shells of oysters and other mollusks, researchers say.
And then there’s what Smith calls the “rape and pillage” of the world’s oceans—the overfishing that has dried up once-fertile sources of food, and sent unemployment in once-thriving seaside communities through the roof. Smith assigns himself a share of the blame. He fished for McDonald’s in the Bering Sea some years back, and pushed the cod stocks to the brink. But grousing about it, and hoping government regulation will solve the problem, won’t do the trick. What fishermen catch needs to be rethought. What fishermen should be doing, in Smith’s view, is harvesting kelp.
Yes, you read that right: the slimy brown sea vegetation that has grossed out generations of New England beachgoers. You might think of it as an annoyance of no particular significance to mankind. Smith sees it as a jobs program, an amazing source of nutrition, a strategic adaptation to the havoc being wrought by global warming—and, quite possibly, the next big thing in trendy New York City restaurants.
He calls it his “path of ecological redemption,” and he’s calling on fishermen, businessmen and consumers to follow it with him.
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Why You Should Care About a Crop You’ve Never Heard Of
When it comes to food, variety is as important on farms as it is on dinner tables. Growing different types of food together preserves soil health and helps crops grow. But with biodiversity declining and about a third of the world’s plant diversity on pace to disappear by 2050, groups like FoodTank are working to make sure that a wider variety of plants go into the ground. Enset, a lesser-known crop related to bananas, is one such candidate for biodiversity, packing a nutritional punch while also proving valuable for clothing, shelter and medicine in Ethiopia and Eritrea. Harvests in the U.S. and elsewhere could help reduce global hunger and improve farming.
This Partnership Encourages Vets to Become Farmers
The Farmer Veteran Coalition Partnership and the Farm Bureau have teamed up to encourage veterans to become farmers or seek employment in the agriculture industry. The groups released a guide for veterans interested in transitioning into agriculture, and plan to help them find farms they can buy or work for and offer assistance in purchasing farm equipment. 44% of people in the military come from rural areas, even though only 17% of Americans live in rural areas. The FVCP is hoping to return some of that talent to its rural roots.
Community Groups Guarantee $5 Bags Filled With Local Fruits and Veggies
Healthy foods can be prohibitively expensive, but not every fresh produce provider is a moneymaker. In Weatherford, Texas, just west of Fort Worth, the Rotary Club and Weatherford Christian School (WCS) have developed programs to share low-cost fresh seasonal fruits and vegetables with the public. With 15 items in each bag, the $5 price tag means that the groups often lose money the deal, and they make up the cost “passing the hat” among members. The programs have become popular over the past few months, especially since the re-usable bags make the bargain even more attractive. For the WCS program, the environmentally friendly bags don’t just draw in more people, they also fuel a fundraising effort to serve nearby hungry populations. Parents can purchase unused bags and the proceeds go toward the school’s weekly Meals on Wheels route.
New “Mobsters” Are Feeding the Hungry and Cutting Food Waste
Successful farmers must have as much business sense as any corporate executive. As with any business, profits are crucial, but an agricultural surplus isn’t the same as an economic surplus. Instead, when farmers have produce that doesn’t sell, it quickly turns to waste. Nick Papadopoulos, a farmer whose resume includes professional work in conflict resolution, turned that food waste problem into a food access solution. He went online and, like many grocery stores might, advertised his extra items at reduced rates. Gleaners in Sonoma County who seek out food for food pantries and low-income housing residents, responded positively, and a non-profit called CropMobster was born. Papadopoulos put his conflict-resolution spin on the model, seeing his work as resolving the competition between the premium prices that farmers need to charge and the minimal budgets available for solving hunger problems.
Farmers’ Markets Around the Country Have Found Bitcoin’s Secret Good Side
At farmers’ markets, credit cards make transactions more convenient for customers who may not have cash on hand. But they’re not ideal for vendors, who have to forfeit a 3% transaction fee. Some farmers are therefore turning to the new digital currency, Bitcoin, which most people associate with online drug and weapon sales. Clinton Felsted from Provo, Utah, started using Bitcoin at his market and has enjoyed pocketing the 3% of each transaction he was previously losing. It might seem like a small fee, but for a “high-volume, low-profit” business like a farmers’ market, it accrues harshly. Bitcoin could make a significant difference in business, and aid the country’s growing local agriculture movement. Small businesses may especially benefit from Bitcoin: they’re young and nimble enough to take the risk of using a new currency.
Chef Fixes the Food Bank by Creating Healthy Meals for Four
The long lines were getting longer at the Capital Area Food Bank, and volunteers noticed a growing sense of hopelessness. Even when people came to the food bank for healthy foods, reports indicated that they were taking the fruits and vegetables home, only to fry or “shower” the produce with salt. Kate Sherwood, the executive chef of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, accepted the challenge of creating nutritious, enticing meals, for under $8 for four people. Her attitude was a fresh one–“You can’t get to healthy without delicious”–but her approach is scientific and data-driven. She comes up with a meal and tests it out with the food bank. She edits the recipe when necessary. And when it’s successful, she adds the recipe to an online database and prints cards in English and Spanish to distribute at more than 500 local agencies. It’s turning into an engaging local movement; the outreach goes as far as store cash registers and bags of donated items.
[Image: Capital Area Food Bank]
EPA Issues an Innovative Challenge
Who says that government agencies don’t get innovative? The Environmental Protection Agency has partnered with the Agriculture Department to issue a challenge to creative problem solvers and entrepreneurs: Find would-be waste in the food chain, and re-direct it to feed America’s hungry and undernourished people. Food makes up a large portion of the nation’s landfills, and decomposition is a major contributor to climate change. Rather than react with bureaucratic subcommittees and lots of red tape, the Food Waste Challenge invites industrial leaders and universities, and even sports and entertainment businesses, to find ways to solve waste and hunger problems at the same time.
Turn Your Foodie Photos Into Food for Needy Communities
A New York–based non-profit has taken a cultural trend and turned it into a brilliant innovation that lets Manhattan restaurants and diners fight hunger as far away as South Africa, with just a few clicks or taps. The Lunchbox Fund is built on the idea that nutrition fuels education, and the fund’s creative staff members are working to make sure that students in South Africa get the nourishment to help them perform strongly in school. Their new program, Feedie, takes the popular practice of foodie photos and translates those images into donations. When a foodie at a registered restaurant snaps and posts a photo, the restaurant contributes cash to the cause. So far more than 50 restaurants are on board; they’ve already provided 800 meals.