Salvation Farms Going Statewide

April 21, 2008

The Transcript
by Amy Kolb Noyes

The Vermont Foodbank recently took on S a l v a t i o n Fa rms, a small program that’s been making a big difference to food shelves

and nonprofit organizations in the Lamoille Valley for several years. The Foodbank hopes to introduce the Salvation Farms model statewide, and change the way we feed hungry Vermonters. To do so, the Foodbank has taken on not only Salvation’s program, but also the woman who makes it all happen.

Theresa Snow is now the Foodbank’s Program Director of Agricultural Resources. Beginning in the Montpelier area this summer, she hopes to soon make the Salvation Farms Gleaning Network a statewide entity. It’s a big step for the program she started just four years ago.

During the summer of 2004, when Snow was working at Pete’s Greens organic farm, in Craftsbury, she had an idea. She thought if she could gather volunteers to harvest otherwise unmarketable crops, she could give that food away to Vermonters in need. She worked on the idea throughout the summer and fall as a “side project” on the farm.

The following January, Snow and friend, Jen O’Donnell, cofounded Salvation Farms. Snow said the mission is simple.

“Salvation Farms has a primary mission to salvage excess farm produce, making it available to Vermonters in need,” she explained. Salvation Farms has accomplished that mission by making the connection between the people who grow our food with those who help feed people in need of more food or better nutrition.

Sitting in a small building back in the woods of North Wolcott, Snow oversees a group of students from Sterling College as they trim defects from produce “culls” from Pete’s Greens’ root cellar. Culls, she explained, are produce that is not saleable, yet still edible.

Over the past three years Salvation Farms has utilized more than 175 local volunteers to glean, sort and process over 88,000 pounds of food from more than 25 farms and food producers throughout the Lamoille Valley. Snow has maintained close ties with Pete’s Greens and another former employer, High Mowing Seeds, and gleans much from their operations. In fact, when it was time to move Salvation Farms out of Snow’s apartment and into its own space, she took her program to High Mowing’s former North Wolcott location.

Salvation Farms has been so successful over the past few years it has managed to keep fresh, local food at area food shelves with enough leftover to spread around to other local programs. All told, Salvation Farms produce has gone to more than 40 sites including local school programs, low-income housing units, eldercare sites and Meals on Wheels. When the local food shelves were full, and other local needs satisfied, Salvation Farms gave the excess to the Vermont Foodbank for distribution in other parts of Vermont.

While Salvation Farms has worked with the Foodbank since its inception, it wasn’t until this year that both parties agreed the time was right to join forces. Prior to joining up with the Foodbank, Salvation Farms operated under the umbrella of the Northeast Organic Farming Association of Vermont (NOFA-VT). Snow said she is grateful to NOFA-VT for fostering Salvation Farms, eliminating the need for it to become yet another nonprofit.

Foodbank CEO Doug O’Brien said an increase in small farms growing produce for local co-ops and farmers markets across Vermont made the timing right to introduce the Salvation Farms model statewide.

“We saw a real opportunity here to wed – pretty much – their operation with ours, and a way to get more healthy, locally produced food to low-income people who probably wouldn’t be able to afford it otherwise,” said O’Brien.

O’Brien also sees the partnership as a way to help achieve the Vermont Foodbank’s ultimate goal: a hunger-free Vermont.

“It’s smarter for us, and more efficient for us, to glean a field of potatoes, or onions, or carrots, in Essex or in Bennington County, than it is for us to pay the transportation costs to bring it from outside of the state,” said O’Brien. “So as much of this activity as we can do, it helps us then extend other program dollars so that we can expand kids’ cafes, or do more food stamp outreach, or other programs that we know we also need to do to help Vermont become the first hunger-free state in the nation.”

The Vermont Foodbank’s 19-thousand square foot Warehouse, in South Barre, is filled to the ceiling with pallets of nonperishable foods, from breakfast cereals to cans of soup. These are the staples that line many local food shelves. But O’Brien said he sees the Salvation Farms program as taking the Foodbank in a new direction that includes whole foods and sustainability.

“This kind of new model is actually, I think in many ways, the future of the Foodbank,” said O’Brien. “As long as Vermont stays a strongly agricultural state, and a state where our agricultural community is committed to helping their needy neighbors, we see this program growing. And we’re going to shift, increasingly, from the more traditional food bank model to a model that looks more at sustainable local sources."

O’Brien added farm fresh produce is exactly the type of food the Foodbank wants to make available to low-income Vermonters.

“It’s good for Vermont; it’s good for the farmer; it’s good for the Foodbank,” said O’Brien. “There’s not many opportunities in life where you get win-wins. This is absolutely a win-win across the board. Everybody wins through gleaning efforts.”

While the Salvation Farms Gleaning Network may be the future for the Vermont Foodbank – gleaning is not a new concept. Snow explained the practice is as old as civilization.

“Gleaning is an ancient agrarian tradition,” said Snow. “It’s allowing – traditionally the poor – to have rights to farmers’ fields once the harvest is over.”

Snow added the act of gleaning has been abandoned as our society has moved toward an industrial agriculture. She pointed out the irony that more food is now available for recapture because there is a need for uniformity when processing by mechanical means.

“There’s a lot of surplus due to our industrial ag,” said Snow, “and it’s a shame that that can’t be salvaged.”

Snow and the Vermont Foodbank are now working together to capture all the food that Vermont farmers deem unsaleable. This summer they’ll be looking for volunteers to harvest crops that would otherwise be tilled under. To volunteer or to learn more call
802-477-4114, email tsnow@secondharvest.org or log on to www.salvationfarms.org or www.vtfoodbank.org.

April 21, 2008

Press Room