Announcing Our Latest Initiative: Glean for the City!

Time to bring fresh produce to everybody.

This week, Bread for the City is proud to announce our latest and most ambitious volunteer initiative—Glean for the City!

We’ve posted before on this blog about how much perfectly good food gets wasted, for a variety of reasons, between the farms that grow it and the stores that sell it. There are estimates that up to 50% of all food produced in the United States ultimately goes to waste. We plan to tap into some of this abundant produce supply so we can bring it to the District and give it to the people who would otherwise have to go without.

This weekend our first group will go to Parker Farm, about an hour away from DC, to pick corn. Every Saturday between July 11th and the middle of November, we will be asking other groups of 20-25 people to go to other farms in Virginia and Maryland to pick or “glean” the excess produce the machines leave behind so that we can offer fresh, free, local produce to neglected neighborhoods in our city. We estimate that one group can bring back enough produce to feed 1750 hungry people!

If you are interested in learning more, organizing a volunteer group, or donating to support this new effort, we’ve got specifics on our website for you. We’ll also be putting updates here on the blog as Glean for the City gets underway. Finally, many thanks to all of you in the community who have made this new initiative possible!