Below was taken from the Farm Share website:
Did you know that half of every crop harvested is thrown away?
If a farmer grows 100,000 pounds of tomatoes, usually about half of them (50,000 lbs) must be thrown away. This is because if a tomato is slightly misshapen, discolored, too small (or too big), or blemished in any way, it will not meet the consumer demand for a "perfect" tomato and will therefore be rejected. This is true for many fruit and vegetable crops. To prevent trucks of produce from being rejected, crops are "culled" (hand sorted) after they are picked. About half goes into the truck on its way to the store. The other half goes into the truck going to the dump, or destined to be plowed under and sprayed with insecticide. The food being thrown away is not rotten or bad in any way.
This problem is no one's "fault", and is certainly not the farmer's doing. No farmer enjoys throwing away half the fruits of his or her labor. However, day in and day out we end up feeding our landfills instead of our hungry. Thankfully, there is a solution to this dilemma. Instead of dumping, farmers can now donate this food to Farm Share!
Utilizing inmate labor and volunteers, Farm Share re-sorts and packages this abundance of surplus food and distributes it to individuals, soup kitchens, homeless shelters, churches, and other organizations feeding the hungry in Florida at no charge. This important distinction makes Farm Share critical to smaller agencies located in poorer rural areas that cannot afford to pay for food. By tapping into this near limitless supply of donated produce, Farm Share keeps its costs low, while providing fresh nutritious fruits and vegetables to the hunger distressed.
Farm Share provides food to hundreds of non-profit organizations that serve more than 7,000,000 meals monthly reaching more than 2,500,000 families each year. More than 15,000,000 pounds of fresh and nutritious fruits and vegetables are shipped each year to participating agencies throughout the Eastern seaboard. Farm Share also directly distributes food to more than 4,000 registered local households -- composed of migrant workers, single mothers, elderly, disabled and other low income recipients -- directly from our packing house. Very few organizations distribute to so many individuals and organizations.
When You Support Farm Share...
* You Support Our Environment -- Surplus produce that doesn't go to Farm Share goes into our landfills or is plowed under and sprayed with pesticides as required by law.
* You DON'T Support Waste -- By using surplus produce to feed those in need in Florida, Farm Share keeps that food from going to waste. You are also providing food to those in need at the most affordable cost possible.
* You Support Efficiency -- Farm Share operates at an amazing 1.3% administration cost. No State money goes to upper level administration in ANY shape or form. Farm Share utilizes inmate labor and volunteers to get the job done.
* You Support Health and Nutrition -- By adding fresh produce to the USDA commodities that Farm Share distributes, our recipients get the added health benefits that canned and frozen foods just can't provide.
* You Support Grass Roots -- Most of the soup kitchens, homeless shelters, food banks, churches, and agencies that Farm Share gives food to are truly "grass roots" organizations run by volunteers. They have little to no money to spend on food. They cannot afford to pay the "shared maintenance fees" (calculated by the pound) charged by many agencies to help defray the costs of administration and transportation. Groups that charge by the pound for the food they distribute are not as reliant on State funds and private donors as Farm Share as much of their costs are passed on to their recipient agencies.
* You Support Your Local Charities -- Farm Share distributes to over 650 agencies throughout all 67 counties in Florida. Farm Share never charges these agencies for food in ANY way.
* You Support Our Farmers -- Farmers who donate their surplus produce to Farm Share can receive a tax deduction from the IRS. They also don't have to pay the dumping fees to send it to the landfill or the cost of plowing it under and spraying it with pesticides.
* You Support Our Elderly -- Over 70% of the USDA commodities distributed in Florida go to our elderly population. Farm Share distributed 2.6 million pounds of USDA commodities in Florida last year alone.
Did you know that most food donated in large food drives is not given away for free to organizations distributing your donation to the hungry?
The difference between Farm Share and other groups is …
* Farm Share distributes food at no charge and without fees of any kind, to end recipients or to agencies such as soup kitchens, homeless shelters, food banks, churches, etc. Many large groups collect food donations from the public and charge a per-pound "shared maintenance fee" to your local church, soup kitchen, etc. for this food. These fees add up to hundreds of thousands (sometimes millions) of dollars per year. If the agency cannot afford the shared maintenance fees, they do not get the food. Smaller grass roots agencies that cannot afford the shared maintenance fees get left out in the cold. Farm Share gives food to our recipient agencies without fees of any kind.
* Farm Share operates the only charitable produce packinghouse in the Eastern United States. This means that while most groups focus on canned and processed food donations, our mission remains focused on re-packing fresh nutritious fruits and vegetables that would otherwise be thrown away. It costs more to handle this kind of food, but fresh produce is simply more nutritious than canned, and there is a nearly unlimited supply of it being thrown out every year. Farm Share receives food in bulk and has the resources to sort, pack, store and ship tractor trailer loads of fresh food.
* Farm Share has a public/private partnership with the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services (which provides a warehouse facility, support staff, equipment, services, and State oversight) and with the Florida Department of Corrections (which provides up to 29 inmates and 2 corrections officers daily for sorting, packing and distributing donated food).
* Farm Share's administrative costs are kept surprisingly low because of our basic mission philosophy of recovering food that would otherwise go to waste. Through partnerships with the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services and the Florida Department of Corrections, Farm Share saves money on warehousing and labor. Farm Share is located at several of the State Farmers Markets in Florida. The headquarters, a 53,000 square foot packinghouse, is located at the Florida City State Farmers Market (in the heart of Miami-Dade County's agricultural area). This provides easy access to produce farmers, packers, brokers and wholesalers who freely donate fresh fruits and vegetables, saving money on transportation costs. By utilizing the supply of bulk produce donations (42,000 lbs at a time) from Florida farmers, Farm Share does not need to spend money on soliciting and collecting individual donations from hundreds or thousands of donation sites.
* Farm Share has the capacity to store more than 12 tractor-trailer loads of refrigerated foods and 7 tractor-trailer loads of frozen foods as well as dozens of tractor trailer loads of dry foods.
Visit www.farmshare.org for more details.
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