As anybody who has grown a backyard is aware of, the fruits of the harvest can typically ripen all of sudden. The identical predicament impacts bigger farms and produce suppliers, whose gluts begin a countdown clock. Earlier than it goes unhealthy, they need to discover rapidly a house for the overabundance, or danger dropping all of it to rot in a landfill. (And no, falling again on zucchini bread received’t minimize it at an industrial scale.)
There’s an alternative choice and it’s present in a Bremerton nonprofit’s basement. Geared up with some steam kettles and a walk-in freezer, workers and volunteers at Kitsap Neighborhood Sources cook dinner up soups, sauces and salsas that harness extra produce to make meals for native meals banks. The Farm to Freezer program has rescued 80,000 kilos of meals within the final yr alone.
At a time when too many nonetheless go hungry and an excessive amount of meals nonetheless leads to the rubbish dump, this system is an instance different Washington communities ought to imitate.
Round 390,000 tons of meals goes to waste in Washington annually, according to the state’s Ecology Division — that regardless of the very fact one in eight individuals in Washington face food insecurity. And what’s wasted is the primary supply of methane, a heat-trapping greenhouse fuel, at landfills.
It’s unhealthy sufficient that so many Washingtonians face starvation. It’s even worse realizing the meals they could possibly be consuming is losing away in a landfill, contributing to local weather change.
The challenge grew out of a Silverdale demonstration farm run by the native conservation district. The Rising for Restoration, Agriculture, and Conservation Training program — GRACE for brief — included teaching inmates from the Belfair ladies’s jail to backyard.
As extra gleaned produce from GRACE started exhibiting up at Kitsap Neighborhood Sources’ industrial freezer — the identical one used to accommodate dinner trays for Meals on Wheels — different contributors started pitching in.
“It simply means we play Tetris to squeeze the whole lot in (the freezer),” mentioned Rachel Beason, supervisor of meals providers.
Immediately, a community of additional meals from farmers and grocers can change into sustainable frozen meals for households that use each native meals financial institution in Kitsap. Not all meals they gather passes the requirements mandatory below meals security legal guidelines. However a lot is feasible. Earlier this month, for instance, an extra of 300 kilos of onions got here in bins by means of Bremerton Foodline, the native meals financial institution. They grew to become 300 containers of French onion soup.
In a time of looming federal cuts to Medicaid and different social packages, nonprofits and native governments might want to get artistic in sustaining the protection web in Washington. The Farm to Freezer program depends upon two AmeriCorps volunteers and a small grant from the Ecology Division that runs out on the finish of June. New funding is required to maintain it going. State businesses ought to acknowledge: Holding bellies full and sustaining Washington’s meals provide for so long as doable is a purpose that’s satiating for all of society.
