1.3 Million meals ready to ship out
Prairie Gleaners continue to divert unwanted food to those in need
The people at Prairie Gleaners Society are giving a whole new definition to the word resourceful.
The group has been operating for approximately eight years and accept donated food from community growers or sellers, dry it out and then send it to countries in need. One of the founders of the Gleaners Society, James Smith, says he and the other volunteers wanted to find a way to give unused foods a second life.
“We realized how great this area is for food, but we also realized how much of it was going to waste,” he said. “We set up this operation to make use of all of this food that is unmarketable to others, and to make sure it doesn’t get thrown out.”
The not-for-profit, volunteer-run group meet several days each week processing tonnes of donated produce such as onions, bell peppers, potatoes and cabbage — which they slice up, dry out and package in different mixes. After it is packaged, the dry mixes are shipped out by different aid organizations to countries around the world.
“We have a shipment going out right now to Burundi soon — it’ll equal about 1.3 million meals,” he said. “We’ve sent food to many different places around the world — tens of millions of meals, it’s great to see so many people volunteer for this.”
Each morning the volunteers process about a tonne of food, says Smith, and things are only getting busier for the Prairie Gleaners Society.
“We have requests from organizations coming in fairly quickly,” he said. “They’re coming in faster than ever right now and we can’t even imagine keeping up with all of the requests — we’re doing our best and we’re going to keep working as hard as we can.”
Smith says the need for food is growing faster than it has before.
“Every piece of food we have right now is accounted for, which is unprecedented for us,” he said. “There is a real need for food in many places around the globe right now, we’re just trying to do our part.”
Smith says he believes the operation they run in Cypress County could be replicated around the world, which he says could solve a lot of hunger issues.
“The places we send food have the same food waste problems we have,” he said. “If they could set up a plant like ours, but using solar energy, they could create plenty of meals and put lots of wasted food to use.”