Harvesting Hope: Tackling Food Waste, Hunger, and Climate Change

We speak with the directors of two non-profit organizations who are turning problems into solutions by getting nutritious food that would normally go to waste back into our food system and into the hands of those who can use it - reducing waste, methane emissions, and fighting food insecurity all at the same time.  Cover Image credit: USDA Photo by Lance Cheung

Relevant links:
Association of Gleaning Organizations
Falling Fruit
National Gleaning Project
Bill Emerson Good Samaritan Act

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Come Rain or Shine affiliate links:
DOI Southwest CASC: https://www.swcasc.arizona.edu/ 
USDA Southwest Climate Hub: https://www.climatehubs.usda.gov/hubs/southwest 
Sustainable Southwest Beef Project (NIFA Grant #2019-69012-29853): https://southwestbeef.org/

Transcript

Emile Elias: Welcome to Come Rain or Shine, podcast of the USDA Southwest Climate Hub 

Sarah LeRoy: and the DOI Southwest Climate Adaptation Science Center for Southwest CASC, operated by the USGS. I'm Sarah LeRoy, Research Coordinator for the Southwest CASC.

Emile Elias: And I'm Emile Elias, Director of the Southwest Climate Hub. Here we highlight stories to share the most recent advances in climate science, weather, and climate adaptation and innovative practices to support resilient landscapes and communities.

Sarah LeRoy: We believe that sharing some of the most innovative, forward thinking, and creative climate science and adaptation will strengthen our collective ability to respond to even the most challenging impacts of climate change in one of the hottest and driest regions of the world.

The contents of this podcast are for informational purposes only, and should not be interpreted as endorsement for any of the products, technologies, or strategies discussed. 

In the United States, it's estimated that between 30 to 40 percent of the food supply is never eaten. Aside from wasting the resources that went into producing the food, this discarded food also produces methane, a potent greenhouse gas, as it decomposes in landfills.

At the same time, in 2022, 12. 8 percent of U. S. households experienced food insecurity at some time during the year, which tallies to 17 million households. Today we're talking with directors from two non profit organizations that are working to help address both of these problems by bridging the gap between usable surplus food and those in their communities who need it.

Barbara Eiswerth is Executive Director of Iskashitaa Refugee Network, an intergenerational network of volunteers and UN refugees in southern Arizona who locate, harvest, and redistribute local produce which would otherwise go to waste. Barbara is also adjunct faculty in the School of Natural Resources and the Environment at the University of Arizona.

Rachel Landis is the director of the Good Food Collective in La Plata County, Colorado. Rachel cares deeply about community building, sustainability, and food systems. Rachel seeks to find ways for the Good Food Collective to address root causes of inequity and poverty, as well as mitigate climate change and build local climate resilience.

Welcome, Rachel and Barbara. Thank you so much for joining us today. So, both of your organizations do somewhat similar work, and so I'd just like to start us off by asking you both, To give us a short overview of your organizations. So Rachel, let's start with you. Can you tell us a little bit about the Good Food Collective?

Rachel Landis: Yeah, thanks so much, Sarah, and thanks for having us on. The Good Food Collective operates across southwestern Colorado, and as you mentioned in your introduction, we're working with the entirety of our food system. So that means everything from how food is produced, who's producing it, where it's produced, etc.

All the way from transportation processing, to the eater side of the equation, and who gets to eat, and how people get to eat, and then of course, as what we're talking about in this show, to the waste side of things. And so our work as the collective is to partner with people and stakeholders at every point of that food system, and together figure out how can we adjust the ways we're doing things.

So that our food system is actually a tool in which we're creating jobs, economic wealth and opportunity, stewarding our natural resources, building community building equity, and certainly addressing food security. And so towards the latter, we run a community harvest program, which I think we'll talk about today, which seeks to capture excess produce in our community and redistribute it out to food access partners.

Sarah LeRoy: Excellent. Thank you, Barbara, same question to you. Can you tell us a little bit about Iskashitaa? 

Barbara Eiswerth: Well, it's wonderful to be here with Rachel and you, Sarah. Iskashitaa started in 2003, just 20 years ago in southern Arizona. I'm noticing that there was a rampant habits of food waste in people's backyards, predominantly. We do have farms. We do visit farms and orchards and do gleaning. What sets us apart from many of the gleaning organizations here is we're, we're battling two challenges. One is social isolation that all immigrants, but in particular UN refugees from all over the world, Africa, Asia, the Middle East, predominantly a few from Latin America.

So that social isolation giving them a way to give back to the community through a harvesting network. We harvest all year round and addressing the lack of fresh local produce available to the one in four people in Pima County and surrounding counties suffer from. So we have the resources, we're connecting the people with the resources, but along the way we're using a zero waste model where we are teaching new immigrants about recycling, sustainability, rainwater harvesting, composting, reuse, upcycling, recycled crafts and projects that we do related to our Refugee Garden Art Program.

Emile Elias: Excellent. Thank you so much. And I want to take a Step back and hear a bit more about where you work, about the location. So Rachel, can you tell us a bit about Southern Colorado? What's grown there, what's typically wasted, and how you work to build capacity to respond to this? 

Rachel Landis: Yeah, thanks so much. So Southwestern Colorado it's actually located at the kind of intersection with New Mexico, Utah, and Arizona, we call it the Four Corners region. And I'm biased, but I think it's the most beautiful and special place on Earth. It is a place where the mountains literally meet the desert. And we are part of the Colorado Plateau, so we're up in elevation. Our growing season is incredibly short. I think I was talking to a farmer this weekend and he said he had 88 non frost days this year, and for those of you who don't grow food out there, you need non frost days.

And so for the most part, we're really lucky here, we still have an intact agricultural, many actually intact agricultural traditions. And so and a lot of the food that's grown here stays here. So we have a lot of 1 10 acre farms that are growing everything from hardy crops like mixed greens and root vegetables and things of that sort to stone fruits.

And stone fruits here, the cold mountain air makes them super good. And the sunshine just makes it even better. So I think we won the World's Fair in 1902 for the best apples in the world. So what is wasted here is, it's not actually on farms. We did a lot of assessment with growers. They're so small, to quote a farmer, if I threw food out, I'd be out of business.

So they find ways to utilize most all the food they're producing, which could be, as Barbara mentioned, a compost model to build their soil back up. But what we do have is an abandoned fruit industry. So we used to house the largest fruit factory or juice factory in the U. S. Largest organic juice factory, which 90s.

So there are hundreds of acres of apple trees primarily out there just dropping food to the ground. And it causes not only some of the waste issues that Sarah mentioned in the introduction, but it also causes some wildlife challenges. So we have a lot of bear human conflict. Yeah, I think to your question about how to build capacity to respond to this, I mean, this covers, we've got fruit trees over 6, 600 square acres of land.

It's massive, this territory we're trying to cover. And so we really went with a decentralized model and have created an internal Fruit Tree Database that's community facing and so basically that's kind of our point of entry where people list. It could be a backyard tree. It could be an orchard with 100 trees on that database.

That database is published publicly and anyone can use it. And so it basically empowers a whole stream of do it yourself harvesters, it powers whole businesses, including large scale cideries that distribute across the country, and it also powers our food rescue component of our mission. And so I'll stop there.

Emile Elias: Excellent. Thank you. Thanks, Rachel. And Barbara, I have the same question for you. Can you tell us a little bit about agriculture and food in Southern Arizona? What grows there? What's typically wasted? And how you work to build capacity to respond to this? 

Barbara Eiswerth: Well, agriculture in Southern Arizona has a long history of over 4000 years of agricultural history captured by a newer non profit in town, Mission Garden, at the base of A Mountain. The three C's of Arizona originally were cotton, citrus, and copper. We are still in the copper industry. But the cotton industry is waning because of the, it's a superior thread that comes out of the cotton, Pima cotton comes from the Pima Indians and Pima County, and that's where we are located, but we're, we're getting away from a large agricultural water flooding practices because it's not water efficient here. In other parts of southern Arizona, which doesn't include Iskashitaa but Yuma is the known as the green leafy breadbasket of the southwest that supplies so many of the green vegetables in the winter. We're at about 2, 400 feet in elevation with another 1, 000 feet depending on how high you're going.

25 Centimeters of water a year, so water is very, very precious. 11 inches a year, not much to go on, but a lot of the historical trees, fruit trees brought by Franciscan and Jesuit priests from Europe have come up through the south, through Mexico, and are established here. Pomegranate, Seville orange, figs, grapes, quince.

But our biggest harvesting that we do, predominantly from backyards, we do harvest from backyards, orchards, greenhouses, educational gardens including Mission Garden, Tohono Chul, and our botanical garden, but our two big takes in the year are pumpkins and heirloom squash. Thankfully, pumpkins have, and this, the more heirloom squash have become popular, the white pumpkins, the blue pumpkins, the Mexican hats, and those are much more nutritionally dense, and we harvest anywhere between 5, 000 to 60, 000 pounds of pumpkins that when we have collaborators like the Community Food Bank of Southern Arizona, we would send 18 wheelers off to adjacent states and other parts of Arizona with those pumpkins. We have pumpkins that sit in the shade from October 32nd to 6 to 8 to 9, and our record is having a pumpkin that lasted an entire year sitting in the shade off the ground.

So we have a food, really rich food resource. For both humans, and when they start to go, we feed the animals, and when they go past the quality for animals, we compost. The biggest citrus season is upon us now, and we are seeing our gleaning and harvesting seasons change with changing weather patterns. I hate to say climate change when we're still collecting data, but it's definitely related.

And citrus... is much bigger than the three months from January to, to March. Last year we started in November and ended in July. That's the longest we've ever harvested. And when I say citrus, I'm talking about tangelos and tangerines and blood oranges and Meyer lemons and making Rachel very, very jealous.

But you can send me apples anytime. Apples for oranges. That was a dream once upon a time. Couldn't we just send some of our oranges and get apples for it? That's citrus. During citrus season, the, the peak three months there, we're harvesting between 1, 000 and 5, 000 pounds of citrus. And 50 percent of what we harvest, we estimate, go to food banks, food pantries, soup kitchens, schools, and other organizations addressing poverty, hunger here in not just Pima County, but surrounding areas, including the native tribes, Tohono O'odham, Pascua Yaqui, and a couple Apache communities, to name a few of the tribes that reside in the state of Arizona, so that we work with indigenous farmers as well, and trying to promote education about native crops and arid adapted crops. But we do get juicy citrus, which is not native here, but we also harvest four different types of cactus fruits to balance it out and learn from our indigenous populations for which we live on their land.

Emile Elias: Wow, I was so surprised to learn about the pumpkins and also very jealous of your citrus harvest there. And so I'm curious, I mean, I think that's a A great model of sharing between the community fruit harvests that Rachel mentioned and, and the citrus harvest that you're doing. So Rachel, you mentioned a database people register trees and that could be from an orchard to a single tree.

Can you tell us a little bit more about the community fruit harvest where you are and expand on how that works, how you get people out there to do that and what that model is? 

Rachel Landis: Yeah, so in this area, we're super rural and fairly remote. So even though we're in the grand state of Colorado, we're seven hours and three mountain passes from Denver.

And most city centers are a long, long, long, long way away. One of the counties in our service territory has three people per square mile. So again, Part of our work is how do we make this accessible to everyone across this region, no matter where they are. And so that database is just a starting place.

It's also a starting place that requires some tech savviness. So there's, we've got to kind of work across that. So a big part of our work is great. We built this platform. Now we've got to do some outreach and some education. I think as Barbara mentioned, we are so disconnected from food systems at this point that like the notion of going to pick food, the notion that there's food on a tree and that it will become waste and that that's not okay.

Like those are mind blowing revolutionary thoughts at this point in time. And so, yeah, we, for our do it yourself kind of operation, we always run some trainings, we try to hype it up and get people excited. We work a ton with the schools and with the college and getting folks out into the field and telling the story of food systems, of food sovereignty, of sense of place.

And then certainly of this massive issue we have around food waste and its implications on climate and resources and inequities. And so there's quite a bit of outreach on that front, and then we also to support this work and in particular to get a consistent amount of food into our food access partners, which Barbara, we kind of align with Barbara's model.

So those are our food pantries across five counties and three tribal nations. It's our healthcare system and then also our schools. So those are kind of right now where we, we go with food access, but to really support and ensure there's a consistent supply to those folks. We have several staff. It's the best job in the world.

They are community harvesters. And they come up with creative ways to get people out and about. And so I participated in Pear-aoke this year, where when you registered to go harvest, you also submitted your favorite song. And then you went to the pear trees, and when your song came up on the playlist, you had to stop picking pears.

Go to the karaoke machine and sing to your fellow harvesters. And I believe all of that food, very similar to Barbara's model, right, there's this zero waste notion which is there are hundreds of pounds on any given tree of fruit and of that, you know, depending on the year and kind of how the, the, the trees or the grounds have been cared for and infestations, etc, etc.

Let's say 50 percent is of A grade quality, dignified food that you and I want to eat, and therefore that we, our partners at food access locations want. Then we have a bunch of B grade food that's maybe marred and looks a little interesting and different, and so that we actually try to get that into secondary outlets, so be that our cideries, as I mentioned, or, you know, we have a local small business that does seconds, backpacking meals with seconds products.

Thanks. Thanks. So, we follow something called the USDA, oh gosh, help me Barbara, it's the food waste hierarchy, I think. I know, we're both like making triangles with our fingers. And whatever doesn't go there, similarly, we get it over to our farmers and ranchers for animal feed. And I think in the five years we've been doing this, We've only ever sent a total of 90 pounds to landfill, which we're really proud about.

Emile Elias: Wow, Rachel, that's amazing. And I will forever have an image of karaoke while harvesting. I love it. It's great. So creative. That's a very creative way to get people out there and fun. So now shifting over to Barbara, in addition to your harvesting, gleaning programs. You have some really fun programs as well.

You host food preservation workshops, cultural cooking classes, and different types of field trips. Can you tell us a bit about these different opportunities, and also their benefits for refugees. 

Barbara Eiswerth: So, I just want to just build on what Rachel just impressed us all with pear-aoke, that, that gleaning can be fun, and this education, I just spoke with, we do edible tree tours as well, and the idea is educating people, not just on what grows here, but How to use it, how to preserve it, dry it, zest it, pickle it, ferment it, you name it, we've tried it.

We make cactus chips out of Peruvian cactus apples, which are not apples, they're cactus fruit. So really trying to stretch the envelope on how to use local food and how to make it last longer for human consumption before we go on to desert tortoises and chickens and pigs and goats. That brings me to mentioning the Association of Gleaning Organizations with Rachel and I are both part of.

Iskashitaa has been part of it since its inception. We like to call it the International Gleaning Association because we included a couple Canadians groups in there, but now I think there's a Spanish group, so we're honestly an international group of gleaning organizations, and each year we meet at a different location and share practices, best practices, and ideas from funding to How to get into a cidery, which I've not managed to do yet, but want to, and the synergy and the, the fruitful energy and that comes out of each of those symposium is priceless, and when harvesters have time during their off months, which Arizona doesn't have off months, you can participate in all kinds of mentoring opportunities and webinars on a regular basis.

So we're pretty proud of that growing effort to, and connectivity to help the tree huggers that are doing this work. And it is fun work, and it is the best job. Well we eat, we eat better than anybody else. We are harvesting things that don't exist in the grocery stores, that don't exist at farmers markets.

That are culturally appropriate for the one, one of, or several of our ethnic groups that we work with. 47 different ethnic groups we've worked with, or countries. And so that makes our food preservation technique and recipe capture very rich and that's why sharing with cultural luncheons and food preservation demonstrations at the educational gardens, at community festivals is important.

So we redefine, with every new ethnic group, we redefine what is a food resource. So, for instance one of our more recent ones that we're developing is, is pumpkin leaves and pumpkin flowers and pumpkin seeds. Besides roasting pumpkin seeds with salt and olive oil, what do you do with pumpkin seeds?

Well, we worked with Hindu populations from Bhutan ethnic Nepalese, and they taught us everything there is to know about pickling from A to Z, including pickled pumpkin seed paste. Who knew that existed, or pickled pomegranate arils? They pickle everything, never using vinegar, and rarely using cucumbers.

So, lots to learn. We get together, we do canning. Like I mentioned, the drying, zesting, pickling, fermenting we're still learning. And then we sell those products that online and at our events. So that we can educate people what they can do in their own homes, they can learn to can with us, with rolling off some food industry, entrepreneurial opportunities for refugee families through the cottage law industry.

Juicing Jamborees are us. We juice and have large quantities of lemon juice and lime juice and tangelo juice, pomegranate juice and prickly pear juice. That lasts us for next year. And we use that internally, but we are also working with the gastronomic union of Tucson and the UNESCO city of Tucson for gastronomy to get more locally sourced produce into not just food banks and soup kitchens, but also restaurants and other organizations. Still need to make inroads like Rachel has already done with the schools and healthcare, but we're working on that.

Sarah LeRoy: Thanks, Barbara. I must say that you two are both making me very hungry listening to all of these good foods and fruits and preservation techniques and yeah, it's excellent. So, Rachel, I wanted to ask about the, so the Good Food Collective offers grants to farmers and food retailers and so I wanted to ask, you know, what's the intent of those grants and how do they work?

Rachel Landis: Yeah, so again, for the Good Food Collective, we're trying to look at this from an entire food systems perspective. And so the healthy food access and health equity are one piece of that. And when we've mapped out kind of the pain points and opportunities in our area, one of the other big things that's risen to the surface is the need and the opportunity to really support our, both our small scale and producers.

As well as retailers and business owners, and there's a lot of pieces to that. It's on the one hand, it's workforce opportunities and development in rural areas, which really struggle to provide those. There's very much a food access component to that. In that county with three people per square mile, your grocery store is the family dollar.

And so, when we've kind of had stakeholder conversations, the things that have really come up for us and what we've learned from the agricultural folks is like, hey, we really need reliable markets that are consistent where there's a fair price, and ideally where we're not just getting into the bougie restaurants and the farmers markets, nothing wrong with that, but we want to feed our neighbors.

And so our, really what we've worked on over the last few years is building out what we call just markets. So, it's this whole field, you can Google it, called Value Chain Coordination, where you're essentially developing, working with folks, let's say, at the schools, as Barbara mentioned, or healthcare, and in our instance, also the legislation and the legislature to kind of develop a, a buying market in places that traditionally have really looked to commodity foods or, or possibly like most calories for your buck, as opposed to nutrient density and investing back in my community.

So how we've worked a ton to coach on that end and create kind of the demand, and then on the farmers, we do a lot of matchmaking. One of the ways that that demand has taken form is in working really hard at the state level to capture funds that can be used by these food access markets to actually procure from local farmers.

And so we're kind of a pass through mediator that has been able to get the money down to our region because we have those ties and connections and then help translate that over to the farmers. So that's one type of grant we offer. We've also heard from both retailers and the farmers that there's massive infrastructure needs that would enable them to be able to either to really sell into this market.

So that might mean cold storage. It might mean a hoop house so that I can grow for more than those 88 days. If I'm a retailer, it might mean I need a new point of sale system or internet access so that I can actually sign up to take SNAP dollars so that people who are utilizing EBT or like food stamps, as it's been called in the past, can actually come to my store and use those benefits.

And so the grants that we offer, again, they're always in partnership with government agencies or philanthropic funders, but they're basically, it's one of the roles we play. If you're in need, there's a resource gap, and we're not full time farming in the field or trying to run a small business. So how can we secure those resources and get them, be the intermediary that gets them out to folks on the ground, doing the hard work.

Sarah LeRoy: Great. Thanks, Rachel. Barbara, could you tell us a little bit about Iskashitaa's Refugee Garden Art Program? You mentioned this a little bit earlier. What do the refugees learn in this program and what are some of the art projects that they can participate in? 

Barbara Eiswerth: Well, every Wednesday we meet from 8 to 11, and it kind of strengthened during, it's one of those silver linings during COVID, we had to be outside, we had to be socially distanced, many refugees were battling social isolation to the 10th degree because of COVID, and it was very important that we still reach out.

We didn't close a day, we continued to harvest, sometimes five, six days a week. For months and months and months, because we had to do it in small groups. So the garden art program kind of grew out of that, and the synergy, and if you would have told me this 10 years ago, I would not have believed me to be emphasizing the garden aspects, because from a garden, I can get hundreds of pounds, but harvesting, I can get thousands of pounds, so it just didn't make sense to me.

Because we have wonderful community gardeners of Tucson and lots of organizations that focus on schools that are teaching gardening, but the synergy that kind of grew out of this was, we can do an art project. It might be making, yesterday they made bling tags for plants to go into our garden. We've just relocated to a garden of our own.

And we're rebuilding that and so that's an opportunity to talk about all those aspects from irrigation to tree pruning to rainwater harvesting to Bokashi composting, all of these things. We now have an educational space. and a healing art space, all in one, to attract the refugees. That is where we do our, our main redistribution, so if you can't participate in the garden art program, that is also the day you come to see what we have harvested that week.

Or previously, but also one thing that I wanted to mention was the rescuing of food. Nogales is the second largest port of entry from Mexico to the U. S. for winter vegetables coming to the U. S. and because of that system, we have partners such as Market on the Move the 3000 Club that, that rescue the food at the border so it doesn't go into landfills, but can be redistributed through networks like our own, and that's also redistributed.

So we call grapefruit the, the zucchini of the southwest, and refugees cannot live on grapefruit alone. So, this week we got watermelon and, and lettuce, so but usually we can get lots and lots of different things from rescuing food rather than harvesting it, just in smaller quantities. Hundreds of pounds compared to our thousands of pounds.

The garden art program has just been a fun time. We don't do pear-aoke but we do do multicultural drumming the first Wednesdays of every month, and we have a a theater professor that comes in and helps us with Language acquisition, and then incorporate food vocabulary that is useful, and then we're learning their languages.

I speak food, but it just makes for boring conversations. Hello, how are you? Apple, Orange, how do you say turnip, Let's Go, Tomato, Potato, and yeah, makes for boring conversations, but the laughter that you get in speaking in, in, in six different languages, food is, is worth the, worth the time. So just trying to level those playing fields so that there's a cultural exchange, a language exchange, and we're really trying to integrate the refugees into our community, and there's not enough efforts to do that, and so that's why having two people playing cornhole, you know, one Bhutanese and one Afghan refugee makes for a beautiful party. 

Sarah LeRoy: Thanks, Barbara. I have a quick follow on question. You mentioned rescuing food at the border. Could you explain why food would end up in the landfill in the first place? 

Barbara Eiswerth: So there's an assessment that goes on as the trucks are crossing the international border, and they do spot checks. There's tons, tens and tens of warehouses that do spot checks. So they'll have a pallet of baby zucchini, and they'll do a spot check of several of the crates.

And if there's a spot, one spot found or a number of spots found, that will be deemed as not transportable to its destination of Washington or New York or Nebraska. And so they then set those pallets aside. There's still sometimes completely edible vegetables available, but they don't think that it's going to arrive at the destination, and they don't want the expense and the fossil fuels going into the air for that transportation.

And so several non profits, including the Community Food Bank of Southern Arizona, utilize that rescued food for getting it out to rural communities, underserved communities. So it's a, a critical advantage that we have in that we're able to save that food from the, from the landfill. 

Sarah LeRoy: Thank you so much for that explanation.

Yeah. And then that makes sense. And so it's great to hear that there are these organizations and folks working to, to reduce that waste. So, you mentioned earlier the Food Gleaning Symposium, as well as this international organization around food gleaning organizations. And so, I was wondering if you know, I'm guessing that you do, since there is this organization, do you know of other similar efforts across the country?

And, but more specifically for listeners, how could they find You know, food gleaning effort in their area. And so Rachel, I will start with you on this question. 

Rachel Landis: Yeah, I think there are some things out there. I think Barbara is going to be more up to date on this then I will be. The sites that come to mind are Falling Fruit, which is a free online database, similar to ours, but at a national level.

And then the American the AGO website should have gleaning organizations listed out across the region. And then I would say another good one would be to check in with your local food pantry or your regional food bank, because they will often be connected to food recovery efforts and your region's food bank.

One distinction you may want to ask is you're looking, if you're looking for gleaning, which is the fine art of capturing excess foods coming out of the field, or food rescue, which tends to, more often is associated with kind of capturing foods coming post harvest and maybe coming out of a grocery store or catering or something to that effect.

Sarah LeRoy: Great. Thanks, Rachel. And I'll add that any of these organizations you mentioned, we'll make sure to add to the, the notes in the episode so people can find them. Okay, Barbara. 

Barbara Eiswerth: Well, the Association of Gleaning Organizations started in 2017, like I said, an annual symposium each year for sharing. It's both in person and available online, and I think just simply searching gleaning organizations will get, and your, the name of your state or city will come up with a list.

AGO, as it's called, is well over 120 different organizations, mostly in the United States, with a few in Canada. And other places. So they're, it's a growing non profit focus to strengthen our local food systems through gleaning, growing, and educating. And I think in, I've got 20 years of experience, and so I've seen many food banks get out of the gleaning business because they cite finances, they say training volunteers, they say that it's not cost effective, and coming from a background in arid lands resource sciences, if we're, we're investing in the land, the trees, we're investing water, love, land, fertilizer, then we should be reaping the benefits of the backyard bounty that we're growing wherever it is.

And one of the things that people don't consider when they think, oh, you shouldn't be growing fruit trees in the desert. Well, how far is that fruit traveling from the grocery store to your table? It's much, much farther. And the, the carbon footprint of that is much, much larger than we think. It's not just driving to the grocery store.

It's, it's a much bigger picture that we need to look at to address some of these challenges that we have. 

Rachel Landis: The other, the AGO I think is your go to. There's another, you can get to it from the AGO's website, but it's the University of Vermont's Center for Agriculture and Food Systems, and they have something on there called the National Gleaning Project.

Which I think was in partnership with AGO but it's an entire map and resources, and a big one on legal and policy in the event you want to start your own gleaning program. 

Barbara Eiswerth: So I just wanted to add that another big difference between Rachel and our systems, ours are not forward facing databases. When we started this project, we had no idea.

that we were going to continue it. So we were mapping with the GIS all of these fruit trees in people's private properties and they don't necessarily, we had no idea that we would eventually get to the point where you can see who's in the swimming pool with the satellite images and therefore we don't publish our maps per se because I don't think that our customers would be what the homeowners want to share with the entire city but want to make sure that it's an orderly network of people coming that are trained, and we always ask permission, and we're following the good Samaritan Emerson law, which is a good thing to mention because there are still restaurants, and still stores, restaurants, organizations, farms out there that fear donating their food will cause some kind of risk and liability, and that has been addressed.

Nationally so there should not be that question of whether you should donate food or not, long as it's in, the food is in good condition and you're donating in good faith. 

Sarah LeRoy: Okay, thank you both. So my next question is something that we asked all of the folks that are able to join us on the podcast about hope for the future.

And I know listening to you both today does give me a lot of hope in the great things that your organizations are doing, but I'm curious what gives each of you hope for the future. And so Barbara, why don't we start with you?

Barbara Eiswerth: So I think our educational and outreach efforts is a reason for hope for all of us.

Because the more intimate relationship we have with the Earth, and nature, and trees, and food, the, the healthier we're going to be, and our knowledge will increase on what is good for our bodies, and what is healthy for the environment, and look at the human impact on our land more seriously. It's a great opportunity to connect food insecurity with excess food so we have the food and we have people in serious dire need of more nutritional fresh food and it's there. We're the connectors and, and I, it's a growing movement and I believe that it's just going to get better and better long as we keep incorporating all these different aspects, so many different food ways to, to pull from and information to share with our community.

Sarah LeRoy: Okay, Rachel. 

Rachel Landis: Yeah, I was just reflecting on this and honestly listening to Barbara. And I guess what that's emblematic of for me is that I am in the fortunate role where every single day the majority of people I talk to and work with are doing incredible things and they are leading from their heart in work that at whatever sphere of influence they have it's, it's based on Connecting to Earth, protecting our planet, building equity, building community.

And I think what's so cool in this little, little role I sit in and Barbara sit in, right, we're connectors, as she mentioned. And so I see how that also rolls up. And so it's, it's right, like, okay, we've got these incredible people in our community doing community based work. And then I'm in all these statewide committees that are working on systems across the state and all those folks are in committees that are working on initiatives that are really looking at a national or global scale.

And so I think for me, what gives me hope is that this is a field where people think in systems, which to me is how the world works. And so it's a model that any system could adapt. And, you know, I think that it's happening in food, which also happens to be a source of joy and creativity. It's like, how could you not be hopeful every day?

Emile Elias: Excellent. I get the same feeling from these conversations. It's really so uplifting to listen to the work you're doing and others in other sectors as well. So this is the last question and it's the question that asks about what we missed. So is there something that we didn't ask that you wish we had?

Rachel Landis: I was just gonna say my former life was as an outdoor educator. And so I'm always thinking from that perspective, both from outdoor education and community organizing, how do you activate listeners? And so hopefully you all are smiling as big as I am and excited to go visit Barbara and eat tangelos in Tucson.

But I think what's so cool about food and food recovery and gleaning and food waste is like, this is a place we have so much power and opportunity. And so, you know, you all mentioned in the beginning that massive amount of food that is wasted and how that turns into methane. And so we all as individuals, again, our sphere of influence, whatever that might be, have the power and the option to actually make a real difference.

And so I'm just looking at, you know, maybe it's a start really small and you make one goal about how you're not going to waste food and you're actually going to eat the leftovers this week. And so I think I would say, maybe the question is, what can listeners do? And my answer is, you can do something, and it will, it will, I am a firm believer that action begets action and hope begets hope, so. 

Emile Elias: Thanks, Rachel. Barbara, same question to you. Is there something we didn't ask you wish we had? 

Barbara Eiswerth: Can't follow that. Besides that I'm heading north for apples. I won't eat an apple out of a grocery store, ever, ever, ever, because I come from Pennsylvania and I didn't know Colorado had the best apples, but I'm willing to come visit to try them.

Actually, somebody just delivered Colorado apples and quince, and the quince were gigantic. So he just brought them, they're coming down to winter over here and brought us a special treat from Colorado. I guess I would just like to say that learning from refugees and from our global friends from different paths who are, by and large, they're connected to the food, they're not disconnected, and how do we reconnect our community to our food, and that's through education, but learning from our diverse voices that have different food ways, different definition of food, different parts of the plant that they eat, We can learn from those techniques, preservation techniques, recipes, stuffing a pumpkin instead of a turkey.

We can learn from our neighbors and put that to good use and that relates directly back to climate change. Having had the hottest summer, most brutal summer to be really building a garden. What are we going to do when the pumpkin does not get to maturation? So one of the things that we're learning, you can use immature pumpkins, harvest them at the end of the season, use them as summer squash.

They haven't formed their seed yet and they taste great. So learning that we can eat pumpkin leaves before the pumpkin comes, or the pumpkin might not ever come if it's so hot. So, we have ways to mitigate climate from our global friends that we can employ for the future, and gives, and planting fruit trees now gives us hope for the future of tomorrow, and we're, we're creating pledge cards for people purchasing fruit trees, so they don't think of it as something for just their family, but think about the future and they can pay it forward.

And this, this fruit tree, when it gets so abundant, will be for your grandchildren, your great grandchildren. And when it's too abundant, then it can come to organizations like ours. 

Emile Elias: Barbara Eiswerth, Rachel Landis, thank you so much for speaking with us today.

Thanks for listening to Come Rain or Shine, podcast Southwest Climate Hub 

Sarah LeRoy: and the USGS Southwest CASC. If you liked this podcast, don't forget to rate or review it and subscribe for more great episodes. A special thanks to our production crew, Skye Aney and Reanna Burnett. If you want more information, have any questions for the speakers, or would like to offer feedback, please reach out to us via our websites.