Gleaning up the Countryside

If you go out into the countryside over the next few weeks and chance across a gang of townies apparently scrumping or scavenging on farmland, don’t be alarmed, they’re just gleaners. Gleaners are volunteers who collect – and save- unharvested but perfectly good food from going to waste. 

Gleaning, as it will soon become widely known as, is both a very new and very old activity. “It’s mentioned in the Bible – in the Book of Ruth,” UK Gleaning Co-ordinator Martin Bowman points out. “In the Middle Ages it was a popular practice whereby farmers would leave portions of their field unharvested so that the local poor could come in and gather up the remainder of the crop.”

Essentially it’s a simple solution to a very modern problem. UK farms tend to over-produce. Supermarkets all too often cancel orders at the last minute and our collective inclination to prefer fruit and veg with the ‘right’ shape means that thousands of tonnes of produce goes unharvested at this time every year. But in recent years a network has developed that steps in and diverts this to UK food charities – with the full co-operation of the farmers.

“About three years ago we started the first few trial gleaning days in the UK,” explains Bowman. “We did them around Kent and Lincolnshire and then since then it’s really mushroomed. We now have five gleaning hubs around the UK”

One of these five is based in Bristol. “Last year for each glean there would be between 10 and 15 of us who got involved, “says Eoin Vondy-Smith, one of the Bristol organisers for 2014. “We send an email out seeing who is interested and then whittle that down to ten or so that would come on the road. It being the West Country, we tend to do lots of apples. But we also glean pears, plums and if we’re going down to Devon sometimes broad beans.” 

“It’s all very organised and definitely more than glorified scrumping! We’ll sort the lifts and then spend the day at the farm. We share a lunch and quite often the farmer will explain things from his perspective. It’s usually a very relaxed, enjoyable day out. Then at the end of the day we’ll take all the produce back to Bristol and distribute it to charities, usually the Matthew Tree Project on Stokes Croft or Fare Share South West.”

The amounts that are involved are larger than you expect. Bowman estimates that at one recent glean in Essex the local team there saved 11 tonnes of parsnips from going to waste. To put that in perspective one tonne is the equivalent of 12,500 portions of veg.

The UK co-ordinator sees the gleaning network’s role as more than just saving food. “We’re not just a food charity,” Bowman explains. “We’re also a campaigning organisation. Our real raison d’etre is to see an end to this food waste in the first place. We want to work with farmers to give them a platform so that they can express their concerns at the cause of the waste and put pressure on supermarkets and the food industry to solve the problems that are leading to it – for example relaxing their cosmetic standards on fruit and veg.”

So remember the word. Unless supermarkets radically change their policies towards their suppliers it’s likely that you’ll hear a lot more about gleaning over the coming years.   “Ultimately it’s a great solution because it brings together the waste on one hand and the colossal food poverty that there is in the UK,” says Vondy-Smith. “Plus it’s a lot of fun too.” 

To get involved in gleaning go to feedbackglobal.org, To follow the Bristol team on Twitter go to twitter.com/GleaningBRIS