In North America, more than 25% of all fruits and vegetables are plowed under or brought to landfills just because they are the wrong size, color, shape or have reached their “best before” date.¹ This results in 63 million tons of food that goes uneaten each year.² The gathering of this wasted food and processing it to produce nutritious meals is called gleaning. Gleaning is not only beneficial to humanity by feeding the hungry, it has many positive effects on our planet.

By growing relationships with local farmers to glean all their currently wasted produce, and by working closely with fellow community volunteers to process this food into nutritious meals, we believe Kalamazoo Valley Gleaners can deliver four to five million meals annually around the world to feed starving people. This is our calling.

Sources:
¹ wfp.org.poverty.com
² Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations