Reducing Food Loss Through Gleaning: The Recovery of Flawed and Forgotten Foods with Lisa Johnson and Lynette Johnson

Welcome to Essential Ingredients. I'm Justine Reichman, your host. This morning with me, guest co-hosting is Lisa Johnson. It's the second time we're co-hosting this episode today, and I couldn't be happier. She always brings with her great guests. Today is no exception. Welcome Lisa, and welcome Lynette. I couldn't be happier or more pleased to have both of you with me today.

Thank you so much. Justine, I'm excited to be here for the second time. And yeah, absolutely. I've brought with me today an amazing guest, Lynette Johnson, and I will let her tell you all about herself. Just a quick note about me. I'm an independent researcher by now with a background in horticulture. And most of what I study is food loss and food waste in agricultural production, and figuring out strategies to reduce that. We're actually supposed to reduce that by 50% by the year 2030 according to the UN Sustainable Development Goals. So working hard at that. And joining me today, joining us, is the wonderful Lynette Johnson with an amazing background in history, and I can't wait to share her with y'all.

Thank you Lisa. Thank you Lynette. Lynette, we're super excited to have you here. Learn a little bit about you, learn about St. Andrews a little bit and the mission that you're on. So if you would just tell us a little bit about yourself.

I'm the Executive Director of the Society of St. Andrew, which is the nation's oldest and largest gleaning organization. So gleaning is a practice leftover from ancient funds where people go into the fields after commercial harvesting is done. They pick, dig or gather whatever food is left over to share with hungry people. So that's what our organization is all about. And we've been doing this for about 42 years.

Wow. I'm glad you explained what cleaning meant,because I was going to ask that just because some of our listeners, I fear maybe might not know what cleaning was. So that's super exciting. How did you get into this? What were you doing before? Were you always gleaning?

No. I was not always gleaning. I spent the first third of my career or maybe first half of my career working in churches. And while I was working in churches, I learned about the Society of St. Andrew and thought that their mission was about the neatest thing ever. At some point in that time, we moved to an area in Virginia close to where the society St. Andrews headquartered. And every time we would drive through the little town where they're headquartered, I would point it out to my children and say: "The Society of St. Andrews here, they're using fresh fruits and vegetables to feed hungry people. I'm going to work for them one day." So here I am.

Wow. We all wish we could say that and then actually do it.

Alright, but glad to be here. Yeah.

Well, that's great. That's great. I'm curious though, how long have you been at St. Andrews now?

I've been here almost 11 years.

Wow, almost 11 years. And when you got there, what was the mission of St. Andrews at that time?

Same mission. All this time, when I was hired by Society of St. Andrew, they actually moved me to Tennessee to open a new office in Tennessee to get gleaning started in the state. So I did that for about three and a half years before coming back to Virginia still working with the organization.

Wow. So have you seen a huge amount of change between then and now?

I guess what's changed between then and now, first of all, is that the idea of foodshed that will be wasted has become popular in that time. So starting around 2012, people started taking notice that food was going to waste and deciding that really, this is something that shouldn't happen. So there's been a lot more publicity. Certainly social media has really grown leaps and bounds since that time, and that helped get the word out as well. So for the first 30 years that the Society of St. Andrew was recovering fruits and vegetables to feed hungry people, we were the only group in the space so nobody else was even thinking about doing what we were doing. And just in the last, really, five to eight years, there's been a huge growth in the number of nonprofit groups and also the number of for profits that are really seeking to minimize ways to capitalize on whatever they can. Whether that's for feeding hungry people as nonprofits do, or for creating other profit centers from that food that would have gone to waste for profit companies.

So Lisa, can you jump in here? I'd love to hear what your thoughts are on there. And if you could maybe pin down what you think was that pivotal moment there that fostered this sort of, where these companies jumped in, and all of a sudden, sort of took notice.

Sure. In 2012, the Natural Resources Defense Council put out a white paper that talks about how America is wasting about 40% of our food from farm, to fork, to landfill. And it was authored by Dana Gunders who's now the executive director of ReFED, that organization that is really championing the study and solutions for food loss and food waste in the US. So her paper came out in 2012. And suddenly, the media took off with this food waste again. And it has popped up in the past, but not to the same degree it is now. And it's been really a hot topic ever since. Now, since that time, food waste has really been linked very strongly with climate change. And so that gets a whole different group of people involved. So people who might have been interested in moving food to for more charitable reasons, you know, now have another gang to lean on, and environmentalists who are trying to keep food out of the landfill. So there's huge social and environmental problems that can be solved by fixing food waste. And I wonder if Lynette, if you use different terms in your organization rather than food waste when you're talking amongst yourselves or making plans, or when and where do you use the term food waste?

That's a really good question. Because when you talk about food waste, you think about the scraps that you throw in the garbage after you finished your meal. The little bit of whatever's left on your plate, or the potato peels, or whatever it could be. That is not always an attractive picture. And if people think that we are feeding food waste to hungry people, that's not what we do at all. What we're really looking at is food that for one reason or another would be lost, would not be harvested. Sometimes, it's because it's not pretty enough for the grocery store. Maybe the bend in the zucchini is too great, or the coloration on the pumpkins just a little bit off. So there could be reasons like that. Sometimes, the farmers' labor has moved on to another field, and they don't have anyone left to harvest again. So there are all sorts of reasons why the spoon is left behind. But none of that is to state that it's not good quality food or not worth eating. It's all food that you or I would be glad to have on our tables.

So it's interesting, and I think Lisa was referring to this. Maybe I was just thinking about it myself. But it goes back to Lisa and I had on our first conversation that I see her shaking her head. Maybe her and I were having the same thoughts. So for those listeners that may be tuned in to the first of the series that we had on food loss, and I say that with that emphasis because that was the word that we were talking about food loss because it doesn't place the blame. I don't know if that rings a bell to anyone else listening. But we were having this conversation around the words that people choose. I don't know if that means, if that sort of speaks to you at all. But a lot of times, people use these words like food waste, and we're placing blame on the farmers when it's really not the farmers fault. Sometimes, things fall off the trees. Sometimes, there's too much. Sometimes, it's a funny shape. And it's nobody's fault. There's nothing wrong with it. Is that what you were talking about Lisa?

Oh, absolutely. Yeah. And I've actually started using another term for the food that's left behind on farms because there's a lot of opportunity there. There's a lot of potential in that food and much of it is social, which is why Lynette is keen to tackle this issue. You can solve social problems with this food, but I've been starting to call it post harvest yield potential which is a little bit technical. But for so long, in horticulture, we've studied post harvest loss. It's been a huge topic 400 years or more within the horticulture community. But as far as the US is concerned, post harvest losses, especially in fruit and vegetable crops has been something that happens to other people. Not us in the US. So we have really focused a lot of energy, resources and research on tackling the low hanging fruit related to these problems in other countries like providing, packaging, or refrigeration, or transportation, options that are that don't damage fruit or vegetables because that's easy for us. We've already figured it out, but we really haven't turned the mirror on ourselves and looked at post harvest loss in horticultural products here in the US. So nobody wants to look and find out what that is. I've been starting to refer to it as post harvest yield potential because there's still a yield out there if it's worthwhile to go and get it.

What do you think Lynette?

Oh, absolutely, absolutely. I think that's a good way to talk about it. So often, there are just so many other factors that are beyond a farmer's control whether that food gets harvested or not. Sometimes, it's as simple as the sale contract says, the green beans have to be two and a half to three inches long. So any green beans that are shorter or longer than that, the farmer is not going to harvest. Or actually, if they harvest mechanically, they're going to grade it out at their warehouse because they know that if it gets to the point of their distributor, it's going to be rejected. So that leaves a whole lot of green beans that are shorter or longer that are perfectly good to eat, they just don't need that sale contract.

Okay. So let's talk about all this food down that the farmers have, that you can't do something, that you can't take to the grocery store, you can't do this, what's happening with it?

Well, a variety of things can happen. It can be difficult if a farmer has an exclusive contract with a particular distributor. Anything they sell has to go to that distributor, and that distributor only once a certain portion of what they grow. That means that the farmer is not free to try to find other markets to sell any additional food, which makes it a great candidate for donation at that point, to be able to work with an organization like ours to come in and get that food that's leftover. In other cases where the farmer is not limited in terms of who they can sell to, they're trying to find alternative markets. So perhaps, the green beans that one farmer is dealing with are going for frozen packaging, and they're going to be whole green beans. So in order to fit the packaging capacity at the plant, they've got to be that certainly. But maybe the farmer could then find someone else who would can the green beans, or just some other use that they completely be put in a soup or a stew, or even used for ugly produce for a CSA type thing. So there might be a lot of other uses for that food if the farmer is not in an exclusive contract.

So what can a farmer do with this exclusive contract? And how can they deal with these issues?

I'm waiting for you to figure that one out, Justine.

Okay. Sounds like a problem I want to fix.

Yeah, well, it is.

That's something that I really want to fix, because I feel like there's a win-win in there somewhere.

There should be. Unfortunately, our growers often get the short end of the stick. And even when they might have a contract where a lot of things are specified, like the volume, the date, the price and the quality are already locked in. Something can go wrong. And generally speaking, it's not the buyer that pays the cost of the thing going wrong. Yes. So we do have a means to kind of deal with this within our government called [inaudible]. And it's there any way a group or organization of mediators that try to find solutions, went to problems when they pop up, or find the solution to a disagreement if there's a problem between a buyer and a seller. But very often, if something is packed and it's on a truck, and it doesn't have a place to go, it can end up in a landfill. Now, if something is in the field and it's not being harvested because of a contract, or because it doesn't fit specifications, it's very likely going to be plowed under.

So is there an opportunity for us to talk to our listeners here, whether they're founders, whether there are attorneys, whether they're anybody out there that has an idea or wants to solve this problem to reach out to us?

Yeah. I talk to people all the time that are working on solving these problems. In this case, though, in solving the problem of food loss and food waste, it really requires everybody at the top of their game to get this done. It's not something that one person can fix. It's going to take everybody holding hands and making it happen. But it's going to be a dramatic change to our food system as it is. I feel like many people say, oh, the food system is broken. But if you feel like it's broken, jump in and do something about it.

That's what we're doing here, we're changing the future. We're doing it together.

I think that there's a lack of understanding perhaps, in the population, generally about the volume of food that we're talking about here. It's 40% of what's grown in this country is never eaten. Is there 40% more demand to eat that food? So that's a real question too.

Yeah, I think so. If you could talk a little bit more about that and sort of give some insight into the numbers that we're really talking about here to our listeners, I think that would give them greater insight.

Well, yeah. So estimates of the quantity of fruits and vegetables that are wasted. I've seen anything from 20 billion to about 40 billion pounds. I don't know, Lisa, do you have any better numbers than that? Seems low to me.

Yeah. It's a difficult challenge to try and put figures on these things. Because like I said, we haven't been turning the mirror on ourselves very much. For the last few decades, the only data we have on fruit and vegetable losses and fruit and vegetable waste in the United States have come from a broader data set from the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations. So by their estimate, we lose and waste about 50% of the vegetables and fruits that we produce throughout the supply chain right from production, through distribution and transportation, through retail and then into consumption. Unfortunately, what's not included in that number is what gets left behind in the field. And that's even a low estimate. So these are things that we're only just beginning to understand. Now, Lynette and I have both spent a lot of time in the field and have a sense of the scale of what's left behind on farms. In my research, what I understand from across a variety of eight southeastern crops, I have seen an amount equivalent to 42% of what's marketed still sitting there in the field that is still good to eat, but just was not harvested for whatever reason. And I had a question for Lynette exactly on this topic. Because when you mentioned that there are a lot more nonprofits popping up to try and recover this food, but they're also for profits that are working in this same space. And there has been some controversy over the past few years over this supply where it should go and where it shouldn't go. And different people have different ideas on this. Are you familiar with this controversy? What do you think about all of that?

First of all, I think there's way more food than anybody's thinking about. So there's plenty of food for all the nonprofit's to recover and there's plenty of food for all the for profits to be thinking about how they're going to work with it.

See, you and I are on the same page. That's exactly how I answer that question when people ask me.

I was at an event, oh, gosh, October a year ago. There were some folks who were being highlighted because they had found a way to use some fruit pulps to create jelly beans. But their whole project uses like 10,000 pounds of fruit. That's great, but 10,000 pounds, we moved 46 million pounds of food last year. So 10,000, not very much, not even a drop in the bucket. So there's plenty of food out there to be recovered, and there's no reason for any of us to be protective of our territory or stepping on each other's toes either, because it's there.

People ask me that all the time. And I just tell them, there's more than you'll ever be able to understand. There's more food out there than we can even put our heads around.

There's lots of opportunity for people to get creative and figure out how to solve this problem.

Absolutely. And Justine, you've talked to a few upcyclers recently. This is a really big new trend, which is wonderful, because there's space for it. The resources are there. And when people are creative and create demand for those products, that's a wonderful thing, right?

I think that this just supports that. This just says that this trend is not just a trend, this is the future. There's really an opportunity here too. And it's better for the earth, it's better for the planet, it's better for the way that we build the future out because we might as well take what we have, use our resources, be more regenerative and build a more regenerative future than creating new products and creating more waste, as opposed to dealing with what we have because there's already so much.

If you look at the players who have jumped into the field as if they were looking at this food, the food that's going to waste, one of the more interesting players to me is the World Wildlife Federation. And their concern is animal habitats that are being taken over by cropland. So if we use the crops that we grow more responsibly, then we're not taking over those animal habitats. So it's been really neat to see an organization which on the surface would seem to have a completely different mission, sort of holding hands and being in the same space working towards the same goal as nonprofits and so many others.

Yeah, it's true. I see a lot, even from food to fashion, people from the ocean to the farmlands, people are getting involved, thinking about this in a new way. And I think it's more important than ever. I think food is really leading the charge here in a new way, and allowing us to build a more regenerative, sustainable future. And I think that this conversation is so important because it allows us to really bring to the forefront all the waste and the loss that's happening, and can inspire these future founders and startup leaders of the world to really think about this in a new way. So I really appreciate what you're talking about Lynette. And I hope that it inspires some of these founders and startups that are listening today. Because it really does the numbers speak for themselves. Both you and Lisa, how, these numbers are just, they really just are staggering.

They are. For a long time now, we have been preparing for an increase in population. And that immediately is always followed by an immediate call for a raise of yields. So people respond to this new pressure of more people every single time with the need to raise yields. And at the same time, we keep hearing that we need to do that sustainably. So there's even been this controversial term come up called sustainable intensification. What we're supposed to be doing is raising yields while keeping our inputs the same. We're trying to get them to go lower while using fewer resources. So in fact, it's really difficult to make that happen in commodity crops like corn, soy, wheat, rice and those things that we really depend on for staples. But when we're thinking about what we depend on for nutrients, those fruit and vegetable crops, it strikes me that we can sustainably intensify production just by using more of what we have already produced. In other words, welcoming more of what we have produced into the supply chain because there are so many ways we keep this or that item out of the supply chain because of silly miss shape, miss color or a minor blemish. If we just welcome that in, we could raise yields by at least 20% like today. But the demand also has to be there from consumers. Consumers eat like two servings of fruit and vegetables a day when we're supposed to get eight or nine. So we, as Americans, we have a job to do to step up and demand healthy food.

Feel like you're reading it right off of everything I write. Demanding a better food system. Did you read my website before? We're just that much insane, right?

Simpatico. Yeah.

I love that. The other thing, as you're saying this and you're talking about what people eat and the proportions that we eat, I'm also thinking about the number of restaurants out there, what they look for? And how if a tomato is not perfectly shaped, or the perfect color, they don't want it, right? Because they need it to be, if they're going to serve it on their plate with their buffalo mozzarella, that tomato needs to be a certain red and a certain shape because they can't serve it to their guests otherwise. So I think there also needs to be some sort of education around this because that tomato, whether it's exactly that shape, or this shape can taste equally as good. And I don't think that we need to throw out that tomato and not serve that tomato just because it doesn't look like the other tomato.

Right. So where do we get those imprinted images of what a tomato is supposed to look like when we see it in a magazine or on the side of a bus, it's pretty perfect. What if we gardened, all of us. Would we know that fruit and vegetables don't turn out perfectly every time? Yes.

You might want to check out my garden. It's far from perfect. It's quite brown.

I think that telling the story that food is just food no matter what it looks like is important too. And I do think it's important for children to get that when they're growing up.

And did everybody, I don't know Lynette if you know about that on one of the episodes, and for our listeners here, if you haven't checked it out. One of the episodes I had was with a gentleman named Steve Ritz. I don't know Lisa if you caught that episode. Lynette, if you haven't, listeners, if you haven't caught it, it's really about educating kids from early on about food, how important it is in their education and how it changes the trajectory of their life. Not just on the way that they eat, but the way that they think, the way that they're raised, the way that they build a life for themselves. I think it goes exactly to what you're saying. Because if we can learn about it at a young age, we then change the way that we think about it. It's like we're changing the story in our head about it at a young age, and we learn how to grow up with it and maybe change the future of food also for the next generation, the generations after that so that there's a lot less food loss. Is that what we're going with now.

Yes.

Is the choice worse? But one that I want to get back and just talk a little bit more about you and about what you're hoping to achieve with the future food, whether it's through St. Andrews, or on a personal level, or actually both through St. Andrews and on a personal level because you're so ingrained in this. I would just love to hear from you a little bit about that.

So what we find at the Society of St. Andrew, our average recipient will get seven servings of fruits or vegetables from us in a year. And it's good, it's helpful, but it's not gonna change their life to receive seven servings of food from us. So the lives we find that are changed are the lives of our volunteers. The folks who go out into the fields to harvest the screw that's left over. They realize how hard the work is, they develop a concern for farm laborers, they take the food that they've harvested to a soup kitchen, or a shelter, or a feeding program of some sort in their community, and they put a face on hunger at home what hunger looks like. And if we're ever going to build a will for systemic change to raise the minimum wage, to do whatever it's going to take to end hunger, it's going to take all of those folks, the people who are volunteering with us and with all the other agencies to raise their voices and say, this is important, it matters. And we need to operate differently, all of us, in order to change what's happening to those who are really struggling at the margins.

I love that that really talks to the root problem and sort of gets you really to the cause and creates change.

Exactly.

It's creating change on a systemic level, so I love that. So if you were going to talk to the founders and startups listening to us out there, what recommendations or tips might you give them?

I would say, start slowly. If you're working with farmers, notice that you are dealing with highly knowledgeable people who have studied, worked and they're earning their livelihood in the field. And what you know is probably very little compared to what they know about what they grow and what they have available. So you want to be building relationships, and you want those to be lasting for the long term. So it's not a command and let me grab what you have leftover and walk away with it. It's how we can work together to see that the screen is harvested. I just would really focus on relationship building. One of the things that we're working within our organization right now is being sure that all of our staff have the same food safety training that farmers have to have so that we know the issues that they're dealing with in their fields, and we're not accidentally creating a problem for them by stepping somewhere where we shouldn't be stepping, whatever.

Well, that's great. And I think it's so important because it puts them in their shoes, and it allows them to better understand the training that they've had so they can be empathetic and also knowledgeable. So they're not just making recommendations, but not necessarily without understanding. It comes from a place of knowledge so that they can really better understand what tools they have to work with, and what some of the guidelines that they're working with them. So I think that that's really important. So Lisa, as we come to a close here and we wrap this up, and Lynette, this has been so amazing. I love all this information. I just love what you're doing. As you look down the line, three, five years, what are you hoping to achieve personally with St. Andrews and the future of food, and how you hope to change the future of food?

Well, I think what our goal as an organization would be for volunteers on the ground and workplaces so that we're gleaning at farmer's markets and lots of new locations. We have supporters all over the country who provide money to us to help our organization, but we'd like them to be hands on as well. So really looking at ways that we can expand with these groups that are already working with us in one way or another to expand their knowledge and help them see what's going on the ground, on their location.

So if there was anybody listening today that wanted to be able to participate or volunteer, how would they get in touch with you to be able to do this.

So if they go to our website, endhunger.org, there is a link on our homepage for volunteering, so they can sign up to volunteer. If we don't have a program working in their area already, we'll refer them to another gleaning organization that might be working where they are to try to get them involved.

Wonderful. I think that that's so great. And the other thing I'll say is that we're inviting everyone that's listening to this podcast to join the NextGenChef app, and it's free. And these podcasts will be on the NextGenChef app. There'll be a community board, and there'll be an opportunity to further connect with the guests from the podcast. So if you want to continue this conversation, you can send a note, you can send an email and we will do our best to make sure that both Lynette and Lisa do get this. We're going to invite them to join us on the app there where they will put their profiles, hopefully, and be able to connect with you one on one so you can continue this conversation with them. Not through me, but directly. There'll be a community board, there'll be a way to connect with them via text, etc so you can direct questions to them. I want to thank our guests. Lisa, I want to thank you again so much for making this possible, and for your great insight, and for joining me and making this such a fun experience.

Sure. Can I add one thing?

You could add three things, or four.

This year, I'm really excited to be a part of a research project with the Society of St. Andrew focusing on the state of Tennessee. We have partnered with the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation and have secured funding from the Environmental Protection Agency to study the surplus available in the state. So we will be working with gleaners on the ground to collect data on what surpluses left in what crops, in what region. And therefore, be able to make some recommendations as far as policy to be able to support growers in using that surplus, and hopefully what becomes a win-win scenario. So it's been a really great experience for me to get to become a little closer with Society of St. Andrew since we work in such a similar area. I'm really excited about this project this year.

Lisa, where will the listeners or the guests be able to get updates on this?

Lynette are you putting updates on the Tennessee regional page?

So our Tennessee reachable page for endhunger.org and then social media, Instagram and Facebook. I think we're calling the program Row by Row?

Yeah.

Okay. And also, keep us posted. Maybe we can put something on the app for you and keep people connected so that they can know when updates come out.

Sounds good.

You're gonna have some fans here. I know it because we're doing the series and so people are gonna be following along and following Lisa, and the Johnson and Johnson ladies to stay up to date on what's going on with St. Andrews and all the research going on.

But thanks so much to see.

Thank you guys so much both. And I just want to thank our listeners and our guests for tuning in today. Essential Ingredients is here every week. Every Tuesday, we drop a new episode, and we are here to change the future of food. I want to thank you. If you've not downloaded our podcast, do so on iTunes, iHeartRadio, on your favorite channel, whether it's Spotify, and subscribe, download and share with your friends. And if you're listening, please download our app. It's free. Connect directly with me, send me a note, I want to hear from you. And that's all folks. So see you here next week.