CINCINNATI, Ohio – The Society of St. Andrew (SoSA) brings people together to harvest and share healthy food, reduce food waste, and build caring in 10 regional offices across the country, including in Ohio and Indiana.

In Cincinnati, Sue Plummer, SoSA program coordinator, and her volunteer gleaners connect with farmers to find out if they have any food that is not going to make it to market but is still good food, maybe imperfect or seconds. Or maybe they just have more of a crop than they can use.

“If it is already harvested, we will go and pick it up from the farm,” Plummer said. “We might get it at the end of a farmers market, or we might organize volunteers to go into the field and harvest it.

“We find someone who can take it and that is very important too because this is a food waste issue as much as anything,” she said. We want to make sure it is going to a place that will want what we have. Something like kohlrabi is a little bit unusual so we want to take it to somebody who is actually going to use it.”

They work with institutional kitchens, food banks, food pantries and other organizations.

The Ohio group is fairly new and is not yet spread throughout the state. Plummer works mostly in southwest Ohio. They work with about 48 farmers and vendors from farmers markets. The gleaners are all volunteers.

“We beat the bushes to find volunteers,” Plummer said. “That’s the tricky part because quite often, the typical glean, we do it with anywhere from two to seven days’ notice. We try to do it at the grower’s convenience, so it often happens on a weekday morning. We have to find people who are near enough to the farm that they are willing to drive to it, to go out and do that work because it can be quite physical sometimes.”

The SoSA protects the farmers from liability for bringing people into their fields, and they practice food safety standards. They make sure to monitor children.

Her favorite part of the job is going out to glean, Plummer said. She likes the conversations that happen with the people she is gleaning with.

“We’ve gotten very separated from how our food is grown,” she said. “When you get new volunteers their eyes light up, they get these big exclamation points over their head because ‘Wow! I didn’t know this was what it took to grow a stock of broccoli; I didn’t know you could get so many potatoes out of the soil,’ and things like that.”

Karen Burwinkel is with Burwinkel Farm, which has several farm markets in southwest Ohio. Plummer and her volunteers have picked extra sweet corn in fields that Burwinkels have not yet harvested and have also gleaned for smaller ears left behind.

“We have also had them come to our apple orchard and pick some apples that we knew we weren’t going to be able to move or to sell or they weren’t perfect,” Burwinkel said. “They have been great to work with. They bring great people with them to help with the produce. It is always a pleasure to connect with different food pantry leaders. Everybody is super kind and always so appreciative.”

Mike and Kathy Pullins, owners of Champaign Berry Farm in Urbana, have pick-your-own berries and a crop of peaches. The demand is high for the berries but they have had extra peaches.

“We have had the SoSA come and help us,” Kathy Pullins said. “We leave some trees purposely for them to come in and glean; we like to give back to our community and help those in need. I encourage more people who have crops that could be gleaned to use their services because it is a meaningful, powerful experience to have them do that. They are very easy to work with.”

Meanwhile, in Indiana, Annisa Rainey, regional director, and her volunteers rescue and distribute food from January through September. Their office in Indianapolis opened in 2018; they operate throughout the state.

“There are lots of rural farmers who don’t realize the amount of food that might be going to waste right here in Indiana,” Rainey said. “They wouldn’t know to rescue it otherwise. We are continually trying to put the word out.”

They have a loyal volunteer base, especially in central Indiana, since the office is in Indianapolis. They are often called to glean with just a couple of days’ notice.

“We gleaned in Shelby County,” Rainey said. “A farmer there grows 250 acres for Vlasic Pickles. They learned when they started growing for Vlasic that any cucumber that is not the exact right shape and size gets left in the field. So, Vlasic sets the date to come in and harvest the cucumbers for the particular product that they are making.

“We got our workers out there, we had about 10 folks that day,” Rainey said. “We were able to rescue about 15,000 pounds of cucumbers. I am always impressed by how much we can accomplish with just a handful of volunteers.

“We did some sweet corn one morning in Hendricks County,” she said. “The farmer has a farm stand and he puts the best out for his customers. We had what he considered seconds; they might be a day older than what he to put out for his customers but perfectly good sweet corn.”

Rainey and about five volunteer gleaners filled a truck bed in 90 minutes. It was about 800 pounds of sweet corn. They took it directly to a food pantry which had a drive-thru distribution that day.

At all regional offices, growers can receive a federal tax deduction for gleaned and donated crops, as provided by law. At the beginning of the year, the Society of St. Andrew will send a letter with the date, type, and amount of donated produce from the previous year.

The organization is so named because St. Andrew was the apostle who took the five loaves and two fishes from the boy and gave them to Jesus when he fed the 5,000.

For information go to endhunger.org.