Ontario Christian Gleaners

Edna is a retired teacher that has a family history in faming (broccoli) and has participated in distribution of Gleaner products in a tent city in Haiti that resulted from major earthquakes.

 

The purpose of the Gleaners is to use surplus produce to feed a hungry world. The term to glean is to gather (leftover grain or other produce) after a harvest and they do just that.

 

The primary product of the Gleaners is a dehydrated vegetable soup mix that comes in 3lb bags that when rehydrated with 25L of water is enough to feed 100 people. The soup is intended to be easy to prepare even over an open fire as the recipients often do not have proper cooking facilities. The produce that is used in production of the soup mix is surplus production or is not of a marketable quality (size, shape, colour or quality reasons). The recipe generally uses 15-20 different vegetables along with lentils or barley for protein which are diced, mixed, dehydrated and packed at the Gleaners location in Cambridge.

 

The soup mix is produced in Cambridge and distributed to over 45 countries worldwide by separate mission groups. The three-pound bags of soup are packaged four in a pail (provided as surplus to the food service operation of Tim Hortons) with 60 pails on a skid shrink wrapped together for world wide distribution. The only “cost” to the mission group is to return with pictures, videos and stories of the recipients of the food. Different cultures and communities spice up the soup with whatever their community has to add or to spice to local taste. There are also other ways of adding some variety by reducing the amount of water to create a thicker broth. A secondary product is dried fruit.

 

It is estimated that 25-40% (perhaps even higher) of all fruit and vegetable production is rejected by retail due to high standards most prevalent in Western society. To put this in perspective, it is estimated that 1.3 billion tons of food are wasted each year worldwide. Just because your carrot is a little weird looking or your cauliflower has a brown spot means it wont sell at you local Sobey’s but it is useful to the Gleaners. They cut out the bad bits and waste basically nothing as the trimmings go to pig food. There is a movement that is starting to gather steam addressing food waste such as a law in France that makes it illegal to throw food away forcing donation or composting.

 

The Gleaners are a registered charity and have their own truck to pick up produce at farms, the food terminal or other distribution centres. Donors receive a tax receipt for the produce donated.

 

Every day 60 volunteers at the Morrison Road facility sort thru the available produce (approx. 4-6,000lbs daily) slicing and dicing from 8:30-11:30 with the dehydrator running all afternoon. The ingredients are then mixed in a fixed proportion for packing and staging for shipment. The volunteer contribution totals almost 1000 hours per week. The organization has 3 employees and everyone else is a volunteer from all walks of life. They are subject to regular food inspections the same as any Canadian food service/preparation facility would be.

 

Current production is focussed on shipments for Zimbabwe and Mozambique are currently underway.

 

The Ontario Gleaners annually produce 7-8 million servings meaning that millions of people have been fed worldwide because of the Ontario Gleaners in areas including Eastern Europe, Asia, Africa, Central and South America. There are several gleaner operations in Ontario but it is estimated that there is enough potential for 20 operations with the amount of food potentially available.

 

2019 Fast Facts on Ontario Christian Gleaner Stats at the end of June:

The Gleaners are always looking for volunteers and it isn’t necessary to call ahead to arrange a time. For further information please refer to their website http://ontariogleaners.org/