by LINDA WEGNER
ABBOTSFORD – This production line is no small potatoes! In fact, Fraser Valley Gleaners could boast their levels of production, job satisfaction and staff commitment easily top any research charts. They wouldn’t, though, because competing for recognition isn’t the purpose for their existence; helping others is. Fraser Valley Gleaners, an offshoot of the Okanagan Christian Gleaners, began operation in September 2001. Both organizations, along with other affiliated groups in Ontario, believe that they can best fulfill the biblical mandate to gather food for the hungry by working together. With a dedicated volunteer staff, tons of donated produce and distribution alliances with reputable relief organizations, the Gleaners gain the only reward they seek providing food for starving people.
While this is a non-profit, it’s run as efficiently as the most efficient and finely-tuned business operation. Take, for example, the morning plant manager Carl Goosen spoke to Country Life in B.C. There was already a team of 50 volunteers working hard to ready peppers and tomatoes for the drying process. “In a couple of weeks, we’ll start on carrots and then onions at the end of July,” Goosen says.
That’s where the potatoes – and a lot more – come in. By the end of the 2007 season, Goosen says, 652 tons of vegetables had been processed, dried, and made into nutritious vegetable soup mix. Besides that, tons of unpeeled apples will be dried and turned into delicious snack food.
“Over the course of the year, we go to eight different suppliers. These include greenhouse and field growers and a local grocery store. We haven’t been able to source onions locally so we go to Walla Walla, Washington for donations [of those]. Peas used for protein come from Fort St. John, pot barley from Swift Current and lentils come from Medicine Hat,” he explains. Abbotsford Safeway donates production waste to the Gleaners.
“This is not just throwaway product,” he emphasizes. “These are vegetables that simply may be oversized or undersized.”
Store manager Travis Drew says their company also derives satisfaction from involvement in the project.
“We are grateful to have the relationship with them. For us, it is a great organization and we’re glad to be a part of helping them and others. We have product that doesn’t meet our standards for retail and we are glad to donate the vegetables. For us it would be wasted produce but if it could be used, we are definitely glad to be part of that.”
Someone has to pick it up though, and that’s how other volunteers start their days.
“Two volunteer truck drivers were here by 7:30 am and they then drove from Abbotsford to Delta to an 80-acre greenhouse. From there, they brought back 6,000 pounds of tomatoes. They carried on, eventually picking up 4,000 pounds of potatoes. They got back at 11:30, unloaded and now they’re making a trip to get peppers from two growers,” Goosen explains.
Drivers commit four to six hours of driving time once or twice a week. They’re the ones who communicate with the growers who would normally have to throw the excess produce out.
“If we pick it up, it’s a two fold benefit,” Goosen adds.
Not only are the produce and driving times donated, the labour required to process it is, too. This morning, 35 men and women were hard at work processing the newly arrived vegetables. In 2007, volunteers gave 38,000 hours of their time doing the same.
“That translated into an average 140 servings per person per hour. The crew – 90 per cent of them retired – are so excited to know that their time and efforts are valuable and can be measured,” Goosen says.
Measuring bags of soup mix and the meals they represent is one way of demonstrating the impact of their generosity: each bag of dehydrated vegetable mix equals 100 servings of soup. It’s their way of feeding a world where two-thirds of the global population is either underfed or starving. It doesn’t come without some challenges, however.
“It’s kind of a mix between challenge and joy. It’s co-ordinating enough products to be picked up so that when volunteers arrive (there are no schedules), we can make each day as meaningful and rewarding as possible for the volunteers. That satisfaction is not measured on how much we do (accomplish), but rather, did we feel we did all we could that day?”
At the end of the day, figuratively speaking, those tons of potential meals are directed to people outside Canada and around the world. Donations to facilitate shipping of some ingredients and shipping of the final product are tax deductible and distribution is done only through reputable organizations such as Samaritan’s Purse, Global Aid Network, Compassion Resource Warehouse, Universal Aid and the Mennonite Central Committee (MCC).
According to Goosen, the land and facilities used by the Fraser Valley Gleaners are owned by the MCC and, in turn, the Gleaners provide resources to assist them in their humanitarian efforts:
“They use 30 per cent of what we produce in finished product for their own global projects. They help provide resources to people who are already set up to distribute but their challenge is to find the aid. We put it all together and see how God can use it.”