THE “ELEGANT” ALTERNATIVE

THE “ELEGANT” ALTERNATIVE

Gleaning as a Practice in Combating Food Insecurity in RI

The term “food desert” is used by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) to measure food insecurity. A “food desert” describes low-income areas in which households are more than a mile away from large-scale grocery stores. In Rhode Island, 91% of low-income areas qualify as deserts, the highest in the nation. Yet many take issue with this phrase, arguing that it does not implicate the policy and market decisions which produce this phenomenon. Food justice activists have proposed the phrase “food apartheid” to better capture the true causes and complexities of food insecurity.

Eva Agudelo, who has a decade of experience with food non-profits, is an advocate for this adjustment in terminology. “‘Food apartheid’ brings agency back into the picture,” she said in an interview with the College Hill Independent, “and shows that there are reasons why people are living in circumstances where they don’t have access to fresh healthy food.” Food insecurity is nothing like a “desert,” which is naturally occurring and presumed to be inevitable. The alternative term of ‘food apartheid’ places food insecurity within a history of systemic injustice. The current situation is not about a lack of food, but a matter of faulty and uneven distribution. “Foundationally, there’s plenty of food for everyone,” Agudelo asserted. “There’s more than enough. It is about how that food gets distributed and how we make sure everybody has access to it. You know, [food is] a resource that has to be distributed appropriately, and we can do that.”

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The “we” refers to Hope’s Harvest, a nonprofit she founded in 2018. Hope’s Harvest is a part of the emergency food system, the network of organizations working to aid Rhode Islanders experiencing food insecurity. The nonprofit occupies a unique space in this system; although Hope’s Harvest does not produce food, as of last spring it had served an average of 35,000 people per month since its inception in 2018. Hope’s Harvest achieves this through the age-old practice of gleaning: the collection of surplus crops by or for those experiencing food insecurity.

Crop surplus occurs for a multitude of reasons: perhaps the farmer does not have enough time to harvest everything; or the food is too blemished to sell but adequate to eat; or current demand makes it unprofitable to harvest all of the food. The appeal of gleaning, Agudelo says, is straightforward: “If there is food that would be wasted, we should go get that food and bring it to people who need it. It is so elegant in its simplicity.” Hope’s Harvest pays local farmers for having grown the crops, invites volunteers to harvest them, and coordinates with food distribution networks in Rhode Island. Working outside of the profit-driven food system, which artificially produces unused surplus and food insecurity, gleaning asserts that farmers deserve compensation for their labor and that food-related needs should be met regardless of profit incentives or market demands.

So why isn’t gleaning the standard answer to food insecurity in the United States? After all, 13.9 million tons of food went unharvested in 2019, according to the food waste monitor ReFED. Gleaning’s prevalence, though now experiencing a surge, has been hindered by the conception of private property for the last few centuries. As these notions of land ownership became codified in law, gleaning faced legal challenges and marginalization.

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The genesis of gleaning is difficult to ascertain, as it has appeared in various societies, occurring alongside established agricultural practices. Agudelo calls it a “foundationally human practice.” It would make sense that if there were excess food, there would be the desire to get it to people who could eat it. The term “gleaning” itself originated in the Torah. In Leviticus, a book of laws for Judaic societies to live by, verse 19:9-10 states:

“When you reap the harvest of your land, do not reap to the very edges of your field or gather the gleanings of your harvest. Do not go over your vineyard a second time or pick up the grapes that have fallen. Leave them for the poor and the foreigners.”

This commandment serves an obvious social good: by not taking all crops into the market, those who need emergency food can access it without having to ‘deserve it.’ This biblical law is not only fair on a societal and religious basis, but also logistically sensible for farmers. Agudelo notes how the resource of time was as scarce for farmers in ancient times as it is now: “[Farmers] didn’t have time to be [harvesting surplus] but as long as they left it, they were right with God.” By codifying gleaning in religious law, ancient Hebrew societies enshrined a practice that improved social welfare.

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Gleaning faced extinction in proto-capitalist societies. During the 18th century, England enacted a series of laws collectively known as the Enclosure Acts that introduced land property rights over the ‘commons’—fields previously shared by small, independent farmers. The Enclosure Acts consolidated this land into the hands of a few wealthy individuals, rendering small farmers landless and without the means to make a living. The former ‘commoners’ began either renting land from the new landlords or trading their labor for wages in cities. Both options left farmers worse off than before the passing of the Enclosure Acts.

Among the commons, gleaning was an accepted and intuitive part of life. The commoners really had no stake in whether someone picked unharvested crops or not, as there was no sense of ownership or entitlement. No commoner had greater claim over the leftover crops than another.

With the introduction of private land ownership, gleaning faced a challenge on the basis that the fields, and therefore the crops on it, were no longer considered public property. The matter was brought to court in a trial amusingly known as “The Great Gleaning Case of 1788.” In this case, a landlord challenged the presumed protections around gleaning on the grounds that it was adjacent to “trespassing.” Three out of the four presiding judges decided that people had “no right to glean” and admonished the gleaners as “arrogantly assuming” they had a right to participate in the established custom.

This neglect of tradition and social welfare in favor of private property rights was crucial to the establishment of capitalism in England. Private property forged an artificial scarcity, both in land and in food, which produced a labor force without the capital to sustain itself. In this ruling, we see the cruel justification for starvation and scarcity that persists today: the legal system privileges the right for landowners to pursue profits over the right of individuals to eat.

The clash between the commons model and privatization ideology also appeared in North America as Native Americans strove to maintain sovereignty. Part of the European colonization efforts included an attempt to “reeducate” Native Americans to understand the “advantage of individual ownership of property” and to abandon the communal ownership of land, the predominant understanding among Indigenous nations.

Resistance to privatization has been significant in preserving Indigenous sovereignty, as captured in the story of the Wisconsin-based Menominee tribe. In 1856, the Menominee were forced to cede most of their land and move to a 235,000 acre reservation located within their former territory. Despite the pressures from local businesses and government to sell their land, the Menominee have maintained their tribal sovereignty. The solution to resist colonial pressures and to maintain sovereignty was inextricably linked with common ownership of the land. The Menominee harvest and sell lumber for economic survival, doing so in an ecologically sustainable manner. While most lumber companies indiscriminately clear forests with devastating effect, the Menominee reseed their land while keeping enough trees to not destroy the forests. The discretion shown in the Menominee lumbering practices alludes to the sense of responsibility which comes with the ‘common’ model of land ownership; the Menominee’s efforts to maintain sovereignty were bound with the forest’s survival and well-being. The ideology of common ownership currently manifests in Rhode Island through organizations like Movement Ground Farms, which advocates for collective land stewardship as a way to empower communities.

“Gleaning is something that brings us close to the source, it is something that puts our hands directly on the plants and in the earth,” Agudelo says. The practice encourages us to consider resources as more than something we use or distribute, but as something with meaning outside of its relation to profit-driven economics. Gleaning offers a chance to break outside from marketized thinking. We are invited to think about the vegetables not as surplus or as resources with market value, but as resources which could go to feed people or to be harvested for social good. The food can be eaten. No other qualification or rationalization needed.

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Hope’s Harvest and other gleaning agencies in the United States have to contend with legal precedents like The Great Gleaning Case of 1788. There is no legal codification for gleaning in the United States; farmers have no obligation to donate their surplus crops. Unlike some historical gleaning models, Hope’s Harvest compensates the farmers for the crops they harvest, meaning the organization relies on outside funding for its operations.

But Agudelo does not see purchasing crops as an impediment. Instead, Agudelo sees compensating farmers for their labor as a key component of Hope’s Harvest’s philosophy. “The highest possible outcome that I can envision is where farmers are getting fairly compensated for the work they do, which is essential and necessary, and everyone has access to their food,” she told the Indy. Hope’s Harvest purchases their food from small- to mid-sized farmers. Farmers designate fields to be harvested, then the gleaners do the rest of the work. Without these farmers, there would be no “fresh, healthy food” to glean.

Hope’s Harvest’s labor force relies on a community of volunteers who are willing to get their hands dirty to help alleviate food insecurity. “I think that people have to understand that generosity isn’t just coming from a place of magnanimity or wanting to feel good about yourself,” says Agudelo. “Generosity is something that allows human societies to function well.”

Gleaning is difficult, strenuous work— something Agudelo acknowledges. Hope’s Harvest’s community of volunteers continue signing up for gleaning trips because they have come to find joy in the practice. Hope’s Harvest seeks to challenge conceptions around volunteerism; they seek to value the activity of gleaning as much as they value the socially positive fruits of their labor. To participate in a glean means more than just doing community service. By gleaning, you engage in an age-old practice and embody an alternative imagining of volunteer labor. “I don’t get to decide how an oil company makes their policies, and I am never going to be the person deciding that,” Agudelo says. “But I can go harvest 500 pounds of corn and put it in boxes … and make sure [people] have food that day, [which] feels very tangible and direct and meaningful. We all need meaningful work to be able to sustain ourselves.”

MARK BUCKLEY B’23 needs to start a garden.