Produce to the People provide your excess fruit & veg to the needy

Are you proud of your backyard fruit and vegetable garden?  Do you love spending time examining (and protecting!)  your plants as they grow, and enthusiastically await the time when it will end up fresh on your plate?  Growing your own produce is SO rewarding, but do you ever find that you suddenly have so much produce at once, that you cannot give enough away to friends and family before it goes to seed or rots?  Penelope Dodd has come up with the perfect solution to putting your nutritious produce to good use.

Based in Tasmania, Penelope Dodd is the brains behind the Produce to the People scheme which gathers excess fruit and veg from your backyard garden and give it to people in need.  Gardeners can drop off their fruit and vegetables to local collection points such as local cafes which is then donated to welfare agencies such as St Vincent de Paul and The Salvation Army.

Produce to the People will also be introducing snack gardens into local Tasmanian schools over the next few months, as part of a collaboration with the North West Environment Centre (who Penelope also works for!) and National Green Jobs crew – Another great idea!.

 

 

 

Penelope Dodd is an exceptional woman. Her background involves managing and consulting in the food industry, prior to starting up Produce to the People just one year ago. She shared with us a little more into her inspiration and workings of the scheme:

 

1. What inspired you to start Produce to the People?   It all began when I had way too many tomatoes from my backyard veggie patch…..way too many!  I couldn’t give them away because, as it happens, everyone else seemed to have too many tomatoes as well.  I wondered what happened to all these toms, and did it happen with other fruit and veggies as well?  Was there a f & v surplus going to waste in the streets of NW Tasmania? 

 

I decided to do a little on line research just to see what other people might be doing.  Much to my delight I discovered produce to the people in San Francisco and got in touch with their founder Lauren Anderson who was most happy, thrilled even to pass on her knowledge to me.  Happy days!  I then developed a project for our local area.

Produce to the People is a way that people who are time poor can still volunteer in their community by donating their excess backyard grown produce.  We also collaborate with a local High School who have volunteering as an elective subject and also work with long term unemployed youth via a Green Jobs Corp project and are about to start a project with Youth Justice that will involve youth with Community Service orders.

As it is developing, Produce to the People Tasmania is as much about helping people contribute as it is about gathering food.   We are just coming up to our one year anniversary!

2.  How many backyard gardens are currently participating in Program?  I would say over 50 gardens are currently giving us their excess produce.  I imagine the number will explode this season as word of mouth grows about the project. We also grow food at the North West Environment Centre HQ in Penguin and a couple of other Community Gardens also produce for our project.

3.  How much food has been donated since inception?  Produce amounts are completely seasonal.  To date our biggest month was April where over 190 kilos of backyard grown produce was collected.

4.  How is collection/drop off organised from participants backyards?  We have partnerships with a number of local businesses who act as drop off spots.  People can take their home grown produce to lovely cafes like Bruce’s in Wynyard, Another Mother in Burnie, Playfish in Devonport, Groovy Penguin in Penguin, Deli Central in Ulverstone, Time Out on Emmett in Smithton.  Also most Commonwealth Bank branches in the NW of Tasmania participate….its great going into the local bank and taking away veggies!  For those that can’t get to a drop off spot we are most happy to drop by and collect from homes.  

We then take the produce to local agencies such as Wyndarra in Smithton, Salvation Army Family Support in Burnie & Ulverstone and Vinnies in East Devonport who make sure the produce goes to people in need.

5.  Can you share with us how the School Snack gardens work?  School snack gardens are a new invention for us!  We were approached by a local school who were concerned about kids coming to school without breakfast and snacking on processed food.  We decided that if we planted simple snack gardens in the school yard there would be fresh food on hand for everyone.  We get our National Green Jobs Corp crew to build the gardens (GJC is a crew of long term unemployed youth who work with us on projects whilst studying for a Cert 2 in Land and Conservation Management) then the school takes over the care.  Over the summer months when school is out, Produce to the People will go in to harvest and make sure nothing goes to waste.  Schools can also use the produce in their canteens.  Our first two snack gardens will be built in the next few months.

6.  What are your dreams for the future of Produce to the People?  I have a wish list for 2011!  We would like to start to glean produce from participating farmers fields, collect “left overs” from catered events, increase our volunteer base, find funding for a cool store/refrigerated something or other, find funding or sponsorship to keep the project going, collaborate with corporates, build lovely relationships with schools and invite participation, create momentum, share the love, grow more, gather more, give more…

7.  For those who would like to become involved, what do they need to do?  Anyone can check out our blog, for ways to participate.  This might be as simple as finding their local drop off spot to take produce to, growing an extra plant or two in their own garden that can go to others in the community, becoming a champion of the project, offering support at a local community garden, telling us if you see a tree laden with fruit that is not being harvested.  

If you would like to set up something similar in your own area let me know, I am about to develop a handbook to assist other communities start up.  For those in Tasmania, the NW Environment Centre will be holding its annual Organic and Sustainable Living Festival on February 27 in Penguin, (headline guest speaker Costa Georgiadis!),  all are welcome and I will be on hand to talk up Produce to the People.

Thanks so much Penelope for sharing this fantastic scheme with us, and we look forward to seeing it flourish around all States of Australia!

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