I volunteer at a food bank, and the company that sends us our food decides what we get. Last Tuesday they sent so much produce we could not fit it all into fridges. We were trying to give away cases of the food on Wednesday, but people were turning it down because they had no place to store a case of tomatoes, or cauliflower. This was what we had left after last Wednesday's morning give away. Not pictured the 5000lbs of watermelons, the 2500lbs of onions (those will last a lot longer).
The company that supplies us wants to move from sending shipments every other week, to once a month. This would cause even more no produce loss.
It is so frustrating to have all this food for it to go bad. Even if we got the same volume of produce, but there was variation in what it is we could give it away easier.
Edit: I posted this in a comment.
Because of bureaucracy we have to request this. If it is found out we are giving away the food to unapproved recipients we can lose all of our funding. If we give to unapproved recipients and they in turn give us prepared food to give out, that is okay.
Word got out that we were loading up my pickup with food and taking it to the homeless camps. I did get a number of them to start coming to the bank to get food. But it was easier when I could take stuff to them.
We are not allowed to simply give it out to anyone. This is not like a church pantry where all of the food is donated by the community and's parishioners. There is government funding, as well as private businesses, which I am guessing get their money back from the government for funding this. If we could simply give it to anyone we would not be in this situation.
Also: Where is this? It’s a small world, some Lemming might pick up a cauliflower or two.
Rural nm
For the tomatoes you might see if there’s canning groups on Facebook for your area? It takes a metric fuck-ton of tomatoes to make a can of sauce so they’d likely be able to use quite a bit of them.
I think the bigger problem is that there are at least 50 trays of tomatoes there and it'll take a bunch of kitchen space and time to process all of them, all of which has to be done on next-to-no notice. It'll also take a lot of time and supplies to can them all - though at least whatever they have the time and space to process will be shelf-stable in the end.
The real question is who the fuck is this "company" that is supplying them with far more stock than they could possibly handle, and why the fuck are those incompetent morons handling so much produce at all?
What the food bank can manage would be known. All "excess" should be handled by the supplying company, instead of making their oversupply the problem of volunteers to manage and dispose of.
I'd be willing to bet the profits of the supplier, or lack of funding to distribute the stock over a larger area, are the reason for this entire situation.
I think the "hit up local churches" suggestion from another commenter would help with that, since (larger) churches often have decent kitchens that are less likely to be getting used on a weekday.
I take it “nm” stands for New Mexico. What’s the weather like there? Sun-drying might be an option, at least dried tomatoes are something people buy.
My first thought for some reason was "northern Manitoba" lol
I think your server might contain a hint as to why…
Not that you’re necessarily Canadian or in Canada, but you probably get more Canadian-centric posts on your local feed.
Oh yeah no it's a big, fat hint haha
Facebook canning groups are a great idea, as someone else mentioned. Them little old ladies can do pretty amazing things on short notice. Can I suggest hitting up local churches? The methodists, Episcopal and baptists are all particularly fond of doing drives and such, and may be able to do an impromptu canning drive for y'all
How rural? I found a Sikh temple north of Santa Fe that could maybe use it for their langar.
Where in North Madagascar?
Madagascar is pretty big.
If you're nearish ABQ, I've got a pickup I'm happy to help transport with. I unfortunately don't think I'm in the list of approved people, otherwise I'd be more than happy to take as many of those tomatoes as I could. Unfortunately I can't get my kid to eat cauliflower to save their life, so I have limited uses for that.
Outside abq? If it's near abq I'll come get it