Find Your Nearest Harvest Market to Save on Groceries
No matter who you are, where you live or what your circumstances are, you need to eat. And it’s a growing problem for much of America: Food prices have skyrocketed in recent years, creating real financial hardship for many people and leading to some questionable decisions .
Incredibly, these high food costs exist side by side with massive levels of food waste — 92 billion pounds of food is wasted every year. This number includes all the food that stores throw away after the expiration date, all the food that restaurants throw away, and all the food we throw in the trash after dinner. But about 16% of food waste in America occurs on farms before it reaches consumers.
This is part of the problem, but also part of the solution. Because if you’re struggling to afford groceries, a harvest market might be the budget-friendly solution you need.
What is a “collection”?
” Gleaning ” is an ancient term ( found in the Bible ) for clearing farmers’ fields in search of leftovers or missed crops. Cereals may represent food rejected for aesthetic or other reasons, or surplus food resulting from overproduction: if a farmer has miscalculated how large their harvest will be and has no way to sell the excess food, they may allow it to be harvested and donated . In fact, there are numerous federal and state tax incentives to encourage farmers to harvest their crops.
By collecting food that would otherwise end up in dumpsters and landfills, it is made available to people in need either through food banks and other charities or at low-cost markets. This work is mostly done by volunteers organized by nonprofit groups such as the National Harvest Project. People go to local farms and collect food left in fields after mechanical harvesting or in areas where it was not profitable for the farmer to harvest. If you’re struggling with your grocery bills, finding a harvest market near you can save you a lot of money and make your grocery shopping a lot healthier.
Where to find it
Harvest markets, sometimes called “groceries,” are located in local communities throughout the country. In New Jersey, for example, the Foodshed Alliance runs a LocalShare program that collects food from local farms and also maintains an app you can use to find harvest markets and other resources. You can also simply do a Google search tailored to your area, and the National Harvest Project maintains a map of harvest organizations that you can use to find local markets. Buy Salvaged Food also offers a grocery map . A popular online option for purchasing collected/reclaimed food items is Misfits Market .
Some collection and recycling markets operate just like any other grocery store, only selling collected and salvaged items— Town Talk Foods in Texas , for example, repackages collected and salvage products and sells them at a deep discount, but anyone can shop there. Other harvest markets have a membership-type program with a monthly fee (the fee is often tied to your income), but then it allows you to simply grab what you need off the shelves, within some basic limits. One person wrote on Reddit that a local harvest market would save them $1,000 every month on groceries for their large family after paying a monthly fee of less than $80.