For Longmont’s Maggie Benton and her spouse, gardening is a labor of love and giving to others is a way of life.
But it’s digital technology that brings it all together. The Fresh Food Connect mobile app makes it easy for Benton and other Longmont gardeners to offer their fresh produce to food insecure people in the area.
“It’s a way to engage community growers in our food rescue work. A lot of what we do is about building community, being part of a community of growers and food producers,” said Naomi Curland, Longmont Food Rescue executive director.
“Home gardeners love the food that they produce, and they don’t want to see any of it go to waste. But a lot of times you have a lot more than you and even your neighbors can eat. It’s an opportunity to do what we do, which is rescue food which would otherwise go to waste,” she said. Currently 45 Longmont gardeners have signed up with the app and new gardeners are also welcome.
Organic gardeners who focus on soil quality, Benton and spouse Barb Smith got involved with Longmont Food Rescue last year, coinciding with the app’s launch.
“I’m pretty techy, so I’ve had no challenges. You do it once and you know what you’re doing. It’s pretty easy to let them know that you have fresh food to be picked up,” said Benton, a Medicare counselor with the Boulder County Area Agency on Aging.
“To my knowledge, this year everything has been going smoothly with the app. It has a really nice messaging system. Once a courier (what our delivery volunteers are called in the app) claims a pick-up, they can message with the growers,” Curland said. “If there’s anything that came up – they can’t find the house, or the grower doesn’t have the food they thought they were going to donate that morning – they can direct message through the app in a safe, secure way that makes any potential problems that might arise easy to troubleshoot within the app, which is really nice.”
Benton and had their first pick-up of the season, onions and a small amount of fresh squash, a few weeks ago.
“The people who pick up from gardeners – they show up on bicycles to come and get it, so there’s no carbon. It’s so amazing to be able to be a part of this, because these folks pick up all this weight of food and then pedal off with it. Look at this – nobody’s driving a car around! We’re not hauling old produce across the country, or from another country even,” Benton said.
Curland praised the app’s user interface and the flexibility it affords individual food rescue organizations to customize specifications based on community needs and circumstances.
Currently Longmont Food Rescue pick-ups take place on Wednesday mornings, with plans to expand the schedule as more produce comes into season. The app is available in zip codes 80501, 80503, and 80504, but only within Longmont city limits. Produce is generally delivered directly to a recipient site, such as a food pantry.
“It has to do with the size of the pick-up, the range, and where they’re getting delivered to. Our pick-ups are done by bicycle for Fresh Food Connect – it’s a little much to ask for a volunteer to bike outside the city limits,” Curland said.
“One of our main tenets at the Longmont Food Rescue is environmentally based. We try to minimize the impacts of food waste, because in landfills food waste creates methane. The bicycle rescue shifts help support our sustainability goals as well,” she said.
However, new operators in particular may start by using the app to schedule gardener drop-offs, perhaps transitioning to bicycle pick-ups when they have more volunteers.
“(Longmont) doing the bicycles is a great example – we trust our operators to do what’s right for their communities. So that’s what’s right for the Longmont community and Longmont Food Rescue. That’s not what every operator does,” said Kayla Birdsong, executive director of Denver-based Fresh Food Connect.
“(Longmont Food Rescue is) one of our more active operators. A lot of our newer operators are coming on right now for this season. They’re one that started last year, they’re one of our more established partners,” Birdsong said.
Longmont Food Rescue is always welcoming bicycle couriers, Curland said. Please contact her at [email protected] for more information.
Fresh Food Connect’s 2021 goal of 50 operators has been reached, encompassing 20 states and 1,503 zip codes. They’re still hoping to expand from their 1,508 gardeners to 5,000 within the season.
Next year Fresh Food Connect hopes to reach 150 operators.
