Comprising 113 acres and 1 million square feet of interior space, Hunts Point Market in the Bronx, New York is one of the largest wholesale produce markets in the world. Journalist Jessica Leigh Hester visited the market with Dominika Jarosz, the global campaigns manager for the food waste organization Feedback, before the Feeding the 5000 event in Manhattan’s Union Square on May 10.
Jarosz will glean cast-off produce from the market and other local organizations to cook an enormous public feast, as well as 5,000 meals for food banks and shelters, all with the aim of raising awareness about food waste. (A similar event is planned in Washington, D.C., on May 18.)
Jarosz says that before the produce even reaches Hunts Point, it’s often been subjected to a sorting process to weed out anything that’s not a uniform size, shape, or color. (A report released in March estimated that about 16 percent of food waste—or 10 million tons of food each year—happens at the farm level.)
Myra Gordon, the market’s executive administrative director, helped spearhead the market’s first donation programs about 20 years ago, when she realized that there was so much food coming in each day that there was simply no way to sell it all. At peak season, Gordon says, the market might be inundated with a glut of berries or greens—more than buyers are looking to purchase.
That un-purchased food is often redistributed, through partnerships the market has developed with City Harvest and the Food Bank of New York City.
The Feeding the 5000 rallies, which are partly sponsored by the Rockefeller Foundation’s Yield Wise initiative, have already been staged in 30-odd cities around the globe, including Amsterdam. They serve as “a show of strength and expression of solidarity on the issue, which concerns everyone who eats food,” says Tristram Stuart, Feedback’s founder and the author of Waste: Uncovering the Global Food Scandal. A shared meal, consisting of ingredients that would otherwise be wasted, is at the center of each event.
The rallies encourage attendees to demand change from the food industry. Across the globe, the most sweeping change has been in the retail sector. The U.K. grocery chain Tesco announced last month that it would relax stipulations that required green bean growers to provide beans within a specific size range and to trim off the ends; The Guardian reported that this change could prevent 135 tons of beans from being wasted each year. In Canada, the national Loblaws and No Frills chains launched a line of “blemished, misshapen” fruit called Naturally Imperfect, the Globe and Mail reported. Produce in that line is about 30 percent cheaper than its prettier counterparts.
