Our first project went really well. We first learned about what a food desert is and how they are so close to where we live not just in other countries that you think of right away. In our case, we live 8 miles away from an urban area where it is difficult to buy affordable or good quality produce. Food deserts are a big problem and limit people from eating healthfully which then leads to diseases such as diabetes, obesity and heart problems. Although these usually are in cities they can als
...read more
Our first project went really well. We first learned about what a food desert is and how they are so close to where we live not just in other countries that you think of right away. In our case, we live 8 miles away from an urban area where it is difficult to buy affordable or good quality produce. Food deserts are a big problem and limit people from eating healthfully which then leads to diseases such as diabetes, obesity and heart problems. Although these usually are in cities they can also be in rural areas. It doesn't seem right that there are some areas that have an excess of fresh vegetables and fruit that just sits there and goes to waste, when there are people who go hungry every day. We really liked going to a huge warehouse where we collected hundreds of pounds of all kinds of fruits and vegetables and drove it an hour north to distribute to people who would cook and eat it that day. Working on a farm and gleaning vegetables was really cool. We never thought before about how all of the food in the grocery store all looks perfect. What we were harvesting was often smaller and malformed but it tastes the same. There is plenty of good food still to be picked after the farmers have sold what they can. It was great to know that by volunteering to pick this food, more people could eat. The other aspect of our project had to do with environmental concerns about landfills. People think that what they throw out just goes away and it doesn't. It could take a hundred years for a head of lettuce to break down in a landfill. We are mummifying our excess produce instead of composting it when it goes to a landfill. All of these things are related and if everyone just did a little bit we could solve a lot of problems.
Read less