SALVATION FARMS INC
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Mission Statement
At Salvation Farms, we foster a future where local farms feed local communities. Our mission is to strengthen the food system by rescuing surplus farm produce that would otherwise go to waste. Through strong partnerships with community meal sites and institutional buyers, we ensure this food reaches the tables of those who need it most—building resilience, reducing waste, and feeding our neighbors.
About This Cause
Salvation Farms was established in 2005 under the fiscal umbrella of the Northeast Organic Farming Association of Vermont after a pilot year at a well-known farm in Northern Vermont, where our founder was employed. Our intention then was to build a replicable model for community-based gleaning while increasing our community’s comfort using fresh foods and understanding of local farms. Gleaning is the act of reaping after the harvest, historically done by the poor. We instituted the Vermont Foodbank’s gleaning program in 2008 and have advised most gleaning initiatives statewide and beyond. Since developing the practice of professional community-based gleaning in Vermont, Salvation Farms and our partners are moving an upwards of three million servings of Vermont’s surplus crops per year. Early in our evolution we realized the potential of and need for an agriculturally minded organization to lead the work of managing farm surplus food in a way that valued and served farms first. Salvation Farms leads this work with ethical grounding in the fact that it must be done first and foremost in service to farms, while providing a safe experience for volunteers and a dignified food experience for the end user. Out of our roots in gleaning our approach has evolved to include aggregation, processing, workforce development, research, technical assistance, and advocacy. Since obtaining our federal non-profit status in 2012 we are proud of many achievements, among them are: 1) our creation of a web application that supports gleaning coordination and tracks gleaning’s impact, 2) the engagement of workforce development trainees in a 16-week job-readiness program in Vermont’s first surplus crop food hub and 3) conducting the first in the nation, statewide study to establish an estimate of annual food loss on farms. Salvation Farms built the Vermont Gleaning Collective, a network of programs that engage individuals in community-based gleaning: the reaping of unsold, quality crops. This is farm surplus management on the micro-level. We also run a gleaning program and provide gleaning technical assistance. At the macro-level, Salvation Farms created the Vermont Commodity Program. Through another tier of partnerships Salvation Farms has orchestrated the aggregation and processing of large volumes of surplus crops to ease their use by agencies and institutions that serve Vermont’s nutritionally-insecure residents. A 2016 Salvation Farms study uncovered an estimate of 14.3 million pounds of wholesome vegetables and berries are left unpicked and unsold on Vermont farms annually. Efforts in Vermont recover only 5-10% of this locally-raise, surplus produce. Meanwhile, it is projected that 2 in 5 Vermont residents struggled to meet their food needs at some point in recent years. Additionally, institutions across the state spend more than $10 million in sourcing fresh foods from out of state for the 19 million meals they serve annually.