One day, about a year ago, Santa Maria resident Stephanie Hull was on Pabst Lane, driving through her neighborhood with her two daughters in the car. In front yards on both sides of the street stood fruit trees weighed down by overripe fruit. Rotten oranges littered the ground.
“I said, ‘Look at all this fruit! Nobody’s picking it. It’s just going to waste,” Hull recalled.
So when she got home, Hull started calling around to see if there was something she could do to get that otherwise wasted food into the hands of the hungry. She eventually found Doug Hagensen, manager of the FoodBank of Santa Barbara County’s Backyard Bounty Program. The program harvests under-utilized produce growing in Santa Barbara, Santa Maria, and the Santa Ynez Valley. Hagensen and his volunteers offer collection and harvesting services to farms and individuals interested in donating their surplus fruits and vegetables to those in need.
Hull poured herself into the program, and now she’s the North County’s only volunteer harvest leader.
“She’s done remarkably well considering it’s just her and a handful of volunteers [working in the North County],” Hagensen told the Sun. “She’s helped collect about 25,000 to 30,000 pounds of food since she started.”
On March 5, Hull oversaw a harvest at Gary and Jacqueline Fredericks’ orchard in the east Nipomo foothills. Local residents, including an outfit from Vandenberg Air Force Base, partnered with volunteers from the Food Bank Coalition of San Luis Obispo County to collect approximately 5,000 pounds of oranges, tangerines, and avocados. The bounty was split evenly between both food banks.
“We don’t care where it goes, as long as it goes to someone who needs it,” Hull said. “Now instead of the FoodBank being a deposit for nitrate-laden, sodium-enriched food, there’s lots of fresh food for people to eat.”
The produce collected by the Santa Barbara County FoodBank is distributed to more than 260 partner organizations—churches, schools, and nonprofits—to feed low-income and homeless people living in the county.
“The need is just—as anyone can imagine, especially with this economy—it’s just going off the charts with most agencies,” Hagensen said. “We’re always trying to increase the amount of fresh produce available. Obviously, we all know what kind of health benefits it provides people.”
Last year, the FoodBank provided Santa Barbara County residents with approximately 9.2 million pounds of food, including 3.8 million pounds of fresh produce. About 175,000 pounds of produce came from the Backyard Bounty program. All together, that food fed 167,246 people, 42 percent of whom were children and 10 percent were seniors.
Some people might find those statistics hard to believe, but for many people, it’s a fact of life.
“I have a lot of people who come up to me, especially in Santa Barbara, and say, ‘There aren’t that many hungry people here, are there?’” Hagensen said. “And I want to say, ‘What planet are you living on?
“Santa Barbara County is actually one of the top five counties in the state labeled as ‘food insecure,’” he said. “So there really is a lot of need, despite the appearance of affluence.
He explained that the cost of living in the county is so high, people often won’t have enough money left to buy food after they’ve paid their rent.
Since most of the county’s agriculture sits in North County, Hagensen and Hull are trying to expand the Backyard Bounty program by recruiting volunteers in Santa Maria, Lompoc, and the Santa Ynez Valley.
“We need more volunteers to pick, and we need more volunteer harvest leaders,” Hagensen said.
The harvest leader position requires some additional training, including first aid, CPR, and basic equipment training.
“The [Backyard Bounty program] is a great way for people to participate in the local food movement,” Hagensen said. “Our goal is to make people more aware of food, of the hunger issue, and where their food comes from.”
Contact Managing Editor Amy Asman at aasman@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Mar 17-24, 2011.