Hello readers!

Thank you for joining us at The Village Visionary, a blog that exists to highlight the good work of the local nonprofit. Today I share with you my conversation with Nita Kurmins Gilson, Cofounder and Director of Programs and Outreach for ProduceGood. This organization takes an ancient practice - gleaning - and applies it brilliantly in our modern world to simultaneously to reduce needless waste, reduce pollution and supply those who are food insecure with fresh produce. Read all about it below!

*This interview has been edited for clarity and length.*

 Tell us what ProduceGood is.

ProduceGood is a food recovery nonprofit that seeks to reduce hunger and waste while building community. That’s our tagline and that’s what we do. We do three of those things simultaneously. We are harvesting and gleaning fresh fruits and vegetables from farms, orchards, farmer’s markets, and we are taking that directly to those in need – the food insecure.

How did ProduceGood get started?

Many moons ago, in 2010, I was living in Carlsbad and was very disgusted by the number of fruit trees in my neighborhood and I’d see [fruit] on the ground and I thought, “Someone should be doing something about that.” And I tried to find a group who would be doing something about it and I couldn’t find a group so I started one. And, even further back than that, my daughter…she was reading a lot of stuff about the destruction to the environment and how it was hopeless and we had screwed everything up and there was no hope. And I just couldn’t accept that (even though a lot of that is true), I was like, “You know, we can’t just do nothing.” And so, I decided to do this one thing – this one thing. I figured one thing is better than no things. And so now, this one thing has turned into a pretty big thing. And I kind of tease her about it. I said, “You know, Nicole, if you hadn’t been so adamant about how horrible things were, I might not have wanted to do something.”

 I didn’t want to go from disbelief to despair, so this is what I did.

 That’s so cool. What was your first step?

First step was basically talking to my friends and neighbors who had fruit trees. We would go to the store, (like Vons) on Friday night and get boxes, and then meet up on Saturday morning, pick the fruit and then just drive it over to North County Food Bank. It was as simple as that. It was literally just picking the fruit, taking it to the food bank. That was, for a long time, what I did. Then I was slowly able to find my people, find the tribe. By 2012, I was connected with Feeding San Diego, and they were able to then bring these giant totes, these big boxes like the ones at the grocery stores that have watermelons and pumpkins, to a property. We started getting people finding out about us, and we’d go to larger and larger yards and orchards and we’d pick, and the food bank would bring these big boxes. We’d spend three hours Saturday morning filling them up, and then they’d take them back and they’d distribute [the food]. So I was able to use the food bank to leverage what I didn’t have, which was transportation and distribution.

 In 2014, I met my two now partners, Alexandra and Jerilyn White, a mother-daughter team who were very keen to start a nonprofit. I, on the other hand, was not interested in the whole bureaucracy that was going to be involved. I don’t know if you’ve ever worked or know anything about the application [to receive designation as a nonprofit], but it’s about a 38-page form. It’s something I was never going to do, but they were like, “Oh, we want to do that!” They were amazing. They put this thing together, we got our designation actually in record time – we weren’t even ready to be a nonprofit, but we got it in five weeks, which is unheard of — and then, we were off and running. And since 2014, it’s hard to tell you how much we’ve grown – it’s [been] pretty exponential. The first five years this was in existence, we probably harvested maybe 5,000 pounds. Since January of this year, the first five months of this year [2020], we’ve harvested 100,000 pounds. So that gives you an idea.

 It’s been meteoric growth. We started out with $150 in our account – we each put $50 in, the three of us. And now we probably have an operating budget of maybe close to $500,000 – and that’s in six years. So that’s pretty insane and incredible, and the response from the community has been unbelievable. What started out as me with my little band of people picking fruit every weekend – I maybe had 50 volunteers in the first few years – we now have about 2,000 in our database. It’s been…a ride that we could never have envisioned.

Forty percent of all food in the U.S. – four zero, 40% -- is wasted. And then you have 1 in 6 [people] who are food insecure, which, as you know, doesn’t mean they’re hungry all the time, but it means they don’t know where their next meal is coming from. These are two existing statistics that are absolutely ridiculous…the problem is not that we don’t have enough food, it’s that the people who need the food do not have access to the food. It’s a transportation and logistics issue, it’s not an issue of what we have or do not have. And that’s what we do, that’s basically our role. We’re not a food bank, we don’t hold the food, we don’t keep the food, we’re just moving it. We are sourcing it. We go from where it is to where it needs to be.  

Are you always harvesting fruit?

It’s fruits and vegetables. We have two programs. One of them is CropSwap, which is the one that I started years ago. That is essentially going to back yard orchards, small farms, and back yards. We get all of that – it’s probably 95% citrus. Citrus is so great; I love citrus. It’s in its own little house, it’s very hardy, it’s very shelf-stable…it’s the perfect fruit. We typically are taking the fruit fresh from the tree, or from the ground, and immediately transporting that to an agency. It could be a small pantry, it could be a women’s resource center, low income housing…there’s a lot. [With] the CropSwap program, it’s always fresh off the tree, and it follows the fruit season. We typically run CropSwap from January through the beginning of July.

 Our second program is the Market Share, which is our farmer’s market food recovery program. Before COVID, we were running four farmer’s markets: Solana Beach, Leucadia, Hillcrest and La Jolla. They’re all Sunday markets; we ran them on Sundays because that’s the farmers’ end of their week, so usually, at the end of that day they’re not going to have another market for three or four days. And even though [the food] is good for a day or two, it’s not going to be good for three days, they’re not going to bring it back. It’s not viable. And so, we were able to get incredible unsold produce, which then we were able to immediately, again, take to multiple agencies in the county. So, that program was completely shut down for six weeks. Now things are slowly opening up, and we are operating again at Leucadia farmer’s market on a limited basis.

 What have you learned through this whole process?

I’ve learned a lot. I’ve learned that a lot of our systems are really broken. I’ve also learned that people really do want to do good, and a lot of times they’re just waiting for a way to do it. They’re waiting for someone to lead them.

 I think that, overall, the biggest accomplishment has been the awareness that people now have. There’s a lot more people that know what gleaning is and understand the problem and the solution, the work that we do.

 What is next for ProduceGood?

We don’t know what the big picture is next -- obviously no one has any idea what the new normal is going to be – we are going to keep doing what we’re we doing. It has been incredibly heartening to us to know that what we’re doing is actually extremely powerful. And to be able to have people working during this time has been amazing.

The whole other part of this conversation is about the environment, how much we’re diverting from the landfill. At this point we’re [at] somewhere over 300 tons [of food] that we have diverted from going into the landfill. Most* of the methane [that’s causing pollution] is coming from rotting food. And if 40% of food is wasted, that means it’s not bad food, it’s just that it went to waste. That could be prevented. That’s a preventable thing.

We have this large grant with the State of California, through CalRecycle; it’s an environmental grant. We work with a group called UrbanCorps. It’s a workforce training program for young people that were not able to get their high school diplomas, and they’re able to work at getting a [GED] and also do work. We’ve been able to partner with them and they come out every weekend to faraway places like Fallbrook or Valley Center with small crews and they’re able to also pick. The cool thing about this is that they are getting paid for it through this program, and they are so happy that they’re working right now, and that they’ve learned what gleaning is and what food recovery is. They’re helping others, and additionally, they themselves are food insecure. They are from populations that are already have some food insecurity issues. So during every single pick, they can take as much as they want back with them to the headquarters to share.

 What would you say to someone who is like you were ten years ago…they have an idea, but that’s all that they have?

I would say don’t quit your day job, at least not in the beginning. Do not give up. I will go back to the story of my daughter because it’s so easy to look at anything and say, well, what can I do? What is this little operation – even my own self, what is my one thing going to do? But, one thing is better than no thing. You’re doing one thing. In my case, through a series of incredible events – luck and timing and the universe, I don’t know how else to describe it – it was the right time, and people were ready to hear the message. What I do is basically a mission. It’s obviously not just a job, because I did this work for six years with no money. I did graphic design on the side, but there were a couple years where I was just doing this, unpaid. So, I will say that you have to really believe in what you’re doing, but also, just to know that even doing some effort is going to make a change. A small change, and it could become a very large change. It could become a huge change.

 In your opinion, what does it mean to be a visionary?

I basically think it means to be clear. My idea has never changed. To remain focused, I think, is really the path to success. You have to see that the whole time. My vision is to have this be everywhere in the United States, globally. Just like recycling. Gleaning should be done by everyone. It’s such a no-brainer, right? But that’s the vision. It’s as simple as that, there’s no other complicated thing. It’s just, this should be happening, these are the benefits, this is what I see – and that’s what I see all the time.

 Do you have a plan for that? For replicating your organization in other places?

We do. What we can replicate is the model that we do, and the model is community-based food recovery. We call it Crop Circle. It comes from the community, it’s picked and harvested by the community, and then it’s shared with the community. And you’re working within the cities do this, and we’re already doing this in three cities. We’re doing it in Encinitas, Escondido, and Oceanside; we have contracts with them for these Crop Circles. That’s how we see this working. We’re never going to be Feeding America, we are never going to be a gigantic industrial complex. We want this to be completely decentralized, and way for people to be able to do this everywhere, locally as much as possible. Obviously, there’s lots of places where this is not going to be a perfect fit. We’re talking about beautiful Southern California, where everything grows and you have this incredible growing season, so I understand that this not going to look the same everywhere. But the idea is what we’re talking about. Reducing the waste and reducing the hunger within your own community, by your own community members.

Readers, if you want to get involved with this effort, there are three ways to do so. You can donate the excess produce that grows on your property if you live in North County San Diego. Contact ProduceGood and let them know of your situation, and if you meet the criteria they will come and glean your crops and take them away to be donated.

You can donate financially…every $10 that you donate provides 38 servings of fresh fruits and vegetables.

You can volunteer to help harvest the food. At this present time, due to COVID-19 and the coming of an end to the growing season, ProduceGood cannot accommodate new volunteers. But check back at the end of the year!

Get started here!

*Please follow the links shared for more precise information about the points our guest was making. 

Thank you for taking the time to learn about another group of people making a positive difference in San Diego County. Please share your thoughts in the comments below. If you like the images accompanying this story and would like to explore how visual storytelling could help your organization share the heart of its mission, please visit my website, www.soulvoyagerstudios.com, or send me an email at soulvoyagerstudios@gmail.com. To receive each blog post in your inbox when it is posted, as well as regular content regarding visual storytelling and inspiring ways to make a difference in this world, subscribe to my newsletter below!