The numbers are staggering. Across the world, 733 million people go hungry. That’s one in every 11 people who go to bed hungry every day. These numbers, now on the increase, captured the mind and heart of Jim Van Tuinen. In 2021, about a year into his retirement, he decided he needed a new mission in his life – so he co-founded Kalamazoo Valley Gleaners.
“Gleaning comes from the Old Testament concept of God instructing the farmers to leave some of their produce by the sides of their fields for the hungry and poor to pick up,” Van Tuinen says. “What we are doing is gleaning surplus vegetables from area farmers to process, dehydrate, and distribute to malnourished people around the world.”
For Van Tuinen, this project is based on his faith, to help those in need and to help feed the hungry. Along with his team of volunteers, he collects food, usually potatoes as they work well in the dehydration process, and then gives the packages over to relief agencies who then ship them overseas and distribute the food.
“We do all the processing,” he says. “Then we put the food into a shipping container, just under a million servings all bagged and boxed up. Then our relief agency, Feed the Hungry out of South Bend, Indiana, who I believe right now are distributing 500,000 meals daily around the world … in Central America, Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe … they are the ones who decide where it goes.”
More than 25% of all fruits and vegetables are plowed under or brought to landfills just because they are the wrong size, color, shape or have reached their “best before” date, Van Tuinen says. This results in 63 million tons of food that goes uneaten each year. Wasted food in the United States also contributes to environment issues as it is discarded in landfills and emits methane gasses.
While the goal is to eventually also help the hungry in the United States, Van Tuinen says: “The model that we have is predominantly for people overseas. The reason for that, while we are totally concerned about the hungry people in this country, but our system of washing, trimming defects, mechanically chopping, dehydrating, loading trays, bagging and boxing, to go through all those steps and make this ‘shippable,’ and for this food to have a one-and-a-half year to three-year shelf life, makes a lot of sense for shipping overseas. To take that to the food pantry or market is counterintuitive.”
Instead, Van Tuinen hopes someday to also collect fresh produce for local distribution. In the meantime, Kalamazoo Valley Gleaners plans to conduct fundraising campaigns and hire more volunteers to expand the program. For more information or to volunteer, visit Kalamazoo Valley Gleaners.
