The Slow Food USA Blog

Gleaning

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This piece, from Huffington Post, got us thinking about the practice of gleaning. Apparently a food pantry director in New Hampshire, faced with a food shortage that has become commonplace in pantries this year, and an utter lack of anything fresh or green, has started to ask local farmers to plant a little extra to donate to her pantry.

Reminds us of the biblical injunctions of Leviticus and Deuteronomy that demand that landowners leave the edges of their fields for the poor:

"When you reap the harvest of your land, moreover, you shall not reap to the very corners of your field nor gather the gleaning of your harvest; you are to leave them for the needy and the alien."

Gleaning is a modern-day practice as well–some farmers supplement payment to their field workers by allowing them to glean the harvest, for example. Can you share with us some modern examples of gleaning? In the meantime, we're off to watch French New Wave director Agnes Varda's 2001 movie by that name….