Yves here. While it’s good to see community groups redoubling their efforts to feed the hungry, the fact that this push is occurring is the result of widespread cuts in Federal food program cuts. The one described below, Food Rescue, takes undamaged surplus products from wholesalers to food banks, schools and food pantries. There are also programs that take extras from retailers. One fancy grocer on the Upper East Side had its own bakery and sold only same-day wares. I’d usually come right before closing time and would see the staff assembling big bags of loaves and rolls. They told me they were going to a food charity. But even so, they often had even more leftovers that they told me they tossed :-(
The Trump Administration assault on the disadvantaged is multi-fronted. KFF Health News has two recent stories that focus on another dimension: that of Medicaid cuts, in New Medicaid Federal Work Requirements Mean Less Leeway for States and Red Tape Ahead for Millions on Medicaid. The second one is particularly disturbing. Citizens who by all standards are satisfying the Medicaid work rules are denied coverage through the Kafkaesque (non)approval process. And don’t kid yourself that you are exempt from this sort of thing. Anyone who receives benefits, and potentially anyone who deals with Federal bureaucracies (think the IRS) will increasingly be subjected to this sort of stonewalling.
On current trajectories of immiseration of the poor, I wonder how far the US is from having impoverished families turn kids over to orphanages because they can no longer feed them, as happens in some supposedly “middle income” countries. And yes, the parents are distraught when they feel they have no other option.
By Mia Hollie, a data reporting fellow at THE CITY. Originally published at THE CITY on August 5, 2025
Nestled inside a small warehouse room in Hunts Point Produce Market on a recent Tuesday, workers for the nonprofit organization Sharing Excess chucked flawed cucumbers into a large cardboard box.
As forklifts zig-zagged across the food rescue organization’s dock, the team members assessed the remaining stash of cucumbers, checking for signs of decay such as mold, mushy textures and rotten smells. They then sorted the viable cucumbers into mixed and single-item pallets of produce.
Sharing Excess retrieves unsellable food from market wholesalers, inspects it and then distributes what’s still good to eat to more than 150 food pantries and other organizations that serve food-insecure New Yorkers. Founded in Philadelphia in 2018, Sharing Excess took root in New York City two years ago as part of a national expansion and now distributes about a million pounds a month of whatever it can glean from the market.
Days when the sounds of machinery, chatter and shuffled boxes and pallets fill the air are typical at Sharing Excess, said its New York program director Miranda Potmesil. But the operation has grown increasingly busy as some food banks and pantries turn to food rescue to fill the gap left by the elimination of federal programs that previously helped them buy food from local farmers and producers.
In March, the U.S. Department of Agriculture notified states that it was canceling future rounds of the Local Food Purchase Assistance Cooperative Agreement program. Known in the state as New York Food for New York Families, the program provides funding to food banks, pantries, schools and other community organizations to purchase fresh vegetables, fruits, meats, dairy products and breads from local farmers and producers.
The state’s Department of Agriculture and Markets had received a total of $49.6 million through two previous rounds, but an expected new influx of $24 million now will not be coming from the USDA.
Since the federal program’s cancellation, Potmesil said Sharing Excess’ Hunts Point operation has added 18 organizations to its weekly and biweekly pickup schedules, as well as 12 additional groups for one-time or occasional pickups, resulting in 70,000 additional pounds of redistributed produce each week.
“This increase represents scarcity of resources — on the ground for the families and individuals we serve, but also for the organizations which have seen deep budget cuts to social safety net programs,” Potmesil said.
One of the emergency food providers adding more rescued food to its mix is New York Common Pantry — which procured 28,000 pounds of rescued food from Sharing Excess in June, up from just 9,000 in March. The group had received a $2 million grant through the state’s USDA-funded program — accounting for 13% of the organization’s operating budget, its executives told THE CITY in April.
“None of us are equipped,” said Judy Secon, the group’s deputy executive director. “We all need to be working together to confront this problem, and none of us have the available resources to do that.”
‘A Weight Off Our Shoulders’
A few blocks from the Sharing Excess warehouse, Cristofer Jorge operated a forklift at the Common Pantry warehouse, plopping large pallets of fresh cantaloupes, apples and grapes in between industrial racks stacked with canned lentils and tuna.
In an opposite corner, coworkers placed fresh grapes, peaches, potatoes and onions into clear bags, turning delivered boxes and pallets of food into groceries.
The rescued food “takes a weight off of our shoulders,” said warehouse supervisor Anthony Lallave, as he oversaw the packaging of grocery bags for distribution to schools, places of worship, housing projects and other community-based organizations, as well as Common Pantry’s own sites in East Harlem and Crotona Park East.
The New York Food for New York Families program helped Common Pantry purchase fresh fruits, vegetables, meats and breads —– foods that make up the bulk of the nutritionally balanced meals that pantries strive to offer their visitors. The USDA generally recommends that fruits and vegetables make up half of a meal, with proteins and grains making up the rest.
Sharing Excess is not the only group gleaning unwanted food: the Food Bank for New York City also rescues produce from the Hunts Point Market, and City Harvest has rescued and distributed to soup kitchens and pantries since the 1980s.
As in Philadelphia, Sharing Excess streamlines the process of rescuing food by operating from inside the wholesale market.
“Just based on work that we did there — we were capturing millions and millions of pounds even in the first year — we were like, okay, obviously this is something that is needed within the broader food supply chain,” Potmesil said. “Let’s see if we can make this work in another market.”
That level of access, Potmesil said, means that the organization can streamline supplies to a wide range of food providers, including other food rescue nonprofits.
Sharing Excess works with nearly all of the produce market’s vendors to retrieve foods that they otherwise can’t sell, potentially because the vendor has a surplus of a particular item. Supermarkets and other wholesale buyers also tend to want food that has a long shelf life, lasting up to a week after receiving it from a vendor, Potmesil said. With food rescue, she said, food is typically gleaned from the vendors, sorted and then distributed all on the same day.
The partnership is beneficial to the produce market’s vendors, too. Tossing food they haven’t yet sold requires vendors to pay for the cost of disposal, she said. But through the partnership, they receive tax deductions based on the poundage that they turn over to Sharing Excess.
For them, the thinking is also, “‘Why would I dump this stuff as opposed to feeding thousands of people?’” Potmesil said.
On a recent Friday, Jessica Ponce joined a line of dozens of people waiting to enter Corsi Houses Neighborhood Senior Center in East Harlem, where the nonprofit Ending Homelessness & Building a Better NYC was giving away food received from Sharing Excess.
Her 83-year-old mother lives in nearby senior housing and has been coming to the center for more than 20 years. She didn’t know that the food had been rescued from places like Hunts Point Market.
“Great!” she said, while looking at the idling Sharing Excess truck nearby. “If it’s gonna get damaged, you might as well give it to those who need it.”
Food banks, schools and other organizations historically used federal funding to grow their operations by expanding their hours, bringing in more product and volunteers, or changing their purchasing practices.
The Food Bank for New York City, for instance, used its New York Food for New York Families funding to develop a program where 30 BIPOC farmers learned more about marketing their products. The program also resulted in those farmers distributing 900,000 pounds of food through the Food Bank.
In 2022 and 2023, United Way of New York City used its $800,000 award to team up with the worker cooperative Brooklyn Packers, which distributed 300,000 pounds of fresh produce gleaned from 15 farm businesses.
Now, say executives, they are losing funding just as the people they serve are enduring a cost-of-living crisis.
“To lose a grant in communities where we have seen 132% of cost of living going up, and wages only going up by 75%, it’s detrimental to the organization, but also to the community,” said President and CEO of United Way of New York City Grace Bonilla.
The Met Council, a Jewish nonprofit that mostly distributes kosher and halal products, has also resorted to securing private funds, said CEO and Executive Director David Greenfield. Its previous $2 million grant helped the organization boost its ability to distribute foods like eggs, yogurt, chicken and milk, a service that he said they’ve now had to limit.
“We’re going to have to rely on city, state and private philanthropy to make up the difference, but no single source is going to be enough,” Greenfield said.
“We’re going to have to rely on city, state and private philanthropy…
Neo-feudalism ho! Good times.
This is yet another example of the acceleration of the immiseration, exacerbation of wealth distribution, public health, quality of life and life expectancy. I have heard that food banks and senior centers in my local area are facing cutbacks and uncertain futures. On a related note, the local public radio station will have to cut back programming (KMUD FM) due to funding cuts. This is likely a nation-wide problem.
The US, as a whole, is the biggest waster of food. It would seem possible, as the example above, to “rescue” more of the unsold and wasted food (over 35% according to USDA and others) and fill the growing need. With more inflation on the horizon, we can expect even more need. Perhaps the state and local levels could help, in addition to contributions from private donors. Instead of throwing away tons of food, would food and grocery companies be willing to donate more? Would that lessen retail demand and thus profits?
https://www.feedingamerica.org/our-work/reduce-food-waste
One German term for food rescue is “containering”. Despite attempts to the opposite even by (green) politicians it is still illegal.
It is illegal on the basis that those who have dumped the food do not know or do not agree with the rescue.
Anually between 11 and 18M tons are dumped. Depending on who you ask – German Agricultural Ministry or WWF.
Naturally German supermarket chains and food stuff multis don´t lift a finger as it´s not in their interest.
So there is no other solution than containering to make it significant on a national level.
Force vs. counterforce so to speak.
Is containering legal? The legal situation in Germany
https://archive.is/81nrn
definition:
“Containering refers to the practice of removing discarded food from garbage containers to save it from final destruction. This often involves fruit, vegetables, bread, and other food items that have been discarded due to expired best-before dates, bruises, or overproduction, but are still edible.”
legal sit.:
“Is containering a criminal offense?
Dumpster diving (containering) is generally illegal in Germany. If dumpster diving occurs without the market operator’s consent, which excludes the offense , it is generally punishable under current law as theft
(…)
The Bavarian Higher Regional Court (…) has upheld a corresponding conviction, emphasizing that such foodstuffs are still the property of another person and therefore suitable objects for theft. Disposal in a waste container does not generally constitute abandonment of ownership under Section 959 of the German Civil Code . The external circumstances (…) and the fact that the market is responsible for the safety of food placed on the market speak in favor of the intention to relinquish ownership only to a specific person, in this case the contracted waste disposal company. Accordingly, consent to removal by any third party cannot be assumed. Nor does the economic worthlessness of the objects confer a right to do so.
The Federal Constitutional Court ( BVerfG, decision of August 5, 2020 (…) approved this decision and declined to consider the constitutional complaints filed against it.”
Germany
One has to distinguish between producers and retailers.
German food production market is worth above 230 billion Euros p.a. – production plus trade with the retailers
(USA $860B)
Consumer retail above 220 billion.
(USA $1.1T)
The 5 biggest producers are:
Südzucker AG (sugar)
Deutsches Milchkontor GmbH (dairy)
Dr. Oetker GmbH
Nestlé Deutschland AG
FrieslandCampina Germany GmbH (dairy)
The 5 biggest retailers are:
Edeka-Gruppe
Rewe -Gruppe
Schwarz-Gruppe (Lidl)
Aldi-Gruppe
Metro
for more e.g. (use google translate)
https://www.listenchampion.de/produkt/liste-lebensmittelhersteller-deutschland/
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lebensmitteleinzelhandel
when i was in high school i worked at a food pantry. one time we got a phone call from this trucker who had this truck full of chicken strips. something happened with the order and they told him to just throw away the (perfectly good) chicken strips or something. but the trucker had been homeless previously and knew people could use the strips. so he stayed in the area for an extra day until he found a place that would take them. i helped unload the truck and store it in our freezers. we had chicken strips for weeks, and people really appreciated it.
i know food safety laws can get a bit wacky. the food pantry had deals with a few local restaraunts where we would take excess food on days when we operated. prepackaged salads, etc. good samaratin laws make it so that you can’t be sued. i was in talks with the manager of several local starbucks to get their extra pastries, but this fell through for a bunch of reasons.
i currently work in my college dining commons. we used to donate excess food, but it’s difficult because it’s state run, so you have to go through hella paperwork in order to donate the food. it’s frustrating because i am the guy who throws out the food and so much of it goes in the trash. there’s a group on campus trying to get the donations started again, but everything moves frustratingly slowly.
a lot of the issues honestly come from transportation. getting someone to drive to a restaraunt/store at close, move the items, bring them to the pantry, store them. a lot of the volunteers we had were retirees because they had that flexibility, but even that poses some issues in regard to lifting heavy things. even worse with unpackaged foods where you have to check the temperature and such.
Good for you for being so actively involved in helping to feed people.
There’s an Agnes Varda film called The Gleaners about the French tradition–it may even be a law–that allows the poor to enter private fields and harvest the misshapen or bruised produce that farmers have left in the field. Like the above it also encourages eating fresh food as opposed to the manufactured variety.
I’m not sure if our Walmart poor would go for that especially as they might have to go to California (or Mexico!) to find the opportunity. And it’s likely that NYC with its many restaurants has a lot more perishable food flowing through than oh say my town. My grandparents grew vegetables along with the peaches. All gone now…..
the answer to all of this is, of course, rather stupidly simple: eviscerate the current big ag/big food/big chem/big processing/big distribution regime by cutting off their welfare checks.
them gaming the commodity programs from the New Deal is how all of this happened….oh, and find Earl Butz’ grave, and make it a pee stop on the side of whatever road.
tiny farmer guys like me hafta scramble for every dollar…because we’re not allowed into the distribution chain…no matter what the customers want.
(“barriers to entry”)
so i have little incentive to do all the hard work to grow my production beyond subsistence(“eat all i can and sell the rest”) because sitting on the side of the road, outside of city limits(bc the city would require a tax #, even tho i’m selling nontaxable stuff, and otherwise insert their bidness into mine)…is catch as catch can, at best.
eventually, i’d like my customers to come out here for market day…a saturday, say…and eat gourmet food and buy all the things i produce…thats the reason for the infrastructure ive been slaving away at.
but i aint there, yet,lol.
and because of the regs…written by the above mentioned big boys…that is the only way for me to be actually legal selling anything besides fresh fruit and veg.
when i have a million peaches…even the local foodbank has to turn a blind eye on itself and me,lol…because i am black market.
want local farmers? enable them with those billions of dollars in subsidies.
and free them from the regs that Big Ag has imposed for the sole purpose of excluding us.
Those grandparents also had a well and an outhouse. My camping tolerance for tents and vault toilets must be in the blood!
It was all before my time but apparently the grandfather used to drive his produce up to the Asheville farmer’s market using the notorious “Saluda grade.”
But then our country fair each year used to feature prize hogs and canning and downtown had a grain elevator, now turned into a multi million minor league ballpark.
All gone, but the grandparents’ tin roofed farm house survives–renovated no doubt. Surrounding it are mansionettes.
the clusterfucknation guy has been more right than wrong, all along.
a stupendous misallocation of resources.
we’ve allowed our “betters” to well and truly frell us, and our progeny.
tghe local PTB out here are still at the same model…”Happy Motoring” and “development”,lol.
incentives are built in for continuing that, and the sooner than later collapse that results.
I remain cassandra…dragged from walmart, shouting Doom, Doom!
Our local entry in the Upper Valley of Vt/NH that will salvage food rather than let it go to waste.
https://willinghands.org/
Garden clubs around the nation are participating in Plant America-Feed America through National Garden Clubs. Fresh produce is donated to food banks, pantries, etc., in an effort to ease some of the hunger in this country.
https://gardenclub.org/plant-america-feed-america
Under the umbrella of this program, Michigan Garden Clubs, Inc donated 64,000 pounds of produce in 2024.
https://migardenclubs.org/garden-with-purpose/
I am participating in the program this year and planted extra vegetables for the purpose of donating. It is hearwarming to hear the comments of the recipients waiting in line who are so appreciative for the opportunity to receive fresh produce in their box from the food pantry.
I am grateful to have the extra produce to donate. I know and understand what it means to be poor and hungry. My help may be small potatoes (pun intended), but in the grand scheme all help adds up to a concerted effort to alleviate hunger in our communuities and in our country.
Maybe you can help too? Grow and donate food. Volunteer or donate money to a food bank or pantry. It all helps.