Sharing food: the Fruit Tree Project

It is sad to see good food wasted, especially when people are going hungry around us.

David Parkinson:

“So for the last four years the Powell River Fruit Tree Project, a small but scrappy community initiative, has been working on a next-to-zero budget to see that as much fruit gets saved and used as possible.

Here’s how it works: the owner of fruit (or nut) tree who wants the fruit harvested contacts the coordinator of the Fruit Tree Project, Anne Michaels. Anne arranges for a team of volunteer pickers to go to the property and pick the fruit. The standard arrangement for distributing the fruit is that one-third goes to the pickers, one-third to the owner of the tree, and one-third to a local food pantry or other charitable organization to be distributed to those in need. But that arrangement is flexible, since sometimes the owner of the tree is happy simply to have the fruit picked and taken away, if only to reduce the risk of having a bear come and do it.

Anne is working hard to see this project expand. She is hoping that the Community Resource Centre in Powell River will be home to some fruit-preserving workshops and work parties this year. One of the difficulties in past years has been that the charitable organizations struggle to give away fresh fruit during the summer months, and there has been no way in previous years to can, freeze, or dry the harvested fruit so that it can be stored and distributed year-round. Now that the Community Resource Centre has a fully operational and inspected kitchen, the Fruit Tree Project can use that kitchen to preserve fruit for later use. Anne is planning to dehydrate a lot of the harvested fruit, in the hopes that dried fruit and fruit leather will be a product that can bring a little money into this perpetually cash-strapped project.

Anne also talks about expanding the project to take in more than just tree crops. What if we could arrange for crews of gleaners to swoop in when homeowners have more lettuce, beans, or (most likely) zucchini than they know what to do with? What if those crews could be sure that this fresh local food could get to those in need, via local soup kitchens or food pantries? And what if enough money (or another form of exchange) could flow through this project to pay for a coordinator, for some equipment, or for the use of the kitchen facilities?

What if there were a whole regional network of gardens producing food which could be assured of not going to waste, because all homeowners knew that the community gleaning team were just a phone call away? If the volunteers could be paid either in gathered food or in some other form, such as a local food-backed currency which could be exchanged at any time and not just during the time of harvest? What if more people in the community were able to learn the skills involved in safely preparing and preserving the summer harvest against the long cold wet winter months?

And what if all of this activity were generating true economic value? How could it not? This would be food produced in the region by people who live here, harvested and shared among other people in the region, producing jobs and stores of food for anyone willing to work.”

2 Comments Sharing food: the Fruit Tree Project

  1. AvatarDavid

    Hey Michel, thanks for the pointer. We’re still struggling a little bit to bring this project to its full potential. But every year it grows a little. It’ll have to grow a lot more before all of the fruit grown around here is gathered and distributed into the community. One of my worries is that someone will come along and ‘privatize’ the gleaning by entering into contracts with homeowners and turning this great little grassroots activity into yet another monetized for-profit business. So we need to stay out ahead of that, and make it more attractive for everyone to consider it as a part of the local commons.

  2. AvatarNathan Cravens

    Let’s imagine the Fruit Tree Project wants to use OpenKollab. We can better understand what OpenKollab is by knowing what it does based on this group’s requirements.

    ‘By their fruits ye shall know them’
    http://slowcoast.ca/2009/06/22/abundance-in-the-community/

    Process: “the owner of fruit (or nut) tree who wants the fruit harvested contacts the coordinator of the Fruit Tree Project, Anne Michaels. Anne arranges for a team of volunteer pickers to go to the property and pick the fruit. The standard arrangement for distributing the fruit is that one-third goes to the pickers, one-third to the owner of the tree, and one-third to a local food pantry or other charitable organization to be distributed to those in need.”

    OpenKollab performs the tasks of Anne Michaels. Each number below follows a link description OpenKollab must alert for participant conformation to coordinate and schedule the desired operations.

    OpenKollab…
    …1) arranges for a team of volunteer pickers to go to…
    …2) the property and pick the fruit…
    …then locates where fruit must go:
    3) one-third goes to the pickers,
    4) one-third to the owner of the tree, and
    5) one-third to a local food pantry or
    6) other charitable organization to
    7) distribute to those in need

    This means an OpenKollab user account for the…
    1. pickers
    2. owner
    3. local pantry user
    4. other charitable organization user
    5. those is need
    The number of fruit is counted in aggregate and divided by volunteers. The count is entered into OpenKollab and alerts for retrieval the…
    1. pickers
    2. owner
    3. local pantry (Why not leave it to OpenKollab to shorten the chain and find the persons in need instead?)
    4. other charitable organization (OpenKollab could do that too, without organizational bureaucracy, and more effectively by going to step 5!)
    5. those in need (like hungry individuals using OpenKollab!)

    The Contract
    Owners and volunteers can negotiate a contract (like what food proportions go to whom) and revise the contract as needed if requirements or conditions change. Contracts provide a way to inform volunteers of work requirements. Each contract will remain public record for reuse when these same task requirements surface or to serve as a template for coordinating similar activities.

    Feedback Rating
    To encourage dedicated behavior in this spontaneous environment we use a feedback system similar to Ebay to assure owners can depend on volunteers and to encourage volunteers to meet the contract and receive recognition in the community served. This feedback system may encourage a sharing competition!

    OpenKollab can do more than what Anne could do alone by alerting related networks like nurseries, tools for pruning to meet volunteer demand the owner may lack, and other required materials to further reduce expenses and extend leisure for everyone involved, while creating a fertile foundation for gift economic activity to come as exchange trade becomes less necessary using tools like OpenKollab, replacing capital production with peer production as it becomes appropriate.

    A single “wave” can be used to alert all social networking tools of the user. OpenKollab users are displayed on a map to encourage neighborhood participation by exposing people to the various activities and network hubs that represent community life.

    I hope you use this exercise as a model to post similar breakdowns by looking at existing workflows in projects you like. The more we take existing processes and funnel them into the OpenKollab concept, the better we know the functions our software must have to assist coordinating efforts.

    Thank you Michel Bauwens for being the living OpenKollab that brought this to our attention.

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