The seeds for UpRoot were planted in the Fall of 2016 with two gleaning events set up on two unique farms in order to provide produce for Feeding the 5000 Front Range, a food-waste-awareness event held in downtown Denver in October 2016. At Grant Farms CSA in Wellington, Colorado, six adults and seven children harvested roughly 1,000 pounds of produce in four hours. At Chatfield Farms, 10 adults h
arvested approximately 500 pounds of produce in about two hours. At both farms, significant amounts of edible produce remained in the fields. In fact, ReFED estimates that 10.1 million tons of edible produce remains on US farms each year—less than five percent of this loss is currently being recovered. Colorado is a state with 11 million acres of cropland and there are existing examples of organizations both throughout the country and in Europe that implement sustainable, year-round gleaning operations. Starting in October 2016, the UpRoot team researched and reached out to gleaning organizations from the UK to New England to the Pacific Northwest to compare organizational models and best practices in order to create a flexible model that will serve region-specific areas of Colorado. In December of 2016, we received fiscal sponsorship from Denver-based Impact Charitable and obtained our Articles of Incorporation in May of 2017. In the summer of 2019, we applied to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) for independent nonprofit—501(c)(3)—status and received our Letter of Determination in February of 2020. Our work is both reducing surplus protective foods (i.e., nutrient-dense foods) and increasing nutritional security statewide, better support Colorado’s smallholder and family farms, reconnect Coloradans to their local foodshed and reinstall food wisdom in the communities where we work.
♡ Team UpRoot
