10/26/2026
How do you tell a farmer, “You grew too much, the community didn’t buy it, so the moral thing to do is donate it”?
When did the farmer become responsible for growing the food AND paying for every step required to give it away?
The planting, watering, harvesting, sorting, packing, refrigeration, transportation—all of that takes people, time, equipment, and somewhere for the food to go.
Donating the crop doesn’t make those costs disappear.
We keep focusing on rescuing food at the end. Reclaim it. Repurpose it. Find someone to take it.
Those efforts matter. But why aren’t we putting that same effort into supporting the farms before the food becomes surplus?
Why aren’t we building a community system that can handle an abundant harvest?
Shared cold storage. Reliable purchasing. Processing kitchens. Transportation. People ready to help harvest. Schools, care homes, and community organizations connected to the farms around them.
And funding to make those things work.
If the community wants food donated, the community needs to help carry the cost of getting it from the field to someone’s plate.
Sometimes returning a crop to the soil is the practical decision. Composting feeds the next growing season. It shouldn’t automatically be treated as a farmer’s moral failure.
The goal should be abundant local production, with a system ready to move, store, preserve, and share what we grow.
That brings us to a bigger question.
If local food production is a community service—and part of our national security—why shouldn’t we support it with public investment?
When municipalities write their Official Community Plans, access to local food should only be the beginning.
What keeps the farm producing next year?
What keeps its land, water, equipment, workers, and distribution network available?
A plan that talks about access to local food needs to explain how the local food network will survive.
Because you can’t access food from a farm that’s no longer there.
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