Oliver non-profit preparing 7.5 million servings of soup to tackle world hunger
Global News
Okanagan Gleaners, founded in 1994, turns blemished fruits and vegetables, donated by local farmers, into a delicious dehydrated soup, to spare produce from the landfill.
An Oliver, B.C., non-profit organization is gearing up to process 7.5 million servings of dehydrated soup mix to feed millions of people overseas and tackle world hunger.
Okanagan Gleaners, founded in 1994, turns blemished fruits and vegetables, donated by local farmers, into a delicious dehydrated soup, to spare produce from the landfill.
“A serving is a 250-millilitre cup of soup. In a lot of cases, it isn’t used as soup, it is used as additional food for stretching whatever people would put on tacos or in their rice,” said general manager Greg Masson.
Masson said the organization fills a gap to ensure edible food isn’t wasted or left to rot in fields and orchards.
“Most of the produce we receive is unsellable. It is too big for market, too small for market, not ripe enough, or overripe, so what they can’t sell, and I wouldn’t want to be a grower today because they are supposed to have a crystal ball,” he said.
Growers from all over the region will donate thousands of pounds of excess or blemished produce, he said, to its processing facility on Number 3 Road in Oliver.
“We just had a local grower up on River Road in Oliver bring us peppers, potatoes, squash,” he said.
“We are blessed with a potato farmer, they will supply us with 120,000 pounds of coal potatoes.”