Using Technology and Excess Produce to Solve Hunger

It is a sin­gu­larly unique solu­tion. And, as one might guess, it came from a sin­gu­larly unique indi­vid­ual. “I am what my friends refer to as an aging hippy, and I refer to myself as a geek,” Oppenheimer told Organic Connections. “I’ve always been involved in the lead­ing edge of tech­nolo­gies. I’m also a Rutgers Environmental Steward, a long-distance bicy­cle rider, a Master Gardener and town Environmental Commissioner. One of my board mem­bers referred to me as the per­fect nexus of geek and social respon­si­bil­ity, which is fine by me because that is prob­a­bly what AmpleHarvest.org is all about: a com­bin­ing of socially respon­si­ble actions with technology.”

The men­tal cat­a­lyst for AmpleHarvest.org was a syn­the­sis of Oppenheimer’s upbring­ing and an obser­va­tion he made right in his own town of West Milford, New Jersey. “As a child my par­ents were always telling me, ‘Finish what’s on your plate; kids are starv­ing in Europe.’ So, while grow­ing up, I was incul­cated with the idea of ‘don’t waste.’ As a con­se­quence I have always hated waste, and I’ve always hated wasted opportunities.

“In 2008 I was asked to take over the com­mu­nity gar­den in my town, which I did. In meet­ings with the peo­ple in the gar­den, sev­eral com­plained that they did not like the idea that, as the sea­son wore on, more and more food was being left in the gar­den: peo­ple went on vaca­tion; they got over­whelmed; they got bored, what­ever. And this rolled off my tongue—I sim­ply said, ‘If we’re going to have an ample har­vest, the least we can do is give it to peo­ple who need it.’”

Oppenheimer found out this was eas­ier said than done, and that dis­cov­ery quickly led to today’s orga­ni­za­tion. “I went about look­ing for food pantries in my town,” he con­tin­ued. “Google said the near­est one was in Morristown, New Jersey—25 miles away. I knew that was wrong. It dawned on me one night that if I can’t find the food pantries in my own town, mil­lions of gar­den­ers across the coun­try can’t find them either. I got up the next morn­ing and reg­is­tered the domain name AmpleHarvest.org, hav­ing no idea what I was going to do with it. But I’d spent nine dol­lars to reg­is­ter it, and since I hate waste, I now had to do some­thing so I wouldn’t have wasted the nine dollars.”

Wasting time isn’t some­thing that Oppenheimer does either. He him­self did the needed research and pro­vided all the con­tent, while he recruited two others—a web designer and a web programmer—to help build the site. Within seven weeks, AmpleHarvest.org was up and running.

It quickly caught on. “On the 150th day, I already had 1,000 pantries reg­is­tered,” Oppenheimer related. “It was a bit of a bal­anc­ing act: I had to get pantries reg­is­tered and I had to get the word out to gar­den­ers. But I nailed it, and yes­ter­day we just broke through 5,000 pantries reg­is­tered on AmpleHarvest.org. That means one out of every seven food pantries in America is now registered.”

As evi­denced by the atten­tion Oppenheimer has received from the media, from gov­ern­ment agen­cies, rep­re­sen­ta­tives of gov­ern­ments around the world, and even the President, the mag­ni­tude of what he is accom­plish­ing is not lost. “I’ve been step­ping back, and I keep see­ing a big­ger and big­ger pic­ture,” said Oppenheimer. “In 2010 I real­ized that I had solved econ­o­mist Adam Smith’s posed prob­lem of excess sup­ply not meet­ing demand. I stepped back a bit fur­ther and real­ized it rep­re­sents a fun­da­men­tal change in the American food system—that locally sourced food already exist­ing in place could get to the peo­ple who needed it in the com­mu­nity. It isn’t that we didn’t have enough food; the prob­lem is that we didn’t know we had the food to use.”

Now AmpleHarvest.org is poised for even greater expansion—but there has been one bar­rier that must be over­come. “We have a pro­gram, a national direc­tory of glean­ing orga­ni­za­tions, that’s on the table,” Oppenheimer explained. “We have print­outs for the donors about the food being donated, also on the table. We have a pro­gram to put adopters in each of the com­mu­ni­ties. There’s a whole bunch of pieces that we have ready to roll.

Click any image above to see a larger version.

“But a frus­trat­ing thing has been that we’ve got this amaz­ing pro­gram that every­body loves, but it’s so far out­side the box that the typ­i­cal response from the food fund­ing orga­ni­za­tions has been, ‘We love what you are doing, but we’ve never seen any­thing quite like it, so we can’t help you. Keep it up!’

“The chal­lenge becomes that, with your typ­i­cal food pro­gram, you give a dol­lar and you expect to see a truck drive across coun­try with food; whereas we’re mov­ing infor­ma­tion, not food. Your typ­i­cal food orga­ni­za­tion wants peo­ple on the ground. We’re con­nect­ing dots, and you don’t see the dots; we’re mov­ing elec­trons around; we’re mov­ing infor­ma­tion around. So it’s not like we can take money and spend it in the com­mu­nity, because we do every­thing at 10,000 feet; we don’t touch the ground.”

As soon as one or more of these fund­ing orga­ni­za­tions can see fit to step a bit out­side what they’re used to see­ing, the rewards in terms of expanded oper­a­tion will be con­sid­er­able. “We are pen­nies on the dol­lar when com­pared to any other pro­grams,” Oppenheimer said. “Fully staffed out, AmpleHarvest.org will need five full-time employ­ees on a national scale. With our bud­get prop­erly con­fig­ured, we need about half a mil­lion dol­lars a year for three years. That would cover every­thing required in terms of proper pantry man­age­ment, grower man­age­ment, media man­age­ment, out­reach and the administration.

“It’s a vir­tual orga­ni­za­tion, so it oper­ates on the same prin­ci­ples as we’re doing with the food. We don’t have a build­ing. Everybody works out of a home office. This way we can find the best peo­ple where they are, not where we hap­pen to be. So it’s a very, very inex­pen­sive model.”

But the longer goal is being accom­plished, and it rep­re­sents a car­di­nal shift in our way of life—for the bet­ter. “The goal has been to sim­ply make it so that we will do to 40+ mil­lion home gar­den­ers in America what hap­pened to you and me in the sev­en­ties when we were told to stop throw­ing stuff away and begin recy­cling,” Oppenheimer con­cluded. “The net out­come is that not only are we get­ting food to peo­ple who need it, which oth­er­wise would have been wasted, but we are also hav­ing an impact on hunger, nutri­tion, health and the envi­ron­ment. And it uti­lizes exist­ing resources, which means it costs America noth­ing. That’s what it really all boils down to.”

For more infor­ma­tion, please visit www.AmpleHarvest.org. Click here to view an episode of the PBS Program Growing a Greener World, fea­tur­ing Ample Harvest.

AmpleHarvest.org was invited to cre­ate a video talk­ing about the part­ner­ship between AmpleHarvest.org and Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move! ini­tia­tive.  We really need peo­ple to visit www.AmpleHarvest.org/letsmovevideo and vote for our video.  If we make the top 10, it helps fur­ther pro­mote AmpleHarvest.org’s work to pantries and grow­ers nation­wide.  People can vote once per day through April 30.  The more peo­ple vote and the more often they vote, the bet­ter off AmpleHarvest.org, and by exten­sion, the peo­ple of America, will be.