Inland program collecting fruit for needy
Oranges that otherwise would go uneaten are delivered to a nonprofit agency.
By Naomi Kresge, the Press-Enterprise, published Saturday, December 3, 2005
Inland Orange Conservancy started the program to donate fruit to needy people through Inland Harvest, a nonprofit agency.
Cost: A $100 donation pays to pick, pack and deliver a half-ton of fruit.
To donate: Checks may be made out to "Inland Orange Conservancy, Thanks a Ton program." Inland Harvest also needs volunteers to deliver the oranges.
Contact: Inland Orange Conservancy, (909) 754-4484 or www.inlandorange.com. Inland Harvest, (909) 335-7327.
Source: Inland Orange Conservancy
One morning last week, workers deftly plucked the last of the Valencia crop from John Broomfield's Greenspot grove.
The men picked the gleanings of this season and left next year's ripening fruit. Moving quickly, they filled a plastic half-ton bin with oranges that, but for a new Inland Orange Conservancy program, would have been left to fall uneaten.
A few hours later, Christina Cornelio, 25, picked up two free bags of oranges at the Home of Neighborly Service in San Bernardino.
Called Thanks a Ton, the conservancy's program donates fruit that otherwise would go to waste to the local nonprofit agency Inland Harvest. Volunteers distribute the fruit to people in need.
Cornelio, neatly dressed in black and wheeling her 2-year-old daughter Gabrielle in a stroller, said in Spanish that she cuts up the oranges for her children.
The food costs donors just pennies a pound, but Cornelio would have to pay $4 or more to feed her children the same number of oranges bought at supermarket.
Carrie Rosema / The Press-Enterprise
Luerecio Estrada of Corona picks oranges from a Redlands grove that will go to a local food bank.
The impetus for Thanks a Ton came a few weeks ago, said Bob Knight, who founded the conservancy and manages the last citrus packing house in Redlands. A conservancy member noticed people rooting through a trash bin, looking for food near a fenced grove of orange trees that she knew would not be picked.
The realization that people were going hungry next to wasting groves of food spurred the conservancy to action, Knight said.
They calculated that a $100 donation would pay to pick, pack and deliver a half-ton of fruit from groves that are neglected because their fruit can't be sold for more than it costs to harvest.
"It works out to 10 cents a pound. You can't buy flour for 10 cents a pound, you can't buy most commodities for 10 cents a pound, and we're getting fresh fruit to hungry people for that amount," Knight said.
The group's members pay $65 a season for a share of the citrus harvest from local growers. Organizers recruited the first donors for the new program by slipping notices into their weekly fruit deliveries about 2¬‡ weeks ago.
Donations have covered 21 tons of gleaned shipments so far. The goal is 30 tons.
The new program has pushed the conservancy's total donations, including leftovers that it donates from its drop-off sites, to 49 tons of fruit this year.
That makes the conservancy Inland Harvest's largest donor.
Barbara Wormser, founder of Inland Harvest, said many of the people who rely on programs like the Home for Neighborly Service aren't homeless, but need extra food to stretch too-tight finances.
And unlike a homeowner at wits' end to dispose of hundreds of pounds of citrus from a backyard tree, the service groups that Inland Harvest supports seem to have an endless appetite for the sweet fruit.
A Set Free sober-living home in Fontana has begun passing around a juicer at its breakfasts.
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Orange harvest for the hungry
"The oranges are just so wonderful," said Lucretia Irving, 69, of Redlands, the Inland Harvest volunteer who dropped the Valencia shipment off at the San Bernardino charity. "It's good for people—we get a lot of doughnuts."
Reach Naomi Kresge at (909) 806-3060 or nkresge@pe.com