Americans waste more than more than 100 billion pounds of food every year, at every stage of production from field to store to plate. That number doesn’t include the produce thrown out or left to rot by the millions of home or community gardeners. Wouldn’t it be great if all those leftover tomatoes and cucumbers in your backyard could be linked with local food pantries and shelters?

Gary Oppenheimer had just that inspiration. He’s the founder of Ample Harvest, a project aiming to help home gardeners donate their unwanted produce to food pantries. Gary is a master gardener and the head of the West Milford Community Garden. I spoke with him about Ample Harvest and how home gardeners can make a difference.

Tell me about your inspiration for Ample Harvest.

I have a large property on which I grow a lot of produce. 2 years ago, I ended up growing far more than I could use. There are only so many cucumbers you can give your friends! I contacted a friend who runs a battered women’s shelter, and I ended up donating more than 40 pounds of produce. When I dropped it off, the woman at the door commented, “Now we can have some fresh produce.” I thought to myself, “Do these people just eat canned stuff?”  The next year, I had 20 pounds to donate. The same woman answered the door—and she made the same comment.

Then in the fall of 2008, I took over the running of the community garden run by Sustainable West Milford (NJ). I became aware that as the season went on, people became overwhelmed or bored with their gardens, and they just left their produce to rot.  I thought, with the economy in free fall, we should be arranging for this produce to reach people who needed it.

How easy was it to find places to donate the produce?

We formed an Ample Harvest committee to arrange for donations, but it was hard to do. These pantries don’t have website, so unless you know about them, you can’t find them. Google told me that the closest food pantry to me was more than 25 miles away! If I couldn’t find them, it meant that other potential donors couldn’t as well. I realized that my committee could have an impact on a national level if we found a way to connect gardeners who wanted to share with food pantries who needed produce.

Why don’t food pantries generally carry fresh produce?

The current structure of the food aid system is that food is typically delivered from government and private sources, who are like wholesalers, and given to food pantries, which are regional or local. They can’t do fresh produce because of the large distribution chain and because of issues of storage. The pantries don’t have the capacity to store fresh or frozen produce overnight.

Ample Harvest is built on a different concept. The food from backyard gardeners should go directly to the food pantry, bypassing the overall network. There’s no storage issue, because it can go from the garden to the client in one day. You just drive it over to the food pantry and it can be in the client’s kitchen that night.

How Ample Harvest does work?

A food pantry signs up, for free, on the Ample Harvest website with basic information about the pantry, like contact information. They can upload a photo of the pantry, and post information about when they would like deliveries, so that they are best able to get the produce to the client without storage. There is also space to put other information, both during and after the harvest season, so that they can let you know what their exact needs are. For example, if they desperately need diapers or cereal or peanut butter, they can post that information and you will know to buy it for them.

It’s like a dating service. The gardener, who is buried in tomatoes, keys in the zip code and how many miles they are willing to drive. A listing of food pantries will come up, along with a google map. You’ll get the information that the food pantry has entered, and you can enter your address and get driving instructions.

And no giving the pantry bruised or damaged food. The food you want to donate is the food you would want to serve your family! Otherwise, make soup or stew, or compost it. Don’t put it into the garbage, because then it becomes landfill, and it creates methane as it decomposes (which contributes to global warming).

How large is the problem of hunger and food waste in America?

12% of Americans are food insecure—they are hungry or in fear of being hungry. 1 in 8 americas are in fear of not feeding their families. 100 billions pounds of food lost every year That’s one pound person a day! We have a picture on our site of what the food lost by a family of 4 every month looks like! If we didn’t lose 100 billion pounds a year, if it were all usable, we’d feed 49 million people. We could eliminate hunger. Not all food can be recovered but we can do better.

What other values are behind your work?

We’re taking the notion of gleaning to the consumer level. There are tens of millions of gardeners who can donate food. In the later half of 20th century, we converted farms to developments. Ample Harvest is a step towards converting those developments back into feeding America. We’re salvaging part of that land.

This site also allows people who don’t have money to charitable. You can help neighbors by reaching into your garden, rather than your pockets. It’s a good example of tikkun olam.

Even people who don’t harvest can help, they can go on the site and see what pantries need. You can contribute by passing the word along to people with gardens or by signing up pantries. We really need help in getting pantries online. My biggest concern is that we’ll have a lot of gardeners with nowhere to donate.

There are some problems in society you can address without spending a lot of money. People are hungry—and food is in people’s backyards. The missing link was getting the food in backyards to the people who are hungry. There might be other problems that can be solved the same way. This will be a demonstration that you don’t have to pass the plate to solve a problem, you just need to ask for a helping hand.

What kind of help do you need most right now?

The key is to get as many food pantries registered before gardeners start harvesting later in the summer. If we can get the food pantries registered as early as possible, it increases the likelihood that you will be able to get on the site and find a place to donate.

To learn more about Ample Harvest, to register a food pantry, or to learn where you can donate near you, please visit www.ampleharvest.org.