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IMMEDIATE RELEASE
December 4, 2017
www.nj.gov/agriculture
PO Box 330
Trenton, New Jersey  08625-0330

Contact:
Jeff Wolfe
P: (609) 633-2954
C: (609) 433-1785
E: jeff.wolfe@ag.nj.gov

                     

Funds to Help Feed Individuals and Families in Need

(TRENTON) – New Jersey Secretary of Agriculture Douglas H. Fisher today announced the New Jersey Agricultural Society, Foodshed Alliance, and the Tri-County Community Action Agency, Inc. will share a $100,000 Gleaning Support Grant, made possible through the Department of Agriculture’s State Food Purchase Program. 

“New Jersey’s extremely generous farmers regularly give back to their communities by allowing organizations to pick and collect surplus produce that might have gone to waste and in turn, donate the produce to emergency feeding agencies,” said Secretary Fisher. “This funding will go a long way to helping these three gleaning organizations continue to collect and distribute this healthy food to those in need.”

The Department of Agriculture provides Gleaning Support Grants to eligible non-profit entities that are gleaning from New Jersey farms and distributing gleaned food to New Jersey organizations to help feed the State’s hungry. 

The New Jersey Agricultural Society Program will receive a $74,413 grant and is dedicated to collecting fresh fruits and vegetables from farms, farm markets, wholesalers, and food distributors and distributing them to 70 agencies throughout the state. Started in 1996 by a few area farmers, the program now includes more than 60 farmers.

The Foodshed Alliance in Blairstown, which operates LocalShare, will receive $18,042 in grant funds. LocalShare is a program that connects food pantries and local farms so that crops left after the harvest, which might otherwise go to waste, feed hungry families instead. They utilize volunteers to help with gleanings and deliver to food pantries.

The organization works with dozens of emergency feeding organizations throughout northern New Jersey.

The Tri-County Community Action Agency, Inc. will receive a $7,545 grant. Over the past year, the agency has successfully gleaned more than 41,000 pounds of surplus produce foods in Cumberland County and distributed the surplus produce and food products throughout Cumberland, Gloucester, and Salem counties.

The funding for the Gleaning Grants comes from the State Food Purchase Program, for which Governor Christie allocated $6.8 million dollars this year to be distributed quarterly to the State’s six food banks to purchase healthy food, with a high priority on buying locally grown produce from New Jersey farmers.

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To learn more about the New Jersey Department of Agriculture, find us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/NJDeptofAgriculture and www.facebook.com/JerseyFreshOfficial or Twitter @NJDA1 and @JerseyFreshNJDA.