In This Issue: Gleanings from the Field

Abstract

First paragraph: Food waste and food rescue have been hot topics in recent years (although gleaning dates back to at least biblical times in the ancient traditions of tzedakah and pe’ah). Our cover photo for this issue, courtesy of Salvation Farms, shows a group of volunteers joining Salvation Farms and two other Vermont Gleaning Collective organizations gleaning a crop of carrots too large and misshapen for market. I first learned of the great work Salvation Farms is doing a couple of years ago from the Food Feed blog (https://learn.uvm.edu/foodsystemsblog/) of the University of Vermont (a founding partner of JAFSCD). Salvation Farms had just published a report assessing on-farm food loss in Vermont, and I thought its methodology should be peer-reviewed and in the applied research literature. I contacted report authors Elana Dean and Salvation Farms director Theresa Snow and suggested they find a scholar who could work with them on a manuscript. They found Roni Neff, a food-waste expert at the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future (coincidentally also a founding partner of JAFSCD). Their collaboration has yielded a seminal work on estimating on-farm food loss. I share this story as a model of food system researchers and professionals collaborating to produce applied research that benefits all parties concerned—and the greater community. We are likely to do a special issue on food waste in the near future, and we hope to see more researcher-professional collaborations like this one....