Grow a Row - Plant a Row

Hungry neighbours
I grew up hearing about hungry children in places like Bangladesh and Ethiopia. There were ads on television asking for funds to help feed these faraway children with swollen bellies and sunken eyes - children who seemed so weak they wouldn't move to brush away the flies that landed on them. Popular musicians were writing songs about their suffering, and school kids were donating their lunch money to pay for food, clean water and medical care.

Hunger was a phenomenon that belonged elsewhere. Not in Canada, nor in the United States, where everyone had a nice house and a Daddy who worked hard to put a roof over their heads and food on the table. We all had new schools, and shiny bikes with banana seats, and new clothes and shoes that our Moms bought even before we outgrew the ones we already owned. We went to bed with full bellies every night, because no one in North America ever went hungry.

Obviously, reality was a little different for other kids. Probably some of them were my neighbours. Maybe some went to school hungry in the morning, or climbed into bed with that gnawing feeling in their bellies, that comes just as much from worrying about where the next meal will come from as it does from the physical hunger itself.

There is hunger in North America, even today. Perhaps more now than when I was a child.

Some 794,738 people turned to food banks in Canada during March 2009, and close to 10 percent of these people were reaching out for help for the first time. Food bank use across Canada increased 18 percent between 2008 and 2009 - the largest increase ever on record. Even more troubling is the fact that some of the provinces usually seen as the most prosperous are among those with the highest increases in use: Ontario, British Columbia, and Alberta saw an increase of 61 percent in just that one year.

Over half of Canadians who live on social assistance depend on a food bank so they can feed their families - a statistic that suggests assistance is not paying enough to cover the cost of day to day survival. Almost half of families who turn to food banks for assistance have young children, and those children make up 37 percent of the population haven't got enough to eat. Single parent families, the disabled, and our country's senior citizens are among the largest groups to seek out a food bank each year.

In the United States the situation is no better: one in eight households is affected by hunger, and some 13 million children do not have enough to eat. Demand at food banks in America has grown 70 percent in recent years, and hundreds of people are turned away each year because the food banks don't have the resources to help them.

There is hunger in North America.

Centuries old tradition
Gleaning refers to the biblical practice of gathering up the leavings of a crop after the harvest is done. Farmers for centuries would leave some part of their crops in the field for neighbours in need, or for the stranger travelling through.

In more recent times, farmers have allowed their workers to glean the fields after the harvesters go through. Workers are able to gather by hand some portion of the crop that the machines would miss. Some farmers have even begun to open up their fields, and allow strangers to glean them. The Society of Saint Andrew has also established a network of gleaners that gathers food from farms and distributes it to those in need.

Grow-a-Row
Grow-a-Row got its start in Winnipeg in 1986. Ron and Eunice O'Donovan grew more potatoes than their family could use, so they donated them to Winnipeg Harvest. Their donation was met with such enthusiasm that they encouraged others to do the same. Since then, over 1.4 million pounds of fresh produce has been donated to Winnipeg Harvest by Grow-a-Row participants. Programs are now run in communities from British Columbia, right to the Maritime provinces.

Plant a Row
In 1995 former Garden Writers Association president Jeff Lowenfels wrote a column asking his readers to plant a row of vegetables in their gardens to donate to a local food bank in Anchorage. Since then over 14 million pounds of produce have been donated to American food banks.

Help your neighbour - and yourself too!
The premise of Grow a Row and Plant a Row is very simple: plant one extra row of fruit or vegetables in your garden, and donate the harvest to your local food bank. Learn how to get involved by visiting the Plant a Row / Grow a Row web site (in Canada) or the Plant a Row for the Hungry page on the Garden Writers Association web site (in the USA.) Donating food from your garden will make you feel good, but if that isn't enough to get you moving, you can check out the cool gardening information and recipes on the Canadian web site. Parents and educators will also appreciate the Grow a Row Junior section of the site, with tons of resources aimed at kids.

Sources:
"Facts and statistics." Food Banks Canada

"Gleaning and food recovery as tools to reconnect at the local level." Slow movement

"Gleaning network." Society of St. Andrew

"Plant a row for the hungry." Garden Writers Association

Plant a Row / Grow a Row web site