Farm to Pantry
Santa Rosa (Sonoma County), CA
Gleaning, Zero Waste and Grow-a-Row Lead
Desired Skills/Traits:
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Some knowledge in farming is a plus (and not necessary).
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Initiative
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People skills
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Ability to lift 50 pounds and work all day in the field leading gleaning events
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Hardworking
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Fun
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Ability to use GoogleDrive
Openings: 1 of 1​
Focus Area: Regenerative Agri-Food Systems
Climate Mitigation & Adaptation; Education & Outreach; Food Systems; Regenerative Agriculture; Volunteer Engagement
project breakdown
Research
5%
Planning
20%
Implementation
50%
Education & Outreach
25%
Goals & Needs
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We harvest food on farms and backyards in Sonoma county to feed marginalized families. This work combats climate change at the same time as 40% of the food produced in our country ends up in landfill and 8% of greenhouse gas emissions are attributed to food waste. We are a small team of 6 employees and we work with 500 volunteers on 300 properties. We lead about 20 gleans a week.Gleaning is rescuing food that would otherwise go wasted to share with families facing food insecurity. Our GrizzlyCorps Fellow will lead teams to harvest and will help drive our Grow-a-Row program getting our community know-how, seeds, compost, and starts to grow more food. Our GrizzlyCorps Fellow will help give land access to families to gain food sovereignty over the food they eat through community garden efforts.
Capacity Building Projects
1) Grow-a-Row: The GrizzlyCorps Fellow will drive our efforts to get more good food grown in our community through community gardens and connecting people with start, know-how, seeds and compost.
2) Gleaning: The GrizzlyCorps will help us lead more teams of volunteers thereby increasing our food rescue by 20%. Last year we rescued 1.6 million servings or 413,000 pounds. Our former GrizzlyCorps fellow helped us by leading 20% of those gleans or over 300,000 servings were made possible by having a GrizzlyCorps fellow.
3) Zero zero waste: The fellow will also network with Sonoma County wildlife rescue to join us on gleans to capture the ground fall to feed animals. This will support our efforts to reduce food waste as we can only harvest from trees to feed people.
Organizational & Community Highlights
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We are a small team of 6. We are a connector between farms and over 100 community organizations. We get to be in amazing spots all over Sonoma County learning about how food is grown and harvested as the seasons progress. Seeing our impact is immediate as we deliver the very same day. Sonoma County grows the food for the Bay Area farm-to-table restaurants. There is so much food out there to go get. NO ONE should go hungry when the food is out there.
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