Source: PRODUCEGOOD submitted to NRP
FIELD TO FAMILY FOOD RESCUE
Sponsoring Institution
National Institute of Food and Agriculture
Project Status
ACTIVE
Funding Source
OTHER GRANTS
Reporting Frequency
Annual
Accession No.
1030420
Grant No.
2023-70447-39546
Cumulative Award Amt.
$244,516.00
Proposal No.
2023-00428
Multistate No.
(N/A)
Project Start Date
Jun 1, 2023
Project End Date
May 31, 2026
Grant Year
2023
Program Code
[LN.C]- Community Foods
Recipient Organization
PRODUCEGOOD
4057 VIA DE LA PAZ
OCEANSIDE,CA 92057
Performing Department
(N/A)
Non Technical Summary
With an active agricultural industry uniquely positioned near a major metropolitan region, San Diego County boasts the greatest diversity of farmers in the state and the highest number of individual farms in the U.S (SDFSA). In addition to farms, it is common to find citrus orchards on private land. ProduceGood estimates that among its current roster of backyard growers, there are 15 million pounds available for rescue that the organization never reaches. Despite the abundance of farms and orchards, there is a paradox. The food system is broken, with agricultural prosperity and food insecurity coexisting. California is a rich, fertile state that yields millions of pounds of produce, yet hundreds of thousands of individuals are living in food deserts with no access to fresh fruit and vegetables. Millions more face daily food insecurity and increased poverty worsened by the COVID-19 crisis.Ten million Californians battle hunger while 40% of our State's abundant produce goes to waste annually. These conflicting problems drive a necessity for systemic change within the food system to reduce food waste by redirecting unwanted produce to feed people. These joint directives, reducing waste and promoting food justice and equity, are also addressed in California legislation SB1383 and AB1826 and AB125. With California unemployment reaching 13.3% during the pandemic, the confluence of job loss and food insecurity devastated San Diego County families. One in four now faces food insecurity, up from 1 in 6 pre-pandemic. Food insecurity has been shown to have a negative impact on dietary quality, as adults consume fewer nutrient-rich vegetables and fruit. Additionally, California has called for a 75% reduction in organic waste disposal by 2025. Organics account for more than one-third of the material in California's waste stream. Greenhouse gasses caused by the decomposition are contributing to climate change.The Field to Family project will leverage the power of volunteers to reduce food waste and hunger making it possible for communities to feed themselves. ProduceGood has cultivated a vibrant service engine of over 4,000 community volunteers who recover produce approximately 700 times a year to supply a growing network of 80 feeding partners to nourish thousands of San Diego County families each week with fresh surplus produce. The methods relied upon by ProduceGood to gather data for this project will be the same methods we are accustomed to for all project work as defined in the prior section with special attention to unique federal requirements.On the Produce Recovery front, ProduceGood will schedule new and existing growers and leverage its volunteer engine to glean surplus produce and move it into the food system. To make this happen, ProduceGood staff will recruit, manage and schedule all resources; obtain the data from every event including volunteers, grower, pounds pick and type picked; and record this information in the Harvesting data tool. Some of this data is manually shared, other data is gathered from a customized app that is used by volunteers to capture data from our market share program. All information collected will flow into our results framework.Outreach and food recovery resource (stakeholder) development will also flow into the results framework, but the development activities are more nuanced requiring a great deal of participation, motivation and demonstration of best practice from ProduceGood leadership who take a very active role in ProduceGood operations. Strengthening the flow and quality of information between ProduceGood and its stakeholders including food sources, cities, and feeding partners will require presentations, regular communications, informative resources in multiple languages and the ability to leverage the community perspective in the activity design. For this reason, we will start the relationship development portion of this project at the very beginning so that we can establish the baseline and create a plan in tandem with food sources and food receivers. Each individual activity we take on is accounted for on the basis of the role it plays in achieving our large goals.Ultimately, ProduceGood seeks to differentiate its value as a provider of whole, fresh produce whose success is made possible by the stories its data can tell. By increasing its alignment with the communities it serves, ProduceGood services can be sought out by organizations focused on nutrition and integrated with culinary or food education curricula. Some of the produce ProduceGood rescues is new to the audiences eating it. This project aims to shine a light on food waste prevention and fresh produce nutrition/prep the strategic collaborations that are driven by the communities being served. Additionally, the project aims to incorporate community members, especially older adults living below the poverty line in the food recovery process.The Field to Family project will deliver against 24 objectives to provide a dependable outlet for surplus food (bumper crops, weather fallout, pandemic or other) in San Diego County through new and existing linkages built between farmers and the recovery outlets that feed people that provide food sources with no charge services as part of a holistic solution to help commercial farmers and growers meet CA food waste prevention compliance and avoid costly penalties. Surplus produce will be recovered from large citrus hubs and provided to those living in urban, rural and suburban food deserts as well as to those living below the poverty line. New demand will be created for variations of service to support desired programming, and the service value and commitment among partnered feeding organizations will deepen. Self-reliance in communities of need will grow as participation in activities increases and true collaboration will evolve acting as a catalyst for greater access to nutritious food. A more educated public will help cities meet edible food recovery compliance and relevant data will be reported to improve federal food waste and hunger prevention policies. ProduceGood edible food recovery will become more sustainable through municipal funding while climate change and social determinants of health are systematically addressed.We like to say we can reduce food waste and hunger in one sweet step. Changing perspectives about the health benefits of fresh produce, building trust among those who have surplus produce and coming together as a whole community no matter what income level to glean the excess for cleaner air and nutrition is what we mean when we say it takes a community to ProduceGood.
Animal Health Component
(N/A)
Research Effort Categories
Basic
(N/A)
Applied
(N/A)
Developmental
(N/A)
Classification

Knowledge Area (KA)Subject of Investigation (SOI)Field of Science (FOS)Percent
70409993100100%
Knowledge Area
704 - Nutrition and Hunger in the Population;

Subject Of Investigation
0999 - Citrus, general/other;

Field Of Science
3100 - Management;
Goals / Objectives
The Field to Family project will move ProduceGood along a continuum within its strategic pillars to 1. Deepen the quality of community engagement through refined collaboration with food source partners (growers/farmers/grocers) feeding partners and city partners, 2. Deliver more impactful program services through greater capacity and fine-tuned operations to include an expanded supply footprint according to area/community type, and to 3. Increase stable revenue by shifting the financial burden for food recovery activities into municipal budgets in San Diego County to lessen the reliance on donors while activating more civic engagement within the communities ProduceGood is contracted to service today and in the future.Deepening the quality of community engagement through refined collaboration with food source partners, feeding partners and cities will require an intentional focus on activities such as increasing the amount and quality of communication going out to food sources, receivers and city partners as well as through the development of programs such as neighborhood self-picks and joint participation in special food recovery and feeding projects. Additionally, ProduceGood will launch Food for Thought to gain more insight into community needs as well as greater participation among those in the communities being served.Barriers with Food Sources include food waste prevention and lack of awareness about ProduceGood services. ProduceGood will address these challenges by positioning itself as a trusted expert with regard to county quarantines and other food recovery related topics; enabling backyard growers to become more participatory in our programs through self-pick and surveys; educating and committing farmers to a schedule for surplus food donation with ProduceGood as the hauler of choice; and expanding ProduceGood's footprint among local grocers as a service to sort unsellable retail produce for supply to our network of feeding partners.Barriers for feeding partners are a lack of awareness about ProduceGood food provision, and/or inadequate resources to support more meaningful collaboration. ProduceGood will address these issues through increasing the quality and quantity of communication to include regular programmatic updates as well as opportunities to complete surveys, expanding activity collaboration opportunities and by creating in-roads to the clients of our feeding partners by operationalizing the Food for Thought program to connect ProduceGood with the communities it serves to better target food supply, leverage knowledge gained to improve services for other feeding partners and address produce consumption gaps within different communities and to engage communities to feed themselves by equipping and training picks groups. Keys to this program are finding champions and engaging members of the community in different aspects of programming.The barriers for City Partners are a lack of resources when evolving Waste Management practices to include food recovery. Their limited understanding of how to integrate multiple food waste prevention options into a holistic solution and a limited view of California law SB1383 makes them unable to look beyond problem assessment or the Tier 1/Tier 2 focus. Additionally, many grocers have not yet considered services beyond composting. Our plan is to continue delivering expertise, to leverage a new headcount to engage more cities based on existing testimonials and demonstrated value in order to triple our contracts by the middle of 2026 and to recruit additional grocery outlets.Delivering more impactful program services through greater capacity and fine-tuned operations to include an expanded supply footprint according to area/community type drives an engaged community as a demonstration of ProduceGood's service capacity and community impact. The first step ProduceGood takes is setting up a delivery so the value of services becomes clear to the receiving partner, grower or contracting city. Through this project, ProduceGood will increase pounds and servings recovered by scaling food recovery activities with partners, increasing our footprint and deepening the value of services.The greatest barrier for program impact is pounds recovery capacity to schedule, coordinate, monitor and evaluate which are addressed through increased headcount and new efficiencies. Additionally, there is the barrier of trust which needs to be established before ProduceGood can demonstrate the impact of its services. And third, there are resource and capacity limitations on the part of feeding partners including space and resources. ProduceGood will develop its role as a connector to broker pre-funded supportive education (such as gardening/culinary/nutrition) to support feeding partners and increase client demand for fresh produce. At the SDFSA Annual Gathering, a nutritionist from UCSD extension mentioned a lack of ability to reach audiences who can benefit from their nutrition education services. ProduceGood hopes to broker more of these connections. Additionally, ProduceGood will focus on multilingual communication and culturally appropriate messaging for targeted communities.Between June 1, 2023 and May 31, 2026, the Field to Family project aims to achieve the following objectives, which are measurable project indicators:Engaged Community through City Contracts to increase sustainability of food recovery efforts and to shift part of the financial burden from concerned citizens:Increase total tons resulting from City contracts by 100% (Baseline = 20 tons)Reach more residents with education/outreach (Baseline = 1 event/1 info push)9 TAC advisory meetings annually (27)Engaged Community through Grower Development to keep excess out of waste streams:4 or more targeted grower comms per year108 backyard growers recruited/services through new and existing channels14 farmers recruited new or for new services45 self-picks (cluster focus)Grower/farmer education through handouts, newsletter, website, targeted outreach for clubs/orgsEngaged Community through Feeding Partner/Receiver Development for greater receiving capacity and increased self reliance through participation:Reach 40 new feeding partners/entities/sites (defined as no prior relationship with site/org)Reach new members of the community (define types - use 2022 data for baseline)Collaborate on 15 special projects with feeding partners (ProduceGood led or partner led)Launch quarterly communication cadence with 1-2 surveys annuallyImplement the food for Thought program with 10 feeding partners/sitesIdentify champions from within communities being served (baseline is 0)Increase in total MOUs annually (baseline = 13)?Impactful Programming through two new headcounts resulting in increased quality and quantity of activities (scale) for expanded capacity and growth in community trust:Scale pounds of recovered produce to 1,430,500 (net increase on plan of 225,000 servings)2,680 food recovery events (net increase on plan of 213)24 communications via social to demonstrate subject matter expertise and build trustPre/post surveys to assess change in perception among growers/farmersFresh produce education connector (6 as subset of 15 special projects or standing alone)Pre-post surveys to assess impact within communities being servedMultilingual resources and culturally appropriate content for targeted communities?Increase stable revenue by shifting the financial burden for food recovery activities into municipal budgets in San Diego County for long term sustainability:Add 6 new ProduceGood City Service contracts for long term sustainability (Baseline = 3)Expand City services and/or types of service relationships (Baseline = Backyard Picks, Outreach)10-12 proposals submitted to citiesAdd additional grocery outlets within contracted cities (Baseline = 1)
Project Methods
Each year ProduceGood takes inventory of our resources and sets performance goals based on achievements/failures, long term strategy and anticipated capacity for the following year. Increasing efficiency gives us the ability to manage more resources including growers, volunteers and receivers for more pounds gleaned and supplied. But this does speak to the quality of our services from the perspective of relationship development. We don't mention volunteers very much when it comes to this project and while we have many goals when it comes to volunteers, our human service engine runs very well becoming more and more performant each year as a result of programmatic improvements. Our aim is for Field to Family to have a similar effect among our food sources and receivers. Activities for the Field to Family project will flow into ProduceGood's existing results framework. The goals, objectives, activities and outcomes defined by the project will be integrated into ProduceGood operations and measured through this framework with weekly activity monitoring and intermittent performance evaluation as necessitated by the project.As stated in other sections, it generally takes nine contacts for ProduceGood to gain traction with a stakeholder. In the case of a farmer, this could be seeing us at market, seeing a story about us on the news, hearing about us from a friend, being approached by a staff member or volunteer. If these things happen enough times, we just may have a new opportunity. But we need to work to ensure we are putting the time and attention in with farmers. As an example, we might have farmer meet and greet on the activity calendar for a Sunday Farmers Market. It works the same way with those being served by our feeding partners. Unlike other stakeholders, we are removed from this group and need to work much harder to create an avenue for direct or indirect engagement. This may mean working through the receiving partner, but we will need to build trust in a whole new way to accomplish this objective.ProduceGood relies on several tools to monitor activities and evaluate performance on an ongoing basis. The Data Harvesting workbook tracks all pounds gleaned and the resources required to do the work, including schedule, receiving partners, growers/farmers, outreach activities, program type, event type, total number of volunteers, funding source for events, pounds to receivers, pounds from cities, and the list goes on. Our RA workbook captures survey results for receivers and individual receiver data such as number of individuals served weekly and type of food distribution operations. Our Crop Circle workbook rolls up all city-specific data by year. Volunteer Hub is our scheduling platform and volunteer data tracker with an accompanying workbook that provides volunteer details such as number on roster, number active in year, number new, age demographics and more. Kindful is our organization's CRM for all stakeholders and our grower registration system. We also have an app used to track recovery data from our Market Share operations at weekly Farmers Markets. Co-ED, Alexandra White, reviews weekly activities and performs data analysis for ProduceGood with input from staff to account for the activities that roll into the indicators that define our strategic plan, performance goals and project metrics/goals each year. Our program team meets weekly to review performance and make adjustments to ensure we meet goals. Data is not about judgment, it drives performance.The analysis process is quite detailed with program leads tracking and reporting specific indicators and using that information to view our progress as a point in time. When we look at pounds, as an example, we know that we must average 32,000 pounds each month to meet goals. With the Field to Family grant, that number will increase. If one week falls short, we work hard to make sure the next one is stronger. In this way, metrics are integrated into our day-to-day operations and part of our decision making process. We track all pounds received by feeding partners and in the case of feeding partners we have worked with for years that receive a high volume, there is already a great deal of trust we can work from to take our collaboration to the next level.Performance evaluation happens quarterly and annually with the major emphasis on annual achievement for internal goals and project cycles dictated by large grants. Our Quarterly Executive report will evaluate performance for the Field to Family project and be shared with the ProduceGood's Board of Directors as is the standard. This will be a summary of performance as opposed to a presentation of all 24 indicators though some of these indicators overlap with ProduceGood indicators such as pounds recovered or people reached through outreach which are consistently reported out. Because our activities are tracked on a weekly basis and linked to key indicators and results, we can see this data in real time and develop the supporting narrative to accompany it. For Impactful Program indicators that speak to subject matter expertise or impact of education for the Field to Family project, we will leverage pre and post surveys directly or through our partners. With the help of our champions, we will also conduct a gap analysis at the start of the Food for Thought program to establish a baseline among those receiving our produce and do the same with some of our food sources. With intermittent surveys we can check in and evaluate impact as needed.It should be noted that ProduceGood was twice recognized through the EPA's Sustainable Materials Management Recovery Challenge for Excellence in Data collection and Analysis. ProduceGood remains open to Monitoring & Evaluation practice, procedures and protocols.

Progress 06/01/24 to 05/31/25

Outputs
Target Audience:Our Field to Family project is focused on delivering quality engagement through increased collaboration and more impactful program services for five key audiences including 1. Food sources such as growers/farmers/grocers, 2. city residents, 3. city recycling offices, 4. organizations with feeding programs, and 5. individuals benefiting from the surplus produce volunteers recover. These audiences are critical to ProduceGood's work because they represent a continuum of food system resources to source excess produce, divert it from waste streams and move it into the food system where it feeds people. During the second 12 months of the project all five of these targets have been reached in part though impact has varied across the food recovery spectrum of our work. Targeted communication via email, door hangers, presentations and event outreach has led to new clusters of growers in the same area as well as new individual growers and farmers. Many growers are coming to us from referrals and we are building trust more swiftly through quarterly newsletter that address food source issues such as green waste management and hunger. We continue to focus on self-pick opportunities in neighborhoods and hope to increase traction with these types of events next year. The word is also spreading to grocers with 1:1 meetings to share our success and recruit food retailers for produce sorting and collecting to avoid the green waste stream managed by green haulers. We've also worked with our zero-waste partner Solana Center to refine the forms that establish Grocer compliance for the state with regard to edible food recovery as well as to educate Grocers on the opportunity to prevent edible food from being hauler to Anaerobic Digesters. During June 2024 - May 2025, ProduceGood also leveraged media outlets like Univision and KUSI. Many new growers and volunteers have let us know they found out about us on the news. Combining city residents and city recycling offices, we've had great success already with a new city contract in La Mesa in the fall of 2024. Outreach efforts have begun very slowly in La Mesa as their city office has delayed us getting our services off the ground. Nevertheless, we are working to promote our presence, recruit volunteers, and build relationships with new feeding partners in La Mesa. We anticipate these pre contract efforts to allow us to hit the ground running in 2025. Four cities are up and running with regular communication to residents that is increasing food recovery volunteers and growers in each city while also gaining the interest of grocers and other cities who wonder why our services are not being offered to them. In the month of August 2024, ProduceGood staff issued a survey to our active Feeding Partners, 79 in total. Unfortunately only 5 responses were submitted by the end of the survey period, while still providing valuable information to ProduceGood regarding the individuals served by each of our partners, as well as the needs of each of our partners. While the survey confirmed their food distribution model and needs as well as an invitation to have ProduceGood partner for their upcoming community events. One example of ProduceGood following through includes Boys and Girls Club Vista, which has evolved into a creative partnership of our services. We've had incredible traction overall with feeding partners over the past twelve months with dozens of new organizations receiving our fresh bounty. All of the clients of our feeding partners are considered low income, but we did make additional traction with our LGBTQ+ community members which can be a hard-to-reach audience. Our Field to Family program delivered hundreds of CSA boxes to kids, seniors and many others each including educational information about EBT benefits, nutrition or food as medicine. These materials are provided in spanish and english and they have created an opportunity to connect more deeply with those eating the food we are recovering. We also added these materials to special drops at our feeding partners to help share resources and education for their events. On October 2024, ProduceGood staff attended the annual San Diego Food System Alliance's annual event, The Gathering. Co-EDs Alex facilitated a workshop titled "Community Partnership" alongside one of our feeding partners, PlusBox. 65 attendees across the food system attended the session. ProduceGood's collaboration with +BOX supports greater feeding and redistribution capacity through shared resources. In order to continue the process of surveying our existing feeding partners and other potential partners conducting food recovery and distribution, we asked participants to write down their basic contact information including current needs. Staff also attended a workshop titled Cultivating the Next Generation of Food Recovery Leaders, which helped to shift perspective on how to effectively engage with youth to normalize and strengthen food recovery practices in day-to-day life. The team experienced some perspective shifting on education gathered through sessions offered at the Gathering. Staff learned from many industry professionals on their contrasting paths that brought them to their current place in the food system, and had thought-provoking discussions on what it means to even be "community-centered" through our work. In addition to collecting contact information at our workshop, ProduceGood hosted a table where staff and volunteers of ProduceGood made meaningful connections with leaders in food recovery and distribution in the county. Our staff and volunteers connected with at least 100 attendees of the event through our workshop and tabling activities. A large map of San Diego County was again displayed at our booth and encouraged guests of the event to leave a note card with their contact information in order to widen our network and gain valuable partners for future work. Going beyond goals to focus on the relationship building that leads to meaningful change and new insights in food waste prevention and solutions to create access for the 9% who reside in rural, suburban and urban food deserts has led to greater collaboration and increased buy-in for our services across the county. We intend to continue with best practices honed in the first 24 months of our project and to go even further in the next 12 months toward meeting our goals and effecting change for our target audiences and our own operations. Changes/Problems:One key challenge we faced during the development of new grocer partnerships was highlighted by our short-lived gleaning efforts at the Costco in Chula Vista. While we successfully launched the program there, it ended prematurely due to a lack of understanding among Costco staff about our mission and the benefits of food recovery. This reflects a broader, ongoing challenge in engaging retail food waste generators: without internal buy-in, these partnerships often struggle to take root. To address this, we are increasingly focused on cultivating at least one internal advocate--or "champion"--at each site who understands and supports our work. A great example of this is Billy at Costco Carlsbad, whose support has been instrumental in sustaining that partnership. Expanding our work into new municipalities brings another layer of complexity. As we continue reaching new city partners, gaining both their buy-in and financial support for the work we're already doing in their communities is essential but challenging. Each new partnership requires tailored outreach and education, adding to the demand on our limited staff capacity. With growth also comes the need to strengthen our internal infrastructure--especially around volunteer leadership. While our visibility and reach have increased, our ability to consistently serve all areas of the county is still limited by our small but committed staff. We rely heavily on volunteers, but it remains difficult to engage individuals as true community champions who will lead local efforts. Even among our existing lead volunteers, many are constrained by time or are reluctant to change established routines, which can pose a barrier to innovation and expansion. Lastly, while we continue to collect data through our Receiving Agency (RA) surveys, it can be difficult to gather insightful, qualitative feedback beyond basic demographics. This can limit our ability to make informed program adjustments based on community voice. Despite these challenges, we remain committed to adapting our strategies, deepening relationships with partners, and strengthening our volunteer leadership model to ensure long-term sustainability and community impact. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?The program team implemented a cadence for Volunteer Forums to help keep volunteers abreast of new projects and procedures within ProduceGood. The space also allows for open dialogue between volunteers and is an opportunity for the program team to receive feedback to help keep the volunteer experience fun, exciting, and meaningful. By engaging with volunteers in this new way, ProduceGood is also able to make more meaningful connections with volunteers. The relationships formed provide the opportunity for the program team to train new pick bosses, especially solo bosses. 66 pick bosses have been trained across all food recovery programs and all have led community food recovery events for grocery sorting and supply, backyard gleaning and distribution, farmers market collection and drop-offs and farm pick up and delivery. This training includes background on SB1383 (the CA food recovery law), volunteer practice and procedure for picks including protocols and safety, driving practice, feeding partner relationships and ambassadorship with growers and other food chain resources. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?ProduceGood has a regular cadence of communications to communities of interest. The social media platforms are very popular with 1500 Facebook followers, 2625 Instagram followers, and 721 LinkedIn followers. Through the ever evolving relationships between ProduceGood and other organizations, the content published on these platforms includes both self written and collaborative posts. ProduceGood communicates with Feeding Partners on a quarterly basis. The emails provide highlights for the quarter including stand out stories, new feeding partner relationships, and an opportunity to provide feedback. The Harvest Hero communication is sent out to everyone in the community orchard of ProduceGood on a monthly basis. The email starts with a highlight of the current month's harvest hero which is an interview of a nominated individual in the community orchard. Additionally the communication highlights program team updates and upcoming events, snippets from community partners if applicable. ProduceGood regularly presents to various community organizations or partners to help spread the gospel of gleaning, educating individuals on how to get involved and why it is important, a call to action for individuals to begin advocating for changes in their community, encourage food recovery as a method of zero waste practices while feeding the community, etc. Staff members are invited to various community events, especially during Earth Month (April) by folks who have existing relationships with us. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?We look forward to our final year of our Field to Family project. Our hyperlocal work forges a connection between source of excess and the community need for fresh fruits and vegetables. In our last year, we will leverage our use cases to expand our edible food sorting into new grocery retailers to prevent food dumping which negatively impacts feeding programs unequipped to manage waste or compost. Our recent development of Community Centers within the City of Oceanside has opened up four new low-income neighborhoods where seniors, active military, children and many others reside. Our intention is to support diverse events and to identify and develop community champions as part of our Food for Thought education. Additionally, we will continue to develop our City partnerships as we work to create a triad between our services, government entities and for profit food retailers and others. Increasing our education efforts through box drops or other means will continue to be a priority. As part of this education effort, we will be improving training resources for our volunteer bosses and regular volunteers to ensure program impact and effectiveness. ?

Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals? City Contracts to increase sustainability of food recovery efforts and to shift part of the financial burden from concerned citizens. We continue to Increase tons from city contracts (Oceanside, Encinitas, Chula Vista, La Mesa & Escondido), exceeding our goal with over 80 tons (200%) recovered and supplied to city partners throughout the County. We regularly attend monthly County TAC and Food Recovery work group meetings to educate others and learn more about food recovery programs, compliance protocols, legislative updates and opportunities for collaboration. Grower Development to keep excess out of waste streams. ProduceGood regularly communicates with our grower community, including 6 grower education communications discussing the impact of fruit donation and the availability of relevant educational resources. We've exceeded our goal with 210 new growers reached, while achieving 70% of our grower self-pick goal. In May 2025, we were contacted by CalPacific, a new commercial farm in Escondido, which resulted in three large-scale harvests of excess avocados for 5,300 pounds. Avocados were distributed to four feeding partners, significantly bolstering their fresh offerings. Feeding Partner/Receiver Development for greater receiving capacity and increased self reliance through participation. Our goal to expand our network of feeding partners remains on track at 97% of our annual target. We welcomed 5 new partners to broaden our impact and deepen our reach into some of San Diego County's most vulnerable communities, including the Armed Services YMCA Food Pantry, Journey Community Church, Civic Center Barrio Housing, and Palomar College. These organizations feed veterans and military families, college students, and residents of low-income housing--groups that are often underserved by the feeding network. In August 2024, we joined the Boys & Girls Club of Vista for their Back-to-School Bash, providing mixed produce and educational materials about brain power foods. This event reached 490 youth and their families, offering a meaningful connection between fresh food and academic success. In July 2024, we visited Interfaith Community Services in Escondido to deepen our understanding of their programs. The visit included a tour, discussions with their volunteer and in-kind donation coordinators, and a valuable referral to a veterans housing complex that could become a future feeding partner. In December, we participated in the Native American Health Conference, distributing 150 bilingual flyers featuring culturally relevant recipes and nutritional tips. The event provided an opportunity to raise awareness about food recovery and healthy eating among adult attendees. Staff volunteered at a PlusBox pack-out day in November 2024, giving our team firsthand experience with their operations, and featured Bayside Community Center at our March 2025 Volunteer Forum to not only strengthen our partnerships but also help our volunteers "follow the food" to better understand where their efforts lead. We co-presented with PlusBox at two regional zero waste events, showcasing our shared commitment to sustainability and circular food systems. One of the most inspiring areas of growth has been in the emergence of local Community Champions who take initiative to mobilize their neighborhoods and expand ProduceGood's impact. Vera Miller, a long-time volunteer, organized a neighborhood-wide gleaning effort in Rancho Bernardo with the Teen Volunteers in Action group. She recruited her neighbors as fruit donors and helped coordinate multiple harvests, starting at her own home and extending to others nearby. Vera's grassroots leadership built community and ensured that healthy food reached those who need it most Dr. Kathryn Dugan, a busy optometrist and mother in Temecula, initiated local gleaning efforts after seeing fruit go to waste in her neighborhood. What began as a solo endeavor quickly expanded as she built relationships with local growers and food pantries. With ProduceGood's support in volunteer coordination and logistics, Kathryn has led efforts that have rescued more than 12,500 pounds of produce in just one year. Her leadership has been instrumental in establishing ProduceGood's presence in Temecula. Christina and Sandy, two remarkable leaders from Rancho San Luis Rey Mobile Home Park, have made a tremendous impact within their community gleaning over 2,300 pounds of citrus. Christina sparked the first neighborhood pick after realizing how much fruit was being wasted. Sandy took things a step further by transforming the community room into a small food distribution hub to receive weekly deliveries of excess CSA boxes from a local Oceanside farm, Sandy and a team of 10 volunteers have distributed nearly 13,000 pounds of produce directly to neighbors. Two new headcounts resulting in increased quality and quantity of activities (scale) for expanded capacity and growth in community trust. Our momentum in food recovery continues to build. In 2024, we surpassed our previous records by rescuing 415,000 pounds of produce--our highest total in a calendar year to date. This milestone reflects both the increasing efficiency of our gleaning operations and the growing network of partners committed to reducing food waste and hunger across San Diego County. Social media remains a key tool in educating the public and establishing ProduceGood as a trusted voice in food recovery. Based on ongoing evaluation, we have shifted our strategy to prioritize video content--specifically, reels--which have consistently outperformed static posts in terms of engagement and reach while making program opportunities more accessible. With the addition of a fifth staff member who is bilingual in Spanish, this greatly expanded our ability to connect with Spanish-speaking community members. We are now able to offer nearly all outreach materials in both English and Spanish, including culturally relevant recipes, nutrition education flyers, and resources promoting healthy eating for youth. This expanded capacity led to an exciting opportunity: a Spanish-language interview with Noticias Univision San Diego, during which ProduceGood shared how the public can donate excess fruit or volunteer in their local community. PG staff presented to several different schools across the age spectrum, from elementary to university age students. The educational pieces of these presentations included opportunities to discuss food system alliances/partnerships, have students work on their own climate and food justice projects. Increased stable revenue by shifting the financial burden for food recovery activities into municipal budgets in San Diego County for long term sustainability. Our ongoing efforts to engage with officials from the Cities of Vista, San Diego and Carlsbad remain a priority, as these cities already benefit significantly from the food recovery services we provide. By building formal partnerships, we hope to secure their recognition and support--both financial and logistical--for the work we are actively doing in their communities. Notably, we also expanded our food recovery partnerships within existing city contracts, launching new grocery gleaning programs with two additional retailers: Costco in Chula Vista and Lazy Acres in Encinitas. Each of these stores is now hosting weekly gleaning events, through which mixed produce is recovered and redistributed locally. A major advancement was our successful negotiation with the City of Oceanside for targeted funding to support citrus distribution within their network of community centers. This agreement enhances our operational capacity by streamlining distribution to organizations equipped to handle larger, consistent volumes with the flexibility to redistribute to smaller partners while ensuring produce gleaned in Oceanside remains in the city to support a more circular and community-rooted food system

Publications


    Progress 06/01/23 to 05/31/24

    Outputs
    Target Audience:Our Field to Family project is focused on delivering quality engagement through increased collaboration and more impactful program services for five key audiences including 1. Food sources such as growers/farmers/grocers, 2. city residents, 3. city recycling offices, 4. organizations with feeding programs, and 5. individuals benefiting from the surplus produce volunteers recover. These audiences are critical to ProduceGood's work because they represent a continuum of food system resources to source excess produce, divert it from waste streams and move it into the food system where it feeds people. During the first 12 months of the project all five of these targets have been reached in part though impact has varied across the food recovery spectrum of our work. Targeted communication via email, door hangers, presentations and event outreach has led to new clusters of growers in the same area as well as new individual growers and farmers. Many growers are coming to us from referrals and we are building trust more swiftly through quarterly newsletter that address food source issues such as green waste management and hunger. We continue to focus on self-pick opportunities in neighborhoods and hope to increase traction with these types of events next year. The word is also spreading to grocers with 1:1 meetings to share our success and recruit food retailers for produce sorting and collecting to avoid the green waste stream managed by green haulers. We've also worked with our zero-waste partner Solana Center to refine the forms that establish Grocer compliance for the state with regard to edible food recovery as well as to educate Grocers on the opportunity to prevent edible food from being hauler to Anaerobic Digesters. Combining city residents and city recycling offices, we've had great success already with a new city contract in Chula Vista in the fall of 2023. Outreach efforts have been very strong in Chula Vista including an edible food recovery presentation to the City council in February and the development of three new feeding partners. Four cities are up and running with regular communication to residents that is increasing food recovery volunteers and growers in each city while also gaining the interest of grocers and other cities who wonder why our services are not being offered to them. In the month of July 2023, ProduceGood staff issued a survey to our active Feeding Partners, 56 in total. 29 responses were submitted by the end of the survey period, providing valuable information to ProduceGood regarding the individuals served by each of our partners, as well as the needs of each of our partners. The survey confirmed information on file for our partners, such as pounds capacity per donation, percentage of clients served monthly who are new clients, and the percentage of clients served monthly who are repeat clients. We collected new data as well, such as the populations each agency serves with their feeding programs, types of produce each agency would like to see more of, and client testimonials about ProduceGood services. We've had incredible traction overall with feeding partners over the past twelve months with dozens of new organizations receiving our fresh bounty. All of the clients of our feeding partners are considered low income, but we did make additional traction with refugees and/or asylum seekers which can be a hard-to-reach audience. Our Field to Family program delivered hundreds of CSA boxes to kids, seniors and many others each including educational information about EBT benefits, nutrition or food as medicine. These materials are provided in spanish and english and they have created an opportunity to connect more deeply with those eating the food we are recovering. That said, we have not yet identified community champions with the communities eating the food we supply. Our presence at events like the Southern Indian Health Council Winter Wonderland and the surveys we conduct with our feeding partners are designed to improve opportunity and education for those receiving the fresh produce, but our work in this area needs to be further refined. On October 19th, 2023, ProduceGood staff attended the annual San Diego Food System Alliance's annual event, The Gathering. Co-EDs Nita and Alex facilitated a workshop titled "Beyond Food Recovery: Mutual Aid & Community-centered Solutions". There were 4 panelists and an estimated 65 attendees at the session. In order to continue the process of surveying our existing feeding partners and other potential partners conducting food recovery and distribution, we asked participants to write down their basic contact information including current needs. Staff also attended a workshop titled "Cultivating the Next Generation of Food Recovery Leaders", which helped to shift perspective on how to effectively engage with youth to normalize and strengthen food recovery practices in day-to-day life. The team experienced some perspective shifting on education gathered through sessions offered at the Gathering. Staff learned from many industry professionals on their contrasting paths that brought them to their current place in the food system, and had thought-provoking discussions on what it means to even be "community-centered" through our work. In addition to collecting contact information at our workshop, ProduceGood hosted a table where staff and volunteers of ProduceGood made meaningful connections with leaders in food recovery and distribution in the county. Our staff and volunteers connected with at least 100 attendees of the event through our workshop and tabling activities. A large map of San Diego County was displaced at our booth and encouraged guests of the event to leave a note card with their contact information in order to widen our network and gain valuable partners for future work. The note cards were pinned onto the map so that we could see clearly where they are located and how they fit into the areas we already serve. Going beyond goals to focus on the relationship building that leads to meaningful change and new insights in food waste prevention and solutions to create access for the 9% who reside in rural, suburban and urban food deserts has led to greater collaboration and increased buy-in for our services across the county. We intend to continue with best practices honed in the first 12 months of our project and to go even further in the next 12 months toward meeting our goals and effecting change for our target audiences and our own operations. Changes/Problems: Nothing Reported What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?On October 19th, 2023, ProduceGood staff attended the annual San Diego Food System Alliance's annual event, The Gathering. Co-EDs Nita and Alex facilitated a workshop titled "Beyond Food Recovery: Mutual Aid & Community-centered Solutions". There were 4 panelists and an estimated 65 attendees at the session. Staff attended this session and reported that they learned from many industry professionals on the diverse paths that brought them to their current place in the food system, while having thought-provoking discussions on what it means to even be "community-centered" through our work. ProduceGood staff also attended a workshop titled "Cultivating the Next Generation of Food Recovery Leaders", which helped to shift perspective on how to effectively engage with youth to normalize and strengthen food recovery practices day-to-day. In Dec of 2023, Alex attended the national conference in New Orleans which was an incredible opportunity to learn about the activities of other CFP recipients as well as to converse with peers within the space. More than anything, this project is creating pathways for greater change in that it has improved the quality of our engagement, our approach to the work and our ability to identify where we need to increase skills or improve connectivity with food system partners such as our partner +BOX who helps us supply the CSA boxes expanding their visibility alongside our own. Staff was introduced to the Oceanside Public Library in a North County Food Policy County Meeting on Wednesday, January 16th. Oceanside Library staff expressed interest in making their site a fresh produce access point, where local youth and families would be able to receive produce regularly without the need for them to provide personal information in exchange. ProduceGood learned more about the library food provision office and established a relationship with the main contact, with the hope of being able to provide regular donations to their site in the future. Additionally, Kenzie attended Doing Good in a Busy World - Employee Volunteer Engagement & Strategies for Refreshing the Spirit of Volunteerism 2/29/2024, Alex participated in the San Diego NPI Governance Symposium at the University of San Diego 1/19/2024. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest? ProduceGood aims to keep all community partners updated on various data points as well as upcoming picks or events throughout the year. Regular communications with both our Growers and Feeding Partners include information about the impact they have contributed to with tons diverted from landfill and servings provided to the communities in need. Growers receive bimonthly updates while feeding partners receive quarterly updates. Feeding partners receive a survey twice a year to improve the PG services provided to better impact their communities served. The NIFA grant has improved PG's take on keeping other community partners informed on our services and impact made. Our grant with NIFA was announced on social media on October 30, 2023. An additional NIFA highlight post was made on November 1, 2023 with educational material surrounding food insecurity stats in the US. Through the NIFA grant, ProduceGood has partnered with feeding organizations to have distribution events for our produce boxes. The community has been updated on our community box drops through various social media posts. Another example of keeping our community partners updated includes our Harvest Hero Quarterly communications. These newsletter are sent to all folks associated with ProduceGood including our volunteer community. Quarterly communications allow PG to to include the community in our progress towards tangible goals and allow an opportunity to share stories or a qualitative view of our impact. Growers - All are viewable on Mailchimp bi monthly grower newsletter: 580 active growers - summary of where we are numbers wise, who we have served, and updates for future picks and operations. 2023: July, September, November 2024: February, April 2024 Grower Letter - Season Kick-Off - January Feeding Partners : impact from the quarter recovered. RA survey for communication. Number of feeding partners to date and tons diverted from landfill. Q3 2023: Q4 2023: Q1 2024: ProduceGood 2024 Q1 Impact + Change in Primary Contact Q2 2024: Thank You to our Amazing Feeding Partners! Volunteers: Social Media posts for box drops Quarterly volhub impact blast Q3 & Q4 in 2023 Instagram: Specific NIFA post Announcing our partnership Box Drops How far we drive Box Drops #2 RA quote #1 Box drops #3 Box drops #4 RA quote #2 RA quote #3 Community benefiting from bounty Community box drops Harvest Hero: sent to The Rodriguez Family 5th Generation Farmers Quarterly Communications: exist because of NIFA! Sharing our results, part of an initiative to include the community with our tangible goals - qualitative data. Looking to include direct impact stories going forward. ProduceGood Quarterly Update for Q1 2024 What did ProduceGood do in Q2? Take a look What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?Our work will continue down a path over the next 12 months, we will benefit from our Program Manager Hired in July and a bi-lingual Outreach and Education Lead who will start Sept.1. Our hire from last August, while very strong with Social Media, has not been prepared to lead the educational development work that we are invested in for this project. Our abilty to offer strong education and to support different events hosted by our feeding partners with both produce and education will be bolsted through the end of the year and early nezt year. We will continue down the road of relationship development with growers, feeding partners, the clients of feeding partners and city resources with targeted education to meet these stakeholders where they are. We will do a joint presentation at the 2024 CRRA conference in Anaheim to showcase our collaborative work with our feeding partner +BOX as well as to demonstrate the possibilities for other California municipalities. There are still many knowledge gaps about food waste prevention, our solution and the nature of the SB 1383 law. We intend to partner more deeply with Zero Waste organization Solana Center and to continue our efforts to grow awareness and opportunity for service expansion. Our focus in custom technology in the 3rd and 4th quarters of this year will increase our capacity to recover over a million pounds during the three years of this project. Our plans are to continue down the same path and to increase the quality of our engagement as we go. Our further development of our Food for Thought programming to cultivate champions will continue to be a strong focus. We may also look to train our volunteers at a deeper level so that they themselves can act as champions for growers and more sustainable growing practices.

    Impacts
    What was accomplished under these goals? 1. Deepen the quality of community engagement through refined collaboration with food source partners (growers/farmers/grocers) feeding partners and city partners. Three main engagement targets are identified for this project with 11 indicators of success. We tracked above the 33% point for the three year project during the first year with new traction within all three stakeholder groups. A new focus on growers and fresh ideas for engagement with feeding partners yield results in the form of new growers and increased feeding partner interaction and impact. We continue to recruit new feeding partners through targeted communication to expand our network. Tammy Manse, a volunteer and Nutritionist worked with us to develop Food 4 Thought program pilot materials, such as recipes, flyers, and handouts with a special focus on senior nutrition currently for the HTH Cape Cod Senior Apartments in Oside. With existing and new city partners, there was a renewed focus on both event outreach as well as targeted marketing provided by ProduceGood and generated by the cities to reach over 100,000 residents through water bills, hauler newsletters and social media driven by the city and also by ProduceGood. We want to note that we are having challenges identifying our champions within the communities being served by our feeding partners, but we do feel we are getting closer. In September 2023, ProduceGood staff sent out an email check-in for growers who had registered within the year. The check-in consisted of information about how much we have gleaned from our growers this year and the state of hunger in San Diego County. We also asked growers for information on the ripeness of their fruit. We received 7 responses about how to best contact our new growers, which were recorded and corrected. Three responses consisted of information about the ripeness of their fruit, and one recipient filled out our Existing Grower Pick Request Form. The reason for this email communication was to deepen relationships with our new growers, position ourselves as experts on the topic of food insecurity in our county, and build trust. 2. Deliver more impactful program services through greater capacity and fine-tuned operations to include an expanded supply footprint according to area/community type. Our CSA boxes with Food for Thought Education made it possible to directly connect with individuals and families benefiting from the produce we recover for the very first time. We worked closely with feeding partners to define their community needs and to deliver our education materials accordingly. We also increased our focus on City Partnerships which resulted in 2 NEW contracts, one of which was one through a formal RFP bid. Additionally, we presented to both Chula Vista and Vista City Councils with the hopes we can gain new traction in Vista in 2025-2026. Our monthly subject matter expert posts and targeted education through newsletters are helping to build our reputation as a trusted advisor and subject matter expert. We are at 24% for total pounds and 34% for the committed number of events. The 53 events for 39,160 pounds 117,480 servings directly supported by NIFA funds are a subset of the 354,565 pounds 1,063,695 servings we have recovered during the first 12 months of this project. We have laid the groundwork to improve our logistics management processes with an increasing focus on this area in the second year of the program which will lead to increased capacity of pounds picked and supplied. We look forward to increased time for developing the stories that reflect the true impact of this work. As a result of ProduceGood's increasing impact, we were recognized as California nonprofit of the year for District 38 and invited to Sacramento where we were honored by Senator Chatering Blakespear whose staff has participated in several ProduceGood picks. 3. Increase stable revenue by shifting the financial burden for food recovery activities into municipal budgets in San Diego County to lessen the reliance on donors while activating more civic engagement within the communities ProduceGood is contracted to service today and in the future. Sustainable revenue through fees for service has strengthened the sustainability of the organization meeting edible city pounds recover by 100%+ while increasing fee for service funds to 45% of money raised overall. As we look to the next phase, we will begin to charge local Grocers for sorting services that divert unsellable produce to the food system and keep it out of the green waste streams. 4 out of 5 city contracts provide support for Tier 1/Tier 2 food recovery and we look forward to the opportunity for additional education for city waste management offices with the hopes that municipal entities will consider food waste and feeding a joint goal for environment and social service delivery. We've worked Bumper Crop Edible food pick up from Farms and Grocery gleaning into contracts during these first 12 months. Engaged Community through City Contracts to increase sustainability of food recovery efforts and to shift part of the financial burden from concerned citizens: Increase total tons resulting from City contracts by 100% (Baseline = 20 tons) 46 (114% increase) Reach more residents with education/outreach (Baseline = 1 event/1 info push for 2) 21 (1050%) 9 TAC Advisory Meetings Annually (27) 10 meetings attended (37%) Engaged Community through Grower Development to keep excess out of waste streams (60%: 4 or more targeted grower comms per year (12) 10 (83%) 108 backyard growers recruited/services through new and existing channels 132 (122%) 14 farmers recruited new or for new services 4 (29%) 45 self-picks/cluster focus annually (135) 59 (44%) Grower/farmer education handouts, newsletter, website, targeted outreach for clubs/orgs (9) 2 (22%) Engaged Community through Feeding Partner/Receiver Development for greater receiving capacity and increased self reliance through participation (46%): Reach 40 new feeding partners/entities/sites (defined as no prior relationship with site/org) 23 (58%) Reach 6 new groups of the community (define types - use 2022 data for baseline) 2 (33%) Collaborate on 15 special projects with feeding partners (ProduceGood led or partner led) 7 (47%) Launch quarterly communication cadence with 1-2 surveys annually (12 and 6) 5 Comms (42%), 2 surveys (33%) Implement the food for Thought program with 10 feeding partners/sites 7 (70%) Identify champions from within communities being served (baseline is 0) 0 Increase in total MOUs annually to 16 2024, 18, 2025, 20 2026 (baseline = 13) 14 (70%) Impactful Programming through two new headcounts resulting in increased quality and quantity of activities (scale) for expanded capacity and growth in community trust: Scale pounds of recovered produce to 1,430,500 (net increase on plan of 225,000 servings) 354,565 (24%) 2,680 food recovery events (net increase on plan of 213) 906 (34%) 24 communications via social to demonstrate subject matter expertise and build trust (Pre/post surveys to assess change in perception among growers/farmers) 14 (58%) Fresh produce education connector (6 as subset of 15 special projects or standing alone - Pre-post surveys to assess impact within communities being served) 2 (33%) Multilingual resources and culturally appropriate content for targeted communities (12) 3 (25%) Increase stable revenue by shifting the financial burden for food recovery activities into municipal budgets in San Diego County for long term sustainability: Add 6 new ProduceGood City Service contracts for long term sustainability (Baseline = 3) 2 (33%) Expand City services and/or types of service relationships (Baseline = Backyard Picks, Outreach) 2 (33%) 10-12 proposals submitted to cities 5 (50%) Add additional grocery outlets within contracted cities (Baseline = 1) 3 (38%)

    Publications