The three women descend in the plate in the field, and their hands reach the remains of wheat stems. Their curved forms dominate the introduction, which emphasizes the physical burden of their work. The “picker” painting immortalized the committees of François Melit, which he drew in 1857, this necessary act: picked up, and collected the remaining crops after the harvest. The origin of this term dates back to agricultural traditions, and its origin returns to ancient French Genner Latin GlennareIn the sense of “gathering”. For many centuries, capturing crops was a lifestyle for the country’s poor in England and France – a legally recognized right that allows them to enter the fields after harvesting to collect the remainder. It was established by French law as a civilian right in 1554, while in England This was an unannounced agreement that reflects the exact balance of the feudal system between the distinguished and the poor.
But by the end of the eighteenth century, this unstable balance began to collapse. The forces of privatization and manufacturing invaded England, as the laws of the guarantor have turned common lands into a private property, and prevented the poor from reaching them. In 1788, The issue of the historic court Steel v. Hyton He hated to capture things as a right, and re -classified them as a violation of the property of others. Soon the mechanization followed, as lessons and harvesters left less quantities for the picker collected. By the mid -nineteenth century, the harvest had faded in memory, and it became a remnant of pre -modern agricultural life, which was overlooked by the progress of progress that is unavoidable.
However, Millite’s scene, which depicts work on collecting what others left behind, appears again – not as a effect, but as a reaction to the crises of wasting food and poverty. In a potato field in Cornwall, England, volunteers sieves wooden boxes, to separate the good from the broken, while others cut the cabbage, fill the bags with trees dedicated to society kitchens.
Getty pictures
“We are feeding a very large number – about 10,000 people per week,” said Holly Whitelo, the Glenning Cornwall Foundation. “It may be just two pieces of vegetables, but it is a healthy thing.” The process, which is done with the help of more than 400 volunteers, depends on a mixture of coordination via the online correspondence platform, WhatsApp, donated storage spaces, and absolute design. However, Whitlo notes that this is not enough at all: “There is a need for great funding to do this correctly. The need is increasing.”
At a time when 3.3 million metric tons of food are wasted annually on UK farms, environmental and social costs resulting from failure to work are amazing. Relaxing spoiled foodstuffs MethaneIt is a much stronger greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, and with it the resources used to grow this food – water, energy and land. Tresman Stewart, the historian and activist who participated in the founding of the Gleang Network in 2011, which Gleang Cornwall is part of it, depicting this practice as a way to challenge British food from its source. Today, from Kent to Birmingham, the summary groups not only collect products, but also dismantle the in sustainable standards that allow waste to continue in the first place.
The effect of this waste exceeds the visible rot in the fields. Globally, nearly a third of all the produced foods are never eaten, and in the United Kingdom, unseminal crops contribute to an estimated 6 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide bonus annually – 11 percent of agricultural emissions in the country. And across the Atlantic Ocean, the problem is exacerbated by a wider scale. Lori Periranivand, director of the Center for Agriculture and Diets at the Fairmont College of Law and Graduate Studies in the United States, highlights the pressure on natural resources caused by excessive production.
“Here in the United States, we have huge farms in the West that use precious water resources during dehydration to grow foods that never reach the supply chain.” People say: “Oh, they will be plowed again in the soil,” but this does not take into account the resources that are wasted in this process – pesticides, labor, and energy – all have environmental costs. “
Throughout the UK, the collection of waste has become a decisive tool in fighting food and poverty. Collection such as Sussex Gleang Network organizes a team to collect everything from islands to cauliflower, and redistributing the food that has been saved to food banks and societal projects such as FareShare Sussex, which takes over -quality food and provides them with people in need. Gleang Network has cooperated with more than 60 farmers and 3000 volunteers to save more than 500 metric tons of fruits and vegetables, ensuring the surplus of production surplus quickly and safely to those who desperately need it.
For Holtam, director of regional programs at Feedback Global, an organization that pushes for a more sustainable diet, the process begins a long time before the day of harvest. He explained, “We recruit a team of volunteers and rent a small truck in advance.” “On that day, we meet on the farm around 10 am, and we talk about health and safety, then we start work.” Once the product picks, it is transferred to cold storage facilities to maintain its freshness. “Volunteers can collect more information in one day than the kitchen can process in a week,” Holtam added, which confirms the size of the problem and the solution. For volunteers in the fields, the work is urgent. For the families they serve, it is a lifeline.
Wasting food starts from the same source: the farm. Up to 16 percent of the crop can be wasted due to factors that are completely outside the domination of farms. “Supermarkets refuse to products because they are very destroyed, very small, or a wrong color,” said Hultam Resident in Sussex. “Then there is an unpredictable weather, and a shortage of employment – it’s endless.” The rest in the fields – potatoes, turnip, zucchini, and soft fruits – represents an amazing waste of resources and an urgent environmental crisis.
The solutions provided by the capture are practical and symbolic solutions. Waste collection workers rescue foods that will contribute to methane gas emissions in waste burials or decompose in the fields. They are working with farmers to ensure the conversion of what cannot be sold to a community resource. “We have worked with everything from soft fruits to salad vegetables, cleaning the family and removing crops from the pile of compost.” “It comes to converting potential waste into community resources.”
Lyon Neil / Getti photos
However, despite all its effect, capturing things is still a temporary procedure. As Perienvand indicates, the radical problem is a regular problem. “Farmers are forced to excessive growth to fulfill strict supermarket contracts, just see many good foods, because they do not meet cosmetic standards.” She said that the solution lies in establishing secondary markets for surplus production and limiting excessive production that forces farmers to rely on donations to transfer their crops.
Until this systematic transformation occurs, pickers continue to stay in the fields, fill the boxes with neglected crops, and save what they can save. Each potato is pulled from the ground, and every zucchini is packed in a box, and every small effort is a quiet victory.
While the idea is simple – saving the food that would have been lost otherwise – this work takes different forms around the world. In the United Kingdom, organizations such as Gleang Network run organized operations, coordinating among volunteers to collect surplus crops from farms and deliver them to food banks. In the United States, information is often collected on a smaller scale, led by popular groups and volunteers from the church.
“It is largely driven by charitable work, and the groups are often separate,” said Periranivand, who has worked with many information collection organizations in the country. Without a central system, efforts depend on personal relationships with farmers and allocated coordination, which makes the process inconsistent and depends on resources.
The legal and cultural differences also constitute these methods. In the United Kingdom, farmers generally welcomes the collectors of the papers, while in the United States, the most striking property laws and fears related to responsibility are created barriers. “Farmers are concerned about what is happening if someone is injured,” Perienvand said. Although some states have introduced protection measures, these laws are inconsistent, and food safety concerns add more complexity. Maryland has, for example, has set specific laws to protect farmers from responsibility when they allow people to reach their lands, providing a model for how to encourage legislation to participate while dealing with farmers’ concerns.
Despite his promise, collection of data alone cannot solve regular problems with food waste and insecurity. It is called by Perienvand the interactive solution, which depends on surplus or rejected crops. “In the end, wouldn’t it be great if we didn’t need to take pictures at all?” I asked. Some organizations, such as Boston Area Gleeres in the United States, explore proactive methods, such as obtaining agricultural lands to grow crops designated for food banks. But expanding the scope of such initiatives requires significant investments and structural support.
However, the process of picking food is not only to save food, but rather relates to re -discovering the value of what we have neglected. For Kelly Lieblank, Vice President of OldWays, a non -profit organization that inspires people to embrace healthy and sustainable paths of old food methods, importance goes beyond the same food. “We have begun to realize that the best diets for people are the best for the planet as well,” she said. “The simple work of converting neglected crops into nutrition blocks many gaps – between nutrition and sustainability, between waste and renewal.”
Perhaps this is the greatest gift for “Glenng”: its ability to remind us that even in the world of abundance, there is beauty in what is left behind. Jean -Francois Melée “has immortalized this fact for nearly two centuries, and today it is no less emotional.
