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Chautauqua
County Rural Ministry
Dunkirk, NY
Though few people may now be familiar with the
concept of “gleaning” -- the
practice of gathering the remains of a harvest
left behind as surplus by the reapers -- the Chautauqua County Rural Ministry of upstate
New York understands it as a conservation practice
reaching back to biblical times, and more currently,
an act of thrift and responsibility that not only
ensures that less food is wasted and left to rot
after a harvest, but also provides a bounty of
fresh produce for the hungry.
In 1999, the Chautauqua County Rural Ministry,
based in Dunkirk, New York, instituted a gleaning
project for local farms due to the response of
many local congregations and other organizations
saddened to see the amount of food left in the
fields to waste. When they began recovering food,
many members of the community saw it as a bold
new innovation, but members of the ministry see
it instead as an age-old practice that discourages
waste and makes the most of each harvest.
Since 1999, the Chautauqua County Rural Ministry
has recovered more than 250,000 pounds of food
that would have otherwise been left to rot. The
food was distributed to 60 sites in the county,
including food pantries, soup kitchens, low-income
housing units, day care centers and senior dining
centers. With help from the Cornell Cooperative
Extension, the ministry also distributes recipes
for cooking the fresh produce as well as information
on proper storage.
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 Run largely by volunteers from many congregations
who labor in the field to harvest the crop, the
program has been very successful and boasts a
newsletter, an information brochure for interested
organizations and receives regular media coverage
of their efforts. In addition to all of their
work harvesting the fields and distributing the
produce to low-income groups, the ministry has
also expanded its efforts to include five community
gardens where individuals in the community have
been moved to donate the use of their land or
take on the entire responsibility of planting,
weeding, harvesting and sharing the fruits of
their labor: a return to the type of farming that
sustained countless generations of rural people
with the values of conservation, wasting-not and
sharing.
Contact information:
Chautauqua County Rural Ministry, Inc.
127 Central Avenue
PO Box 362
Dunkirk, NY 14048
Phone: 716-366-1787
Fax: 716-366-8322
Email:
ccrm@netsync.net
Website:
http://ccrm.netsync.net
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