Tons of free oranges go to food pantries

(Packing oranges from the Big Pick for food pantries)

When Rick Nahmias walked his dog, he would often see fruit trees that no one tended. "Ninety percent of it falls on the ground, goes to squirrels, rats," he said.

And an idea was born: For a few weekends he got some people together, they picked the fruit and gave it to SOVA, a Jewish Family Service organization that runs three food pantries.

But the simmering idea behind the small harvests was "the Big Pick," and on Sunday, dozens of volunteers went to work at an estate in Chatsworth and picked nearly 5,000 pounds of oranges from about 300 trees. SOVA began giving the fruit to people today at their pantries, said Fred Summers, the organization's operations manager.

"The numbers of people that are struggling grows month by month," he said, adding that demand is up 45% over a year ago.

Nahmias, a documentary photographer, said about 60 people came out Sunday to pick the Valencia oranges, at a cost of nearly nothing — about $200 for some picking tools, and coffee and doughnuts for fuel. And orange juice, of course, squeezed on the spot.

Nahmias, who is calling the project Food Forward, hopes other people will organize similar events in their communities. People who want to take part can contact SOVA at (818) 988-7682.

More pictures are posted on the experiencela blog.

— Mary MacVean

Photo courtesy of Curtis Gibbs/experienceLA

Comments

[Diana Foss]

There is so much wasted backyard fruit here in California. In San Jose, Village Harvest goes out twice weekly to glean backyard citrus and stone fruit and apples from small local orchards. Last year we picked more than 120,000 lbs of fruit, which went to a variety of hunger relief organizations in the San Jose area.

Ironically, most of the orchards that we pick are too unprofitable for the owners to do so commercially anymore. It's sad that apples from China have replaced local fruit in California, of all places.

In LA, the group Fallen Fruit has mapped publically-accessible fruit and leads walks to glean it.

I hope that the orange pickers make a regular habit of this. Once you start thinking about it, you see laden fruit trees everywhere.