Rescued Produce
During the past few weeks, our Executive Director from Borderland Food Bank Yolanda Soto, worked feverishly to find homes for rescued Roma and regular tomatoes, orange bell peppers and European cucumbers. In one of her daily offerings, there were mixtures of these produce weighing over 200,000 pounds!
According to Yolanda Soto, Executive Director of Borderland Food Bank, in January and February, Borderland was saturated with rescued tomatoes. It became extremely difficult to find these tomatoes homes and they had to end up dumping at least 50 percent of them.
In Arizona, the only food banks that accepted tomatoes were St. Mary’s Alliance, Wilcox, Northern Arizona Food Bank and our newest agency, Valley View Food Bank in Surprise. There were different types of tomatoes: beef, vine ripe, house, cherry, grape, Roma and regular. Borderland did a lot of repacking for three weeks in January, until it started receiving 90% good product. The saturation of tomatoes was due to a reduction in the market price of tomatoes. Thanks to Yolanda Soto for all her hard work.
Liz Taylor ♥
