NEWPORT — The corn’s not going to pick itself.
And the corn that doesn’t get picked in Arkansas farms more often than not rots in the field and goes to waste.
But a partnership between the Arkansas Hunger Relief Alliance and the Arkansas Department of Correction has helped save more than a million pounds of cropsand send them to local food banks.
More than 20 inmates worked for hours in the hot Arkansas sun Friday on Bill Landreth’s farm on U.S. 67 near Newport, picking corn that wasn’t able to be sold - a process called gleaning. They gathered 6,200 pounds.
Corn “is a huge plus for us, because it’s something that everyone loves but we don’t get a lot of,” said MichelleShope, the alliance’s director of food sourcing and logistics.
In 2011 and 2012, the Department of Correction has gleaned 41 percent of the gleaned food that the alliance received, amounting to more than 615,000 pounds and 77,000 meals. The department first started working with the alliance in 2010.
“This program is good because it helps people in needin the state and it provides something positive for these inmates to do - to help repay some of the debts caused by their crimes,” department spokesman Shea Wilson said. “It has them out working in the community, and that supports their successful re-entry because at some point, these people will be going home.”
The inmates are especially helpful because they are avail-able on weekdays - most volunteer groups who glean are rarely available during the week.
“Produce is not something that sits around and waits on you,” Shope said. “To get it fresh out of the field really gives us the extra time to help a lot more people.”
All the food goes to its nearest food bank, keeping the distribution process as fast and as local as possible. If one donation is more food than the local bank needs, it will send the extra to nearby food banks.
The alliance gleans at farms all across the state, but Shope said she has yet to work with 10 farms in one season.
The inmates who glean have good institutional records and were arrested for nonviolent crimes.
Landreth has let inmates glean his farm, Berries by Bill, for years. He’s farmed his land for 13 years.
“It’s a whole lot better than letting it go to waste, and there’s a whole lot of hungry kids out there,” he said.
The food that isn’t harvested is sometimes too small or oddly-shaped to be sold in stores. Sometimes, Landreth said, it’s simply a management decision - one blockof corn is more profitable to harvest than the other, and he doesn’t have the labor to pick the other block.
Shope said she anticipates that the alliance will glean more than a million pounds of produce this year, which would be a record number. Last season, the alliance received about 700,000 pounds.
“We’re at a point in the program where we are poised to grow,” she said.
Northwest Arkansas, Pages 7 on 06/25/2012