books, gardens, vegetables, and more: How One Grassroots Group Is Changing Local Eating-One Vegetable at a Time

Rochester and Monroe County, NY has always been adapting in various ways to get food to low income or homeless people. There is a backpack program through the local Foodlink where a mobile pantry goes to local schools and passes out backpacks with food in them to needy students. The mobile pantries also go to different areas where there is no pantry close by. Summer Meals are also provided during the summer at certain locations for students who would normally receive a free lunch during the school year. And there is more. So it's not unheard of that someone like Khoury Humphrey would be thinking about how he could help.

Khoury Humphrey of Rochester, NY has a philosophy-to ignore a problem is to condone it. When at Rochester's Public Market, Khoury had noticed the amount of wasted food that was still available at the end of a typical Saturday that the vendors/farmers have to either cart back to the farm or toss out if it's not considered sellable. What's not “sellable?” A piece of fruit or a vegetable with a scar or blemish on it. Khoury decided to do something about all that excess, especially considering the number of poor and homeless living in Rochester and it's surrounding areas. Over $600,000 in food stamps were spent at the market in 2014 alone, so low income people are definitely looking for fresh fruit and vegetables. Khoury's concept of asking the farmers and other vendors for donations for the area's food pantries and food kitchens is a wonderful concept.

In the early part of 2015, Khoury started out as a solo act. Now, with the help of volunteers, Flower City Pickers has been collecting upwards of 4000 pounds a week of healthier food for various shelters, food pantries, and food kitchens. That is totalling close to 50,000 pounds so far for Flower City Pickers. Each week, the Pickers rotate where the deliveries go. Potatoes, barbque sauces, fruit, vegetables and more are donated by vendors, farmers, and even shoppers. One vendor, Seven Bridges Farms, donates the only meat-all natural beef. One other incredible thing about Flower City Pickers: anything that is deemed not suitable for humans to eat, is donated to small farmers who compost or who could use the product as animal feed. So nothing is wasted.

With the early success of this group, and the support of the farmers and the Public Market community, Flower City Pickers has even started to look into a commercial space to eventually open a food pantry and a collaborative community free space.

Khoury Humphrey is always looking for good, committed volunteers to help collect, sort, deliver or even to help in planning stages for the commercial space.