Dive Into Your Imagination

Why is it better to eat food that is grown and harvested locally?
Over the past many decades, people have lost touch with not only how food is grown, but also with the knowledge of who actually grows it for us. There has been a disconnect from the importance of food and how it is raised.  By people participating more actively in our local food system, we can actually put the word “culture” back in agriculture. This idea benefits the entire community. Eating locally raised and harvested food not only reduces the need to transport food from afar (therefore reducing the use of fossil fuels), but it also keeps the dollars spent on food in the community. By supporting local farmers and organizations that are distributing/collecting local food, the community develops a more sustainable relationship with food.

What is Backyard Harvest (BYH)?
BYH is non-profit community service organization that captures the under-utilized food growing in the community by harvesting from residential/commercial trees and gardens as well as collecting culls and over-production from local farms. Since operations began in mid June of '08, we have harvested and collected close to 50,000 lbs as well as 42 different varieties of fruits and vegetables. Home and business owners contact us to either come pick up the food they were able to harvest, or we schedule a gleaning session with or without volunteers, depending on the size of the job. We operate as a project of the Unity Shoppe, where the collected produce is distributed to the less fortunate within the community through their free grocery store. We have been able to provide about 2/3rds of the produce that the Unity Shoppe distributes to some of the 20,000 individuals (they never count the same person twice) drawing on their services for assistance.  The primary mission of BYH is to provide produce to the less fortunate in the community, however recently some of the food has been sold to distributors serving schools and the local hospital, both in an attempt to get more local food into community institutions and as a way to bring much needed funds into our program. Once the project gets adequately funded, all of the collected food will go into serving the needy in the community.

How is Backyard Harvest helping the community as well as sustainability?
Backyard Harvest captures a valuable resource that would normally be wasted and makes it available to a sector of the community that is under-served and typically lacking healthy, nutritious produce. We are also keeping this produce out of the waste stream. It would otherwise be collected by a waste disposal company and trucked to a far away facility. Also, by harnessing more of the food grown locally, the need to import food into the community is reduced, therefore lowering the amount of fossil fuels burned and CO2 released into the atmosphere. The average food item in a grocery store travels 1,500 miles by a semi truck, burning 250 gallons of diesel fuel and releasing a lot of CO2 in the process.

BYH also benefits the society since we collect not only from large orchards but also from small properties having only one tree.  This allows the average homeowner to participate in the re-localizing food movement, which spreads awareness that we need to eat more locally.  We also host Learning Service Projects with school groups, allowing them to see how and where food grows.  They help us harvest trees (one class picked 750 lbs of blood oranges in 2 hrs) and then they tour the Unity Shoppe’s distribution system.. Some of the oranges picked by the students also ended up not only in their own cafeteria but also at their neighboring schools.

What inspired you to create Backyard Harvest?
I came to the United States 14 years ago from Vancouver in Canada.  At the time, I was working in construction, and I started to notice how much food was going to waste in peoples’ yards; at the same time realized how many people were struggling and didn’t have access to healthy produce.  I therefore combined these observations and decided to help the community by creating Backyard Harvest.

As Director, you are directly involved in all aspects of the organization.  What are your specific duties?
Since we are such a young organization and virtually a one-person show, my duties as Director range from networking, to fundraising, to being a spokesperson all the way to volunteer coordinator, driver and harvester. We are just now having a second person, Tynes Viar, who has a PhD in sustainable agriculture and is a grant writer, join BYH as the program director.  This will enable us to grow more rapidly.

What is in the future for Backyard Harvest?
Once the basic collection/harvesting service becomes sustainable, we will focus on more education by providing regular Learning Service Projects with schools and offering unique volunteer opportunities. We will also promote growing of more food on both residential and commercial/public properties by supplying seeds and plant starts. We also hope to eventually produce our own added value products such as preserves, dried fruit, orange juice, all made from the local food we collect and for sale in the community. The entire Backyard Harvest organization (there are 7 chapters) is moving towards an expansion program that will have many new chapters popping up around the entire country.

We are excited to try your fresh food in the future! Thank you so much for the great work you are doing.

Biography:
Doug Hagensen’s diverse background includes construction work (including Green building), massage therapy, and cabinet and furniture making.  He lived in Vancouver in Canada before moving to the United States 14 years ago where he pursued his career in construction.  He created Backyard Harvest in January 2008 in an effort to help the Santa Barbara community.  BYH has reached this goal and is having great success purely by his own hand, as he runs most aspects of the business solo.

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