When Pedro Castro, Jr. was driving on Interstate 90 in October last year, he noticed there were still squash left in a harvested field, probably due to drought conditions.

At that time, Castro, Historically Black Church chaplain for Hendricks Chapel at Syracuse University and the minister of the local church, was aware that Syracuse has one of the nation’s highest poverty rates.

Seeing this, Castro came up with the idea of providing more fresh food to the local community.

“It really impacted my heart,” Castro said. “What can we do to help families have access to fresh produce?”

This year, Hendricks Chapel is partnering with Syracuse Fellowship AME Church, launching a program “Blessing Others With Surplus” to give away thousands of pounds of fresh produce to the Syracuse community.

“We are providing others with the blessings that we received,” Castro said, adding that a refrigerated truck was distributing local fresh produce for families during October and November.

All of the produce they got is locally grown, including from central New York farms in Baldwinsville and Cazenovia, Castro said.

Most of the fruits and vegetables the farms donated don’t meet the market’s standards to be sold in grocery stores, he said, adding that farmers would otherwise dump the produce that aren’t the best-looking.

In New York state alone, Castro said a report conducted by the Natural Resources Defense Council pointed out that Americans wasted about 100 million pounds of produce in 2014, adding that it’s important to put surplus food to good use.

In 2015, 16,500 pounds of food were given to 400 local families, Castro said, expressing his hope to reach the same amount of produce this year.

In addition, the program could help Syracuse families maintain a healthy diet because many parents didn’t make the right choice in terms of what food they would purchase, Castro said. He has encouraged the community to avoid food that contains high levels of sodium and fat.

The church also offers recipes to help people who aren’t sure how to cook the different vegetables they received.

In the future, Castro said he hopes there will be more community members participating in the program to help future generations grow stronger.

“Even with what we are doing, there are still plenty of surplus produce that never get to the community,” Castro said.

Published on November 28, 2016 at 10:12 pm

Contact Chieh: chchen@syr.edu