Digging In for Hungry : Agriculture: An Irvine farmer is spearheading an effort to glean fields, salvaging crops for the county’s destitute. He insists that there’s plenty to go around.

IRVINE —  Stand in A.G. Kawamura’s fog-shrouded bean fields and take in the pungency of fresh greenery and warm earth and it is easy to believe you are on a farm patch in the Central Valley rather than in suburban Irvine.

The young farmer will accept this description as an anomaly or a last vestige of a more rural past, but he also believes that his 600 acres of agricultural fields, much of them bordered by encroaching business and housing developments, may hold the key to solving a social ill of the county’s increasing urbanization.

“I think the farm community has just recently begun to be very supportive in realizing that (we) have to take a part in alleviating hunger,” said Kawamura, a tall man with a friendly, open face who says he gained a sense of social responsibility as well as business acumen during his student days at UC Berkeley.

Hunger and malnutrition hound the homeless and working poor in Orange County and fall especially hard on children, according to recent studies.

While local social planners grapple with finding solutions to the broader societal problem, others, like Kawamura, see a more practical approach: Salvage crops from the county’s agricultural producers to feed directly to the poor.

Gleaning, as such salvage is known, has been around locally for years. But a new task force of activists and producers is attempting to develop the most ambitious program to date, working on the theory that Orange County’s once abundant fields still have much to yield.

“By and large, people are not aware of the agricultural resources in the county,” said Kawamura, who estimates that scarcely 1% of available produce is salvaged.

To reap more benefits from the county’s resources, Kawamura is working with the Irvine Gleaning Project to enlist more agricultural producers.

The gleaning project is an outgrowth of earlier efforts to increase the amount of fresh produce donated to local food banks, coordinator Charlene Turco said. The group is forming a nonprofit foundation and has already been awarded a $5,600 grant from the city of Irvine. Turco hopes that with funds from other Orange County cities and federal and state grants, he can expand the project’s volunteer base.

“We are trying for the first time to coordinate efforts and to include everyone from growers to service providers,” she said.

Turco talks of one day having a food hot line, which residents or businesses with donations of food could call for pickup. She also hopes to develop an offshoot of the gleaning project that will travel to private homes to salvage surplus zucchini and tomatoes straight from the garden.

While no one disputes the critical need for fresh produce to supplement the diets of those at risk of missing meals, what no one can say for sure is how effective an expanded gleaning program would be in alleviating the hunger problem in Orange County.

“It depends to what extent you are increasing the capacity of food providers,” said Michele Van Eyken, nutrition services supervisor for the county. “If we can get over the problems of distribution and the way people utilize food, then (gleaning) could make a big difference.”

Ann Cotter, a home economist with the local branch of UC Cooperative Extension, noted that many needy residents, particularly Latinos, may be unaccustomed to eating some fruits and vegetables common in the United States and might let the produce waste.

“Even with low-income families that have been here for generations, making food changes does not come overnight,” she said.

But the expense of fresh produce poses the greatest barrier. A recent survey conducted by UC researchers noted that while the need for emergency food assistance has increased, resources have decreased.

Cutbacks in government surplus commodities have resulted in a halving of the number of Orange County households able to participate in the program. And foods such as cheese, powdered milk and rice are no longer available.

In addition, donations to the county’s two food banks are down 25% in recent years. Mark Lowry, manager of the food bank run by the Community Development Council, said his program is continually in need of fresh produce.

“It is very hard to provide a well-balanced diet for people because we are at the whims and wills of what is donated to us,” he said.

The CDC food bank has recently sought help outside the county, working with a Fresno group that has shipped down more than 40,000 pounds of cantaloupes, peaches, nectarines and plums. The first 20,000-pound shipment was gone in three days, he said.

But Kawamura and others believe that if only 10% of available produce were salvaged, Orange County farmers could provide for local needs as well as export produce to the needy in other counties.

Kelly Sullivan, resource director for the county’s second major food bank, the Food Distribution Center, said local gleaning projects have provided more than 118,000 pounds of fresh vegetables since last October.

“If you calculate that one-half pound of food is equal to a meal, in human terms it means more than 236,000 meals for the county’s needy,” Sullivan said.

So far, the Irvine gleaning project has enlisted support from four Irvine farms: Kawamura’s Western Marketing Co., Murai Farms, Treasure Farms and John Magarro Farms. Another gleaning project, Sunshine Outreach, founded in 1983, also picks over several South County farms.

But Kawamura says the salvage potential is vast and largely untapped. In spite of seemingly endless development, the county still holds nearly 57,000 acres of agricultural land, according to the Orange County Farm Bureau, nearly 8,000 of them in orchards.

Although nursery stock accounted for more than half of the county’s $250 million in agricultural earnings last year, crops such as strawberries, beans and peppers are also big income producers. The county still has more than 300 individual farms, according to Farm Bureau executive director Nanci Jimenez.

She said farmers are increasingly aware that their role is vital in feeding the hungry.

“It’s going to be agriculture that’s going to solve the problem,” Jimenez said. Kawamura, a member of the Farm Bureau, recently made a presentation to the group, and the board of directors probably will back expanded gleaning efforts in the county, she said.

Kawamura said easing of liability laws has led many farmers to be more receptive to having mostly novice volunteers tramp through their fields.

The most serious obstacle is timing, he said. Sometimes there is not even a day’s break between harvest of one crop and preparations for planting another--and farm operations will always come first, he concedes.

Of his 600 leased acres of corn, cabbage, celery, bean and squash, about 400 acres lend themselves to salvage, Kawamura said.

Kawamura’s love for the land runs deep. He said his family is the oldest active tenant on Irvine Ranch property, its farms dating to 1958. But he is equally committed to easing the plight of the county’s growing ranks of hungry and homeless.

“To grow up in Orange County with the wealth that we have, it’s really no excuse . . . to have the kinds of problems we have,” he said. “It’s been a personal challenge to actively do something rather than just talk. I’m just lucky to be in the business I’m in.”