Berry Recovery: for growers and Producers
The berry recovery project for growers and producers helps you pour much inputs into growing quality fruits recoup value from your fields.
Increase your berry harvest opportunities
Your organization probably already has a crew of volunteer harvesters, connections to local farms, and a system for redistributing the food you harvest to those who need it most. We want to partner with you, bringing all the good things you’re doing to the berry industry.
When you join the Berry Recovery Project, we guide your organization’s leader through food safety training and industry protocols for berry harvesting. After training, Northwest Berry Foundation can use its strong relationship with PNW berry growers to begin endorsing you to the berry industry and matching you with interested farms in your region.
With ever increasing food-safety regulations and on-farm liability concerns, gaining access to commercial berry fields can be difficult and time consuming. As an official Berry Recovery Project partner, your group will have more credibility with berry growers, so you’ll spend less time searching for berries to harvest and more time doing the work you love – rescuing food and sharing it with neighbors who need it.
Donations
Processed Donations
Some examples of when to call us to coordinate a fruit pick up and donation to a food redistribution center:
- When a buyer falls through without notice
- When there is unsold inventory in your storage
- When line sorting results in a portion of fruit with color, sizing, or weight issues
If you want to donate imperfect fruit without impacting your company’s reputation for high quality product, we can arrange to repack you donation into containers that don’t have your logo on it before the fruit is redistributed to those who need it.
Fresh Donations
Next time you have surplus fruit in your fields, think about hosting one of our trained & endorsed volunteer harvest partner crews. We’ll match you with a group in your area who can work according to the standards and rules you need, such as GAP and FSMA.
Some examples of when to contact us to request a volunteer harvest crew:
When a field needs to be cleaned up between commercial harvests
When fruit has cosmetic issues like size or color
When there isn’t sufficient labor, or when the cost of labor doesn’t justify commercial harvesting
Additonal resources
Berry recovery resources for growers
- OR crop donation tax form
- Instructions for OR crop donation tax credit
- Guide to Federal Enhanced Tax Deduction for Food Donation
- Questions to consider before donating fresh or processed fruit
- Oregon Food Bank information on hunger in Oregon