Wendy Leung, volunteer executive director of Foodsharing Ottawa, which rescues and redistributes surplus food, couldn’t believe her eyes when an email arrived offering 100 batches of potatoes — each comprising about 18,000 kilograms, or 40,000 pounds.

“You have no idea what this means to … the community,” Leung told Manitoba farmer Isaiah Hofer on CBC’s The Current. “We call it the Ottawa Great Potato Rescue.”

“When you’re blessed with so much, it’s just good to give back … and I’m just glad we could do that,” Hofer said.

Hofer grows about 560 hectares of potatoes at Acadia Colony Farms, northeast of Carberry, Manitoba. Last year was an extraordinary year for potatoes all across Canada. “People that have been in this industry for the last 40 years, they’ve never seen something like this.”

“We had at least almost 100,000 bags of surplus potatoes,” he told The Current’s Matt Galloway. “In potato language, a bag is 100 pounds [45 kilograms].”

Hofer considered using the potatoes for animal feed, or returning them to the earth where they would rot and become fertilizer. 

But then he saw an email from the industry group Keystone Potato Producers Association, highlighting the work of the Farmlink Project, which was founded in 2020 by a group of young Americans during the COVID-19 pandemic. Seeing dramatic lines at food banks but also food being thrown away as supply chains shut down, they thought, “Huh, this feels like one problem can solve the other,'” said Kate Nelson, chief marketing officer and a co-founder of Farmlink. 

Nelson and her colleagues started small, renting a U-Haul van and calling up farms to see if they would donate any produce that was going to waste. They’ve scaled up and have since moved 90 million kilograms of food to people who need it across the US, Canada and Mexico.

Together with a donation from Blumengart Colony Farms in Plum Coulee, Manitoba, Farmlink received 5.4 million kilograms (12 million pounds) of potatoes.

Hofer provided the labour, while he and Nelson secured donations from a local charity and the McCain food company. Simplot Canada provided the packaging, which helped with the estimated cost of $30,000. Hofer said 115 trucks delivered the food earlier this month as far afield as Toronto, San Diego and New Mexico.

Nelson said it is one of the largest donations Farmlink has ever handled, but shows what can be achieved when people come together to support one another.

In Ottawa, Foodsharing worked in partnership with local organizations Care Centre Ottawa, Lion Hearts and Deep Roots Food Hub.”Together, I think we actually gave back to over 50 local organizations across the city with countless numbers of individuals and households,” Leung said. “And all these potatoes were claimed actually within eight to nine days.”

Cover image: Pixabay, Pexels