“Since 1983, the Society of St. Andrew has salvaged fresh, nutritious produce from American farms – produce that otherwise would be left to rot – and delivered it to agencies across the nation that serve the poor.
God has called us to do this work. In Deuteronomy 15, it says, "Since there will never cease to be some in need on the Earth, I therefore command you, ‘Open your hand to the poor and needy neighbor in your land.’
Gleaning America’s Fields ~ Feeding America’s Hungry. That is what the Society of St. Andrew does. "We do it simply, and we do it more effectively and far more efficiently than any other hunger relief organization.”

July Green Bean Drop @ FPC

~A team of FPC ‘truckers’  make the drive the day before to pick up donated beans (4000 pounds or more) from Crossville TN farmer, Chris Hughes.  We are always looking for more truck drivers as we can get as many beans as we have trucks. 

( truckers email:  mission@fpcfranklin.org )  

Beans are a hard crop to plan for due to potential rainy weather and their short shelf life if they get wet, so sometimes beans gets rained out and we try to replace with a different crop.  In spite of this, we have diverted quite a few beans from the landfill and have sent the bagged beans to local food support agencies.    

Green Bean Facts:  Green beans have to be 3-5 inches for grocery stores to sell them, so literal tons of green beans are thrown away daily. They’re sent on the conveyer belt right into the bed of a dump truck, hauled to a nearby field, and dumped in a hole. Crossville, Tennessee is the green bean capital of the US. Most of the green beans grown for commercial sale east of the Mississippi River are grown right on the Cumberland Plateau. Some of those unmarketable beans have gone for years to feed livestock nearby, but the volume of waste is far too high for the livestock to consume. We’ve been working with a Crossville farmer since Summer 2011, and he is thrilled to have these gorgeous green beans going to feed hungry people.  Besides filling up landfills, food waste produces methane gas. In fact, food waste is the second-leading cause of methane in the atmosphere. Another way to describe all that: Every ton of fresh produce left to rot in a landfill emits as much greenhouse gas in its decomposition as driving a car for a year.