Potato lovers in the Raleigh-Durham area have a new reason to celebrate.
Several Duke departments—including Religious Life at Duke, the Food Recovery Network and Sustainable Duke—organized a “potato drop” Saturday in the Smith Warehouse parking lot during which volunteers bagged potatoes for food relief agencies in the Triangle area. The Society of Saint Andrews—a national organization that works to feed the hungry—delivered 40,000 pounds of potatoes, which were sorted into ten-pound bags by students and faculty.
“A significant number of people will be directly fed as a result of this,” said senior Greg Poore, one of the organizers of the event and leader of Duke's chapter of the Food Recovery Network.
He said that the potatoes at the event were perfectly edible vegetables but had the wrong size, shape or color to be sold in grocery stores. The Society of Saint Andrews worked with farmers to collect non-aesthetically-pleasing surplus potatoes and then delivered them to be bagged by volunteers.
Students, faculty and staff in the Duke community were able to sign up for one-hour shifts beginning at 10 a.m. The event was scheduled to last until 3 p.m. but the over 400 volunteers finished the project in two hours.
Poore explained that the bagged potatoes will be picked up by charities such as the Durham Rescue Mission and the Urban Ministries of Durham, which prepare meals for the hungry in Durham. He said that the Food Bank of Central and Eastern North Carolina will then pick up the expected 20,000 pounds worth of remaining potatoes.
In addition, Duke Dining will receive a small number of potatoes for use in their cooking to promote sustainable food education, he added.
Christy Sapp, associate dean for religious life at Duke Chapel and an organizer of the event, said that she hopes the potato drop will spread greater awareness of food waste and food-related issues.
“We waste a lot of perfectly edible food in this country,” she wrote in an email Aug. 28. “I'd love for people to become more interested and involved in food-related ethical questions as a result of this event.”
Poore said that he thinks the potato drop showed students that they can easily get involved with their community. He added that in total the 40,000 pounds of potatoes will be able to provide 33,000 meals.
Ismail Aijazuddin, a sophomore and resident advisor on East Campus who made the potato drop an RA event for his residents, said that he thought the event was well-organized and efficient.
Although all 40,000 pounds of potatoes were bagged in record time, Sapp explained that the event leaders experienced some difficulties. She said that the shipping company tried to deliver the potatoes a day early, which posed a problem because there was no location to store them. Fortunately, the truck driver waited a day to unload his truck.
Poore added that redistributing the potatoes is “a logistical headache” at times because of the large number of organizations receiving the bags.
Despite the challenges, Sapp noted that she thinks the potato drop brought together diverse groups across campus.
“It's a community building event that touches on concepts that are important across so many different departments and interest groups in the University,” she said.
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