In 2014, Mireia Barba left her job as a Business Studies graduate to pursue her dream of creating a foundation that would combat food waste. At the call of a farmer who has just harvested or plans to leave a farm unpicked due to issues of weight, size or appearance of the product, the Fundació Espigoladors mobilizes its body of volunteers. In a matter of hours, they comb through those fields to collect hundreds of kilos of food that would otherwise rot in the sun.
Mireia did not imagine that just a decade after turning her life and career around, the organization she promoted would have 3,000 volunteers, recover more than 400 tons of food per year and distribute 1.3 million portions of food to people. vulnerable. In that same period of time, Espigoladors (the Catalan way of saying “gleaners”, the traditional name for those who collected the fallen ears after harvesting) has promoted the Es im-perfect label, a canning workshop that has transformed 110,000 kilos of foods in jams, stir-fries, creams, jams or pâtés. And with this, it has saved the planet from the emission of 1,800 tons of CO2 and the consumption of 1,700 million liters of water.
Espigoladors settled in the Sant Cosme neighborhood of El Prat de Llobregat with a clear intention: to be near the Llobregat Delta Agrarian Park and, at the same time, in one of the most economically and socially vulnerable areas of the Barcelona metropolitan area. They took as inspiration the more than 300 earing associations that exist in the United States.
The operation is apparently simple, although it requires great strategic organization. Espigoladors closes agreements with producers who accept volunteers to collect surplus or non-marketable product. Organize teams of volunteers and immediately deliver the food to organizations such as the Food Bank, Cáritas, Red Cross, Solidarity Stores… and up to 94 social entities. “We donate 100% of what we collect,” declares Anna Gras, Head of Communication at Espigoladors.
At the same time, it has agreements with farmers to buy at favorable prices products that are too small or too large in size or that simply do not meet the aesthetic standards required by large distribution chains. Thus, artichokes with blackened outer leaves; pumpkins with spots on the skin; huge onions; carrots twisted instead of rocket straight; Plums, peaches or oranges with small defects… go directly to the Es im-perfect workshop, where they are turned into preserves.
“We employ around twenty people at risk of social exclusion who obtain a 3-year employment contract, are trained in food handling and transformation and, after that time, will be able to integrate into the conventional world of work,” says Anna Gras. . “At the end of their contract, the Social Services department of the El Prat de Llobregat town council will send us new candidates.”
Ideas boil in the modest offices that Espigoladors has in the Llobregat Delta. They have already extended their network to different Catalan regions and even monitored similar experiences in Navarra and Valencia. They admit, however, that there is not yet an organization in Spain with the implementation and impact that they have… although they would like it.
To become a volunteer gleaner you just have to sign up on their website and be willing to give a few hours to the service of food use and caring for the planet. Those who appear in the collaborator bags are mobilized by email and summoned to the farm in question. The number of volunteers is established depending on the hectares that need to be gleaned. Normally, a crew of 15-20 people can prepare a field in 3 hours in which 2,000 kilos of pumpkins are collected, for example. It is the volunteers who set their availability, although the days are preferably on weekdays and in the morning, to coordinate with the farmers.
This circumstance quite defines the typology of the volunteer gleaner. People with liberal professions, who work shifts or retirees. The profile: 60% are women over 60 years old who can attend the morning sessions. If it is on the weekend, young families with children appear and the atmosphere is different. In summer, when the hours of sunshine are generous and the heat is intense, gleanings can be organized starting in mid-afternoon. “We carry out educational activities with young people to raise awareness about food waste. And by the way, for them to become voluntary gleaners, but they have borne specific fruits, it is difficult for them to get hooked on a continuous basis like the older ones do,” Gras acknowledges.
Espigoladors has also begun to operate in the urban area. In 2021, it carried out a pilot experience to collect bitter oranges that hung from the street trees of Sant Andreu in Barcelona. The experience was so satisfactory that the city council of the Catalan capital has already granted them up to six districts for fruit collection. In the winter 2024 call, 600 people took part in the call, and several hundred who wanted to participate were left off the list. The oranges ended up turned into “imperfect fruit jam,” as they like to call it. By the way, Es-imperfect preserves are in the commercial circuit, and can be purchased in stores, as well as on the foundation’s website.
One of the best-known collaborators of Espigoladors – and a member of the foundation’s board – is chef Ada Parellada, continuator of a prestigious saga of Catalan chefs and visible head of the Semproniana restaurant in Barcelona. Every year she organizes several denunciation dinners made only with products that were destined for the trash can due to their appearance or size.
