Yesterday, I blogged about whether hunger was an environmental issue. I see a lot of reasons that it could be considered one -- waste of food that gets thrown out, waste of arable land, agricultural issues such as chemicals and genetically modified organisms.

Today, I heard from Gary Oppenheimer, founder of AmpleHarvest.org.

"The answer to your question is 'yes'.... and I can speak with some authority on it," he wrote in an email. 

"I’m a Rutgers Environmental Steward, TEDx speaker and a CNN Hero. I’m also the founder of AmpleHarvest.org – enabling millions of home gardeners nationwide to donate excess garden produce to local food pantries.... both to diminish hunger/malnutrition AND to improve the environment.

"This is not just my soapbox... the EPA considers wasted food an environmental hazard.... take a look at www.AmpleHarvest.org/epa," he wrote.

I loved how the EPA took up the liability issue of donating food, because I feel certain grocery stores would consider liability an obstacle. 

I looked at more than that, though. AmpleHarvest's website is wonderful.

One thing it has is a food pantry finder. I plugged in my zip code and in moments found that there were six within a 15-miles radius. I had known of one -- and had taken food there. But this wealth of opportunity -- and the dearth of produce it suggests -- already have me thinking about this year's garden. How much can I squeeze into it (and manage to keep maintained)? Once my freezer is full, I know where to take the rest.

The site has information about hunger in America and more. I could have spent an hour roaming its riches.

Here, from the website, is the story of how Oppenheimer launched his mission:

One out of six Americans (including a quarter of all kids under six ) does not have access to healthy fresh food at their food pantry. The AmpleHarvest.org Campaign is a national effort utilizing the Internet that enables 40+ million Americans who grow food in home gardens to easily donate their excess harvest to one of 4,792 registered local food pantries spread across all 50 states. 

Shortly after I became the director of the Sustainable West Milford Community Garden in late 2008, I learned that some of our garden plot holders -- like millions of backyard gardeners nationwide -- left large amounts of their garden produce unharvested when they grew more than they could possibly use.

Aware that hunger is a problem in our community, I suggested that we created a committee that would help to gather this extra food and deliver it to local food pantries. The program was named Ample Harvest West Milford.

Food pantries however were hard to find, in large part because most operate without an Internet site or yellow page listing. Google for example listed the nearest food pantry as being in a town 25 miles away, even though our own town had several of them. And it turns out this same challenge was faced by backyard gardeners nationwide wishing to share their bounty.

To address this dilemma, I created the AmpleHarvest.org Campaign, new supply side channel in our national food network that would educate, encourage and enable gardeners with extra produce to easily donate to a local food pantry. AmpleHarvest.org gives food pantries the opportunity to register themselves in a central nationwide directory so that gardeners and other donors can share their fresh produce and, garden-by-garden, help diminish hunger in America.