The Economic (and Artistic and Political) Practice of Gleaning

Jacinda Swanson

                It often seems that capitalism is lurking everywhere we turn. If anything, the growing discussion of “globalization” tends, more often than not, to further reinforce the image of capitalist markets as all-pervasive and unstoppable, if not inevitable. This image is not limited to conservative and business discourse. It is also common in the rhetoric and assumptions of the rightward-shifting Democratic Party in the U.S. and of the increasingly centrist labor and social-democratic parties in many of the other western democracies. And all too often it seems, unfortunately, to inform the worldview of leftists and progressives. But such images of capitalism may result in leftists becoming paralyzed or defeatist when it comes to envisioning economic and social alternatives to capitalism and formulating strategies to combat capitalist exploitation. To many, the only short-term remedies that seem realistic are those aimed at curbing the worst excesses of exploitation, while the possibility of eliminating exploitation is considered pie-in-the-sky utopianism or a far-off, always deferred prospect.

                Yet a fascinating new film, “Les Glaneurs et La Glaneuse” (English title, “The Gleaners and I”), by Agnès Varda thematizes one of the many forms of non-capitalist, non-market economic activity surrounding us today: gleaning. Partly inspired by Jean-Francois Millet's 1867 painting “Les Glaneuses” (“The Gleaners”), which portrays three women bending over gathering stray stalks of wheat from a harvested field, Varda’s moving, never-dry documentary explores contemporary forms of gleaning in France. Although, historically, gleaners referred to people who collected the remnants of the harvest, Varda adopts a wider notion of the practice to include those who scavenge for leftover food, artists who use discarded materials and refuse in their paintings or in the construction of outdoor “gardens,” people who salvage copper from televisions or repair and resell refrigerators put out with the trash, etc.

                If contemporary gleaning was confined solely to the poor salvaging food from dumpsters as a means of survival, it might be less an instance of an alternative economic practice worth celebrating than yet another symptom of scandalous levels of inequality and suffering in countries of great wealth. But Varda shows that even the practice of gleaning leftover food and crops extends well beyond the poor. There’s the chef at a pricey two-star restaurant gleaning herbs and fruit from nearby fields, and the man in Aix-en-Provence, of unspecified occupation and socioeconomic status, who, disgusted at the waste generated and tolerated by contemporary societies like France, describes his collecting from dumpsters (of, e.g., packaged food that’s just barely past its expiration date) as a political act.

Also portrayed are several instances of seemingly economically-secure middle- or working-class people who glean fruit, grapes, and other crops because it’s a traditional practice and right: it’s simply something that’s done, once by their parents and grandparents and now them. And surprisingly, French law is often on their side. Varda intersperses several comical scenes in which a French lawyer in his long black robes stands in a cabbage field citing passages from the French penal code that establish a right to glean.

                Varda also discusses the biblical roots of gleaning rights, citing Leviticus 22: 9-10, where Moses receives the following commandment from God: “When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap right to the edges of your field; neither shall you glean the loose ears of your crop; you shall not completely strip your vineyard nor glean the fallen grapes. You shall leave them for the poor and the alien.” In addition, Varda highlights the traditional, but now declining communal aspect of the practice when early in the film she talks with an “elderly peasant woman [who] recalls the old days, when, as in Millet’s painting, gleaning was a communal activity, festive and sociable even as it was backbreaking” (New York Times).

                But even when gleaning is done because of or in response to economic deprivation, such instances are significant and often suggest inspiring alternatives or supplements to common economic practices such as exploitative wage labor, wasteful consumption, individualistic property rights, etc. For example, the film begins with the tale of commercial potato processing and its waste. Potatoes sorted and processed for commercial sale must fall within certain size and shape requirements; those not meeting these criteria are simply thrown out. Varda films trucks transporting vast quantities of potatoes to fields where, rather than being donated or cheaply sold to less demanding consumers, the potatoes are dumped. To make matters worse, the locations of the dumped potatoes are never announced or advertised. Whether gleaners are able to find and then to salvage edible potatoes for use is a matter of luck and/or concerted detective work. Those filmed gleaning these discarded potatoes include not only the needy in search of food, but also workers from a soup kitchen, some of whom are formerly from the ranks of the poor and hungry who now want to help others in desperate need.

                Another interesting example involves a former graduate student living in a Paris suburb who sells newspapers and has lived for several years in government-provided housing. (At this point in the film, I couldn’t help but worry about such a fate for myself or my graduate student friends, given the decline of steady academic employment and the rise of temporary adjunct teaching positions in the U.S., with their lack of benefits and often poverty-level pay.) Very nutrition-conscious, the man subsists on fruits and vegetables gleaned from the trash remaining after the daily food markets and on day-old bread gleaned from the dumpsters of bakeries. Yet this very unorthodox manner of feeding himself is one of the conditions of existence for the generous, socially-useful volunteer labor he performs in his housing complex. Several hours a week, he teaches recent immigrants French. Viewing the film through my interest in deconstructing the hegemony of capitalism, I found Varda’s documentary to be particularly valuable in making visible that which is often invisible: examples of important economic activities taking place outside capitalist markets and capitalist exploitation.

                Immediately after seeing “The Gleaners and I”, I assumed that while some forms of gleaning (e.g., by the poor from dumpsters, by artists from trash) were also found in the U.S., crop gleaning did not occur here, given American-style property rights. To my surprise, a cursory search on the web revealed that there are gleaning organizations across the country, mainly structured around food banks and/or aimed at alleviating hunger. For instance, in 1992 the nonprofit organization Foodchain was established to provide information and to form a country-wide network among different locally-based, grassroots food rescue groups.

While I see no evidence of the existence in the U.S. of legally sanctioned gleaning rights, a 1996 New York Times article reports that “Gleaning... is spreading in the United States, from the larger farms where it first cropped up years ago to small organic farms, supermarkets and cafeterias. In some cases, gleaning remains closer to its biblical origins, with volunteers sweating in a field to save fresh produce, passed up during the harvest, from being plowed under, In other cases, the gleaners salvage prepared foods from caterers and bakers.” In fact, a National Summit on Gleaning and Food Recovery was convened in 1997 by Vice President Al Gore and Secretary of Agriculture Dan Glickman, following census and Department of Agriculture surveys depicting the simultaneous high rates of hunger and food waste in the United States. These surveys found that in 1995 “11.9 million households experienced food insecurity,” and that 96 billion pounds of food, “27% of the 356 billion pounds of food available for human consumption,” were wasted. This summit was aimed at decreasing hunger by decreasing food waste. Although I’ve seen nothing in the press about any current national gleaning initiatives, such efforts may be urgently needed—in the present political climate of decreased spending on many social services—if the economy continues to slow, wages fall or unemployment rises, and people exhaust their five-year time limit for receipt of public assistance.

                In line with conservatives’ preference for charity and tax-incentives, Indiana’s own Republican Senator Richard Lugar reintroduced legislation this January to “make it easier for restaurants, food processors and farmers to contribute food to food banks, pantries and homeless shelters by allowing the deduction of the full market value of donated food” since “[u]nder current tax law, the deduction allowed does not cover expenses incurred by the business.” While a far cry from the more egalitarian French gleaning rights, Lugar’s legislation is motivated by the important recognition that hunger is a real and significant problem in the U.S., and one that is getting worse not better, partly because of “welfare reform.” A press release by Lugar states, “Demand for emergency food assistance in American cities is increasing by a fifth each year. About the same percentage of emergency food requests are denied because of a lack of food. Catching just one percent of the 96 billion pounds of food that goes to waste each year will double the donations to the nation’s food banks.”

                In heavily agricultural states such as Arizona and Florida, local gleaning organizations arrange with some individual farmers and property owners to gather crops remaining in the fields after the harvest or on fruit trees no one intends to pick; they also rescue loads of produce that farmers would normally throw away when market prices drop too much. Other organized gleaning activities in the U.S. include coordinating with grocery stores, restaurants, and food manufactures like Kellogg’s to take their nonstandard, “defective,” or extra products—as when the boxes of Raisin Bran have too many raisins or when there are Christmas-decorated packages of Rice Krispies left in stock after Christmas. Otherwise, these products end up in our already overflowing landfills. In another example of a non-capitalist, non-market gift economy, volunteers in Missoula, Montana, compiled a list of local residents who could not pick and consume all the apples on their trees, picked the apples, and found a local cannery to donate its equipment and labor to can the gleaned apples, which were then given to the local food bank.

                While the U.S. practice of food gleaning may mostly involve instances of charity and need, Varda’s portrayal of the rich diversity of gleaning practices in France suggests that gleaning doesn’t have to be confined to acts of survival or charity; there may still be a role for gleaning in a society based on justice and equality (as opposed to one based on charity) and free from hunger and poverty. When it fosters communal values and practices, and tempers exclusive private-property rights, it strikes me as an alternative economic practice worth celebrating and possibly preserving—if only as an example of the possibility of creating many other non-capitalist economic activities and institutions. As for current political and economic strategies, capitalism appears far less powerful and inevitable when we can see the many other non-capitalist forms of production, distribution, and consumption in our very midst today. By identifying and fostering some of these alternative economic practices, we can help to replace capitalist exploitation with much more desirable alternatives.