Feeding San Diego sends rescued food to help feed livestock at local farms

ANZA, Calif. (KGTV) – It’s feeding time at Phil Noble’s farm, Sage Mountain Farm in Anza, California. The farm grows plenty of crops and raises several animals on his family’s land.
“They love the high-sugar stuff. The apples, the plums, the peaches they just gourd out on those so,” Noble said.
And there are some things these livestock may stick their nose up at when it’s chow time.
“So — they don’t like lemons and grapefruit, but they do get composted in, we make fertilizer out of them,” Noble said.
The plump pigs, big bovines and a flock of fowls are here at Sage Mountain Farm in Anza.
The big tubs of grub for Noble’s livestock come from Feeding San Diego and its rescued food.
“About 3% of what we bring into our distribution center here can’t be eaten by people,” Kate Garrett, Director of Supply Chain at Feeding San Diego, said. “So anything that is not used to feed people is actually sent to some local farms.”
“Our animals are a lot healthier now that we do that versus just using commercial feed. So we have less health problems. It’s a fun relationship to work and understand like what’s coming in,” Noble said.
The damaged and bruised fruit that Phil uses to feed his animals is different from the ones we can eat, so they go to feed the animals that feed us.
And he’s not the only farm doing this.
“We also work with Bloom Family Farms. They’re located in Alpine, and they also come and pick up on a fairly regular basis,” Garrett said. “Whenever a farm comes to us and lets us know that they’re interested, we try to work with those farms as well.”
Noble thinks this effort is doing great things for him and other farmers.
“I think it’s great because our, our farms in San Diego County are, are a community in itself. I mean, and I think it’s great that every farm, you know, has some access to something like this,” Noble said. “You’re putting food to do good things, right? Instead of it taking it to a landfill.”
Taking the food there for the animals to eat instead of the landfill also helps all of us.
“So when food ends up in the landfill, it actually produces methane, which is a super pollutant 80 times more powerful than carbon dioxide. So these are really harmful environmental impacts we can really try to mitigate,” Garrett said.
It’s creating a closed circle to take a bite out of food waste.
“I remember going back about 15 years or so when these conversations just started and I, I mean, I’m really impressed with how it’s evolved and how the county’s gotten involved,” Noble said.
If you’re interested in donating to the Month of a Million Meals campaign,
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