I volunteer at a food bank, and the company that sends us our food decides what we get. Last Tuesday they sent so much produce we could not fit it all into fridges. We were trying to give away cases of the food on Wednesday, but people were turning it down because they had no place to store a case of tomatoes, or cauliflower. This was what we had left after last Wednesday's morning give away. Not pictured the 5000lbs of watermelons, the 2500lbs of onions (those will last a lot longer).
The company that supplies us wants to move from sending shipments every other week, to once a month. This would cause even more no produce loss.
It is so frustrating to have all this food for it to go bad. Even if we got the same volume of produce, but there was variation in what it is we could give it away easier.
Edit: I posted this in a comment.
Because of bureaucracy we have to request this. If it is found out we are giving away the food to unapproved recipients we can lose all of our funding. If we give to unapproved recipients and they in turn give us prepared food to give out, that is okay.
Word got out that we were loading up my pickup with food and taking it to the homeless camps. I did get a number of them to start coming to the bank to get food. But it was easier when I could take stuff to them.
We are not allowed to simply give it out to anyone. This is not like a church pantry where all of the food is donated by the community and's parishioners. There is government funding, as well as private businesses, which I am guessing get their money back from the government for funding this. If we could simply give it to anyone we would not be in this situation.
Are you dense? The OP said they tried giving it away but nobody wanted it. I guess people must not really be starving that badly if storing it is their main concern. UBI isn't going to solve that because if people won't even take it for free they sure as hell aren't going to pay for it.
It wasn't homeless or starving people turning it away. It was other organizations that didn't have the space to store it. Probably because their shelves were also full of food that they need to give away before it spoils.
If there were individuals turning it down, they probably already had enough food for the day (likely also from OP), and had no way of keeping a crate of vegetables for later because -
... How exactly do you imagine this works? How do you accept food that you can't put anywhere? Do you take it, and put it outside, so it can spoil faster?
If you put it out on the street in an urban area, it would be infested by rats within the hour, which would literally make them more dangerous than starvation. Sickness from eating food tainted by rat droppings would leave you with far less calories than you started with.
Or let me guess, you think they should just bring it straight to the homeless who need it? Well:
OP literally can't bring the food to the starving. If they could, the food would all be eaten by the people that need it. There are people that absolutely will take and eat this food because they want and need it, but OP can't deliver it to them. None of this is about a shortage of people willing to eat cauliflower.
Where did you read that? I'm actually curious, please quote!
Literally the third sentence in the OP:
"We were trying to give away cases of the food on Wednesday, but people were turning it down because they had no place to store a case of tomatoes, or cauliflower."
I see your confusion, people aren't simply saying no to vegetables, they're saying no to cases of the same vegetable as they know they realistically won't be able to eat it all before it goes off.
I also have a feeling you skipped the last part:
I said they did not want it in large quantities. Most of the people who come through the bank are conscious of other's and know they do not have the time or means to deal with all of the extra fresh produce while working multiple jobs, or some live in a motel room with only a microwave. So they do not take something that maybe someone else could use. We did have some people taking cases. But not everyone can deal with that.
Everyone was given, I think, 4 heads of cauliflower and a dozen tomatoes in their cart. Very few did not take them. They were also offered a case of veggies. Which most declined. Hell I did not even take a full case myself because I know I did not have time to process it.