Baton Rouge Green: Harvest citrus bounty for needy

BATON ROUGE (AP) — A Baton Rouge nonprofit hopes to harvest citrus from yard trees for food banks.
Even relatively small trees are heavy with fruit, Baton Rouge Green spokeswoman Amy Loe said. She knows this firsthand: she’s been giving away lots of lemons from her tree.
The group is asking tree owners in and around Baton Rouge to donate extra citrus. It’s also looking for volunteers to harvest the fruit on Dec. 13.
“Any kind of fresh fruit like that is tremendously important to the people we service,” said Mike Manning, president and chief executive officer of the Greater Baton Rouge Food Bank.
He said it’s especially welcome because reduced donations and U.S. Department of Agriculture cuts have left the food bank is about a million pounds down in the amount of food it’s been able to distribute, compared to last year.
“To get fresh fruit is just tremendous,” he said.
Baton Rouge Green is dedicated to improving and conserving the urban forest in the 11-parish Baton Rouge area.
The harvest is a project of the group’s City Citrus program, which has planted numerous trees on public land so anyone can pick the fruit. Those trees all are too young to bear.
The citrus harvest is a new project, so it’s starting small, concentrating on Baton Rouge and nearby cities such as Baker and Zachary, Loe said.
“The City Citrus is volunteer based, so we want to match pickers to growers,” she said.
However, Loe said, if someone farther afield has a significant number of trees, volunteers may be able to go there, too.
Citrus tree owners who would like to participate, and volunteers who would like to help harvest, are asked to sign up online at www.citycitrus.com under the “Food Bank Harvest” listing.