Hungry cows keep food waste out of landfill

Francisco “Pancho” Martinez jerked the dump truck forward and out poured a whole bed’s worth of tomatoes, squash, melons and other past-prime produce mashed into a slop Friday morning.

While most humans would turn up their noses at the half-rotted and moldy produce, a herd of cows quickly swarmed the pile. Soon, on the ranch that operates on Martinez’s land off State Route 82, all that could be heard was the sound of contented bovine mastication.

“Right now, all that grass, it will keep an animal alive,” Martinez said, pointing to the dry stubble covering the hills. “But this stuff, they go for this stuff.”

Squash, he added later, is the cows’ favorite, and whatever isn’t eaten decomposes and helps improve soil health.

The herd is one of many in the area that benefits from close proximity to what has historically been the largest port of entry for imported fruit and vegetables from Mexico.

The free load of produce unfit for human consumption the cows enjoyed Friday came from the Borderlands Food Bank, which collects between 25 and 40 million pounds of mostly edible imported produce from local warehouses every year and distributes it to food banks and nonprofits around the country. But not all of it ends up on the tables of families in need, and last year nearly 2 percent of the total went to local ranches, like the one on Martinez’s land and more than 30 others in Santa Cruz County.

However, due to a now-enforced cap at the county landfill, the food bank has turned to composting and ranch donations much more heavily since then, according to director Yolanda Soto. While Borderlands Food Bank is where Martinez and others pick up much of the produce waste for cattle, the Nogales Community Food Bank and a number of local produce companies also give spoiled produce to ranchers.

Martinez said produce warehouses regularly call him looking to rid themselves of spoiling food. On a good day, he said, he can run six loads to his property, “depending on how fast they load me,” and he tries to put in three days a week during peak produce season, which can spell big savings.

“It helps him quite a bit because otherwise you’d have to buy hay,” Martinez said of the rancher who leases his land.

Landfill limits

The help goes both ways. For the produce companies that give spoiled food to Martinez and others, it saves them $45 a ton in landfill fees, as well as the cost of driving it there. But for the food bank, the help is even more critical.