Gleaning and SNAP

 I was reading Ruth for a Bible Study and ran into both the word and concept of gleaning. Leviticus 19:9-10 directs farmers:

9“ ‘When you reap the harvest of your land, do not reap to the very edges of your field or gather the gleanings of your harvest. 10Do not go over your vineyard a second time or pick up the grapes that have fallen. Leave them for the poor and the foreigner. I am the Lord your God.

Why? Even the poorest could put a small amount of labor into gathering food without anyone else needing to do so. This provided for them but also meant that a poor person would need to invest some effort into getting himself fed. At the same time, he was not going (to mix a Victorian metaphor profoundly time machine blended) cap in hand asking for help. His dignity was undamaged. If you were too proud to invest a few minutes of your time locating unharvested food, you were probably too proud. From the Torah.com:

The concept of “charity” (tzedakah) in a form recognizable to us today – as giving one’s money or other asset to the poor without an expectation of compensation from the recipient – is a post-biblical development, beginning in the Hellenistic era and brought to fuller fruition in the earliest rabbinic texts (second-third centuries C.E.).[1] In the Hebrew Bible, support for the poor is provided in a variety of different ways.

Exodus 23:11 instructs landowners to leave their land fallow every seventh year for the poor to collect what grows. Deuteronomy (14:28–9 and 26:12–15) requires the tithe in the third and sixth years of the Sabbatical cycle, to be given to the needy, and advocates lending to the poor in the years leading up to the cancellation of debts every seventh year (15:7–11).

A number of prophetic texts also express special empathy for the poor, instructing the reader not to take advantage of the needy (Isa 3:14–15, 10:1–2; Jer 5:28; Amos 8:4–6) while the book of Esther (9:22) instructs one to give “gifts to the poor” on the festival of Purim.

Above all, the preeminent way to support the poor in the Hebrew Bible is through allocations to the poor at the time of the harvest, which is the focus of this piece.

Gleraning seems to have been a right recognized in English law at times:

GLEANING, LEASING,OR LESING, FromFr. glainer, quasi graner ; colligere grana. Teuton. Ahrlesen, ex ahr, spica, & lesen, colligere. Minshew in v. Glean] It hath beensaid, that by the commonlaw and custom ofEngland, the poor are allowed toenter and gleanuponanother'sground, after the harvest,withoutbeing guilty of trespass; which humane provision seems borrowed from the Mosaical law. 3 Comm. 212, 213. Trials per pais, c. 15. p. 438. 534. [Giles Jacob, comp. 3 The Law-Dictionary 185 ( 1811).]

Right of poor to glean-Most municipal laws had some rules relating to poor and famishing people before poor laws were adopted. Moses prohibited the owners of fields from reaping the corners of their crops, or from gathering the scattered ears, or fruits of the trees after being shaken, these being reserved as an indirect fund of support to the gleaners.¹ And a traveller could pluck the ears of corn growing near the wayside and eat, though not carry them away; and he was even justified in entering his neighbour's vineyard and eating enough of grapes to satisfy his appetite.2 And Mahomet also recognised gleaning as a sacred right of the poor. Moreover a Brahmin in his travels when hungry was exempted from fine, if he took only two sugar-canes, or two esculent roots from another's field. 4 By the ancient laws of Wales a poor man, who had traversed a certain breadth of country without obtaining either alms or entertainment, was not punishable though caught with stolen eatables in his possession. [James Paterson, 2 COMMENTARIES ON THE LIBERTY OF THE SUBJECT AND The Laws of England RELATING TO The Security of the Person, 24 (1877)]

If the right to glean was ever recognized in American law, I have not seen it. Yet the parallel to SNAP (or "Food Stamps" as the program was known in my youth) is very strong. When Food Stamps were created, the goal was to soak up the surplus that American agriculture had created by its high efficiency in the postwar era. This is why the Food Stamp Act of 1964 excluded imported foods:

(b) The term “food” means any food or food product for human consumption except alcoholic beverages, tobacco, those foods which are identified on the package as being imported, and meat and meat products which are imported.

In a weird analogy, SNAP was doing the gleaning on behalf of the poor. Farmers were producing food so efficiently that there was not enough demand to buy it all, so our government was doing a sort of post-harvest gleaning. Similarly, if you are of my generation, you remember US Government surplus cheese in the 1980s.

Most cities have laws prohibiting the poor from taking the garbage behind restaurants. There are certainly some health risks associated with this; I can also see why this likely leads to unsightly messes. I think laws allowing restaurants to leave in clearly marked locations food that has not gone bad that could be safely put in a timed container: eat until 10:00 PM. This could certainly alleviate hunger among the homeless. Is this an ideal way of doing it? No. But better than letting people fall through the crevasses of pride or bureaucracy.

I can see why farmers might not be keen on legal recognition of gleaning. It would certainly be commercially misused. Not everyone gleaning a harvest is likely to be responsible about access to the fields.