It’s Harvest Festival season. School halls and churches up and down the land are overflowing with vegetables, fruit, tin cans and other goodies.

Though it’s a celebration with obvious importance for Essex’s farming areas, in our towns and cities Harvest Festival might seem like a quaint hangover from an earlier age.

I wouldn’t agree.

In fact, I think that we need to celebrate Harvest more than ever!

That’s because Harvest Festival reminds us to think of our food and produce as a precious gift, something we should never take for granted, something for which we should always give thanks.

While most of us enjoy a greater variety and quantity of food than ever, many others go hungry each day.

What’s more, UK homes waste an estimated 7 million tonnes of food and drink each year.

In the face of other people’s hunger at home and abroad that’s scandalous!

I suspect that if we all gave thanks for our food, and tried treating it as a precious gift, that we might not waste it so readily.

So whether we’re going to a Harvest Festival or not this year, why not try thinking of our food as a gift?

It might inspire us to make a donation to the local food bank, or to reduce the amount of food we buy and throw away.

We might be pleasantly surprised at how much money we save – money that could be donated to a charity tackling the problem of hunger.

Working to ensure that the gift of food is shared with all this Harvest would be something really worth celebrating!