Gleaning and the Harvest

I am reflecting on the trip I recently took to the Balkans and the end of the Jewish holiday, Sukkot, which is in celebration of the harvest season. There was impressive agriculture going on in both Serbia and Croatia, with astonishing fruits and vegetables, and a large amount of land devoted to raising feed corn as well. There is also impressive unemployment in Serbia. I was repeatedly told that in Serbia proper unemployment is at 30% of the population--and no one knows what is going on in Kosovo (which Serbia still regards as it's territory, while the U.N. is occupying it and Europe considers it independent). An estimated 20% of Serbians do not work, either due to age or unemployability--so that leaves the other half to support them. A very difficult situation.
When we were driving from Zagreb to Belgrade on our last day in the Balkans, I saw a man with a wooden cart hauled by a horse in a harvested field of corn. He was gleaning. The classic painting on the subject of gleaning is this one by Jean François Millet in 1857, and I have always loved this concept. People who do not have enough to eat, or have more time than they have money can go into a field and pick up what is left over. No one is going to use that food, and someone should have it. In our country we do not encourage, or even allow gleaning, but in days gone by, in Millet's time, farmers would invite gleaners into their field after the harvest. It was a nod to those less fortunate than oneself. I didn't see a lot of horse drawn carts on the trip, but I saw more than one. Serbia in particular is a country balanced on the edge. There is some impressive infrastructure, roads and bridges being two examples, but there are significant problems to be overcome as well.