People live form the land or livestock. Even without much money you could get food. Plus, was part of the Law that anyone could harvest from any field after the first pass from the owners, as measure against starvation.

If you live in a rural area, even today, you will see that is normal and easy to share and get food free or very cheap (in fact, a lot of food will not get in the supermarket for lack of ways to fully utilize the capacity!).

Is kind of simply to maintain a live if your are friendly in the community.