Animals will eat those or the composting of the food simply returns nutrients to the environment

i don't want the rats in my neighborhood to return those nutrients to the environment, and i don't like tracking composting fruit into my apartment, though i guess if parrots eat the fruits while they're still on the tree that's okay

Even better when done without profit as a motive, like community volunteer efforts such as https://www.portlandfruit.org/

that's better if it works better, but often profit is what works better as a motive. ultimately what matters is that the fruit finds its way to hungry mouths—and that those mouths are human mouths and not rat mouths!

systematic harvesting is much better at that; whatever kind of point-scoring exercise people engage in on the way is irrelevant