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Flashfood, Price Rite to Boost Fresh Sales, Cut Waste
Flashfood, an app-based marketplace that strives to eliminate retail food waste by connecting consumers with discounted food nearing its best by date, is adding more stores to its U.S. footprint through a new pilot program with Price Rite Marketplace.
August 12, 2021
Flashfood, an app-based marketplace that strives to eliminate retail food waste by connecting consumers with discounted food nearing its best by date, is adding more stores to its U.S. footprint through a new pilot program with Price Rite Marketplace. Price Rite Marketplace customers in the western New York area can now save up to 50 percent off select groceries that would otherwise go to waste.
The Flashfood app allows shoppers to browse and purchase fresh food, including produce, meat, deli and bakery products, nearing its best before date at significantly reduced prices. Shoppers can find great deals and purchase through the app, then simply pick up their items at the Flashfood zone located at their selected Price Rite store.
“We’re thrilled to work with Price Rite Marketplace as our newest partner committed to fighting food waste while helping their customers save significantly on their groceries,” said Josh Domingues, CEO of Flashfood. “Flashfood is a triple-win for our partners, the planet and people. We look forward to connecting Price Rite Marketplace shoppers with great deals while helping them make sustainable choices.”
In addition to helping customers shop more affordably with Flashfood, Price Rite Marketplace also supports local communities by donating to charitable organizations such as Feed the Children, contributing nearly 3 million pounds of food across 49 cities since 2015.
“Partnering with Flashfood is a natural next step as we continue to create environmentally-friendly neighborhoods and exceptional value for shoppers,” said Jim Dorey, president of Price Rite Marketplace. “We are proud of the concerted efforts our stores have made over the years to minimize our environmental footprint and look forward to seeing the impact of our new partnership with Flashfood.”
To date, Flashfood has partnered with grocery chains across the U.S. and Canada to divert more than 25 million pounds of food from landfills.
Re-Nuble And KETOS Partner To Provide Turnkey On-Site Food Waste Recovery Solution For Soilless Farms
Re-Nuble’s on-site food waste recovery system helps soilless farms optimize their operations while reducing costs
By 24-7 Press Release
June 17, 2021
NEW YORK, NY, June 17, 2021 /24-7PressRelease/ — Re-Nuble has announced a new strategic partnership with water innovator KETOS today, providing soilless farms across the United States with a turnkey on-site food waste recovery solution. By combining the technology of Re-Nuble’s on-site food waste recovery system with the KETOS SHIELD, soilless farms will not only be able to produce their own free supplementary and sterile biostimulants and potable water for reuse, but they will also gain access to industry-standard lab data on the quality of their treated water.
Re-Nuble’s on-site food waste recovery system helps soilless farms optimize their operations while reducing costs. Through its Organic Cycling Science™ approach, farms can finally use a fully integrated, closed-loop, and self-sustaining nutrient system, capable of reducing input and disposal costs, while delivering biostimulants capable of improving crop yield and nutritional value. However, as water droughts and erratic weather patterns become more frequent, the need for resource efficiency using circular economy strategies, particularly water reuse, is becoming increasingly necessary.
“We’re here to help our clients be proactive about water reuse in order to create a fully circular food production and hedge their risks. For that reason, we saw an immense value add for our clients by partnering with KETOS,” commented Tinia Pina, Founder, and CEO of Re-Nuble.
The KETOS SHIELD is part of a fully integrated solution offering valuable water insights including automated reporting, real-time alerts, EPA-compliant or custom threshold-based diagnostics, custom reports, historical trends, and more. These insights are used for water quality, safety assurance testing, protecting liability, understanding process optimization, improving crop yields and water data for farming and protecting consumer health.
“We are pleased to partner with Re-Nuble, as water quality and conservation is critical for agricultural applications – particularly in instances where nutrient management, water availability, water quality and consistency, or product safety is essential,” said Meena Sankaran, Founder and CEO of KETOS. “For many farmers, poor nutrient management, a lack of water, low water quality, inconsistent or varied water sources, and safety concerns can have a significant impact on both revenue and profitability.”
Re-Nuble noticed this was a salient challenge for all farms but more prevalent amongst the growing indoor, controlled environment agriculture market due to the frequent wastewater discharges not reclaimed. However, the solution is also of interest to soil-based farms as more municipalities seek to limit nutrient runoff and water contamination, impacting underground water tables.
Today’s announcement builds on Re-Nuble’s mission to help global agricultural communities reimagine localized food waste for more sustainable growing practices.
ABOUT RE-NUBLE
Re-Nuble is an MWBE-certified agricultural technology company that uses organic cycling science™ technology to transform unrecoverable vegetative food byproducts into a platform of sustainable technologies for soilless farming. Our closed-loop process transforms unrecoverable food byproducts into organic goods while eliminating landfill waste and greenhouse gasses. We were founded with the mission to help global agricultural communities reimagine localized food waste for more sustainable, environmentally-friendly growing practices.
For more information, please visit www.re-nuble.com.
ABOUT KETOS
KETOS delivers smarter, safer, and more sustainable water solutions to change the way the world thinks about water. This is done through a comprehensive offering of industrial-grade patented hardware, an IoT communication framework, and a robust software platform to address global water management issues. Real-time monitoring and understanding of water, both quantitatively and qualitatively, helps address both water efficiency (leak-detection & usage) and water quality (safety), ultimately increasing water availability. With the power of actionable and predictive water intelligence on a global scale, KETOS seeks to solve a number of the world’s water challenges with the goal of preserving this quintessential resource for generations to come. Learn more at http://www.ketos.co.
Press release service and press release distribution provided by http://www.24-7pressrelease.com
China Enacts Food Waste Law, Brings In Bans For Binge-Eating & Fines For Leftovers
The food waste law also introduces a fee that restaurants can charge to their patrons if they leave “excessive” amounts of uneaten food at the end of their meals. Vendors that “induce or mislead consumers into making excessive orders” can now be fined up to ¥10,000 ($1,540)
May 4, 2021
The Chinese government has passed a wide-ranging law aimed at reducing food wastage in the world’s most populous country.
Among the provisions of the food waste law are a ban on competitive eating and hefty fines of up to ¥100,000 ($15,400) for making “binge-eating” videos where vloggers “usually leave a lot of food uneaten and often vomit what they have consumed,” according to the state-owned Global Times.
The social media phenomenon of livestream eating originated in South Korea where it is called mukbang, meaning ‘eating broadcast.’ The Chinese term for the genre, chībō, means the same thing. Chībō has become wildly popular throughout China in recent years – though not without controversy.
The food waste law also introduces a fee that restaurants can charge to their patrons if they leave “excessive” amounts of uneaten food at the end of their meals. Vendors that “induce or mislead consumers into making excessive orders” can now be fined up to ¥10,000 ($1,540).
Restaurants that consistently waste “large amounts” of food face fines of up to ¥50,000 ($7,720).
The law was first proposed to China’s legislature, the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress, late last year after Chinese president Xi Jinping described the country’s food waste problem as “shocking and distressing.”
According to the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, restaurants in the country’s major cities waste 18 million tonnes of food a year, which the Academy estimates as being enough to feed up to 50 million people in the same timeframe.
While the Communist Party-affiliated Times claimed the “adoption of the legislation against food waste does not imply that China is facing an immediate food shortage risk, but [is] a far-sighted move for food security,” China simply can’t afford to waste this much food.
With 1.4 billion mouths to feed and issues such as a growing but ageing population, desertification of already limited cultivable land, and deteriorating relations with major food exporter countries, China is facing significant food shortage risks over the medium to long term.
The Academy predicts a domestic grain supply shortfall of 130 million tons by 2025, with China’s dwindling rural workforce cited as a key factor – meaning that the country can’t simply turn to traditional agriculture as a solution.
In recent years, investment has been pouring into China’s burgeoning agrifoodtech space, with much of it targeted at solving the country’s food security and resilience issues.
Released last month, AgFunder‘s China 2021 Agrifood Startup Investing Report found that agrifoodtech funding in the country rose 66% year-on-year in 2020 to reach $6 billion.
While most of that capital went to e-grocery companies, upstream categories raised a total of $1.4 billion, taking a 24% share of overall agrifood investment compared to 14% a year earlier. In particular, business models and technologies aimed at bringing efficiencies and smaller environmental footprints to farming – such as robotics and drones, farm management software, and biotech solutions – received substantial funding; while startups developing alternative protein sources with the objective of reducing China’s reliance on animal agriculture also saw a pop in funding.
However, solutions specifically targeting food waste reduction and valorization were notably absent from China’s top agrifoodtech funding deals last year – perhaps indicating a major area of white space for entrepreneurs and prospective investors to keep an eye on going forward.
Food Waste To Indoor Farming Input: Re-Nuble Raises $1.1m Seed Funding
New York-based Re-Nuble is adopting yet another strategy: turning food waste into a way to grow more food. The company’s technology ‘upcycles’ organic compounds from unrecoverable vegetable food waste, generating water-soluble, organic, hydroponic nutrients for soilless farms
November 23, 2020
Startups are taking a diversity of approaches to tackle the issue of food waste. Phood is using hardware and software to measure and address waste in restaurant kitchens, while Clean Crop is targeting post-harvest wastage. Ambrosia turned leftovers into a household cleaning product while Full Harvest connects food producers with buyers to sell what would otherwise go to waste.
New York-based Re-Nuble is adopting yet another strategy: turning food waste into a way to grow more food. The company’s technology ‘upcycles’ organic compounds from unrecoverable vegetable food waste, generating water-soluble, organic, hydroponic nutrients for soilless farms.
“We haven’t seen anyone applying this to indoor or controlled environment ag,” Tinia Pina, Re-Nuble founder, and CEO, told AFN.
Pina’s inspiration for the business came from her stint working as a teacher in 2012, when she noticed a serious lack of healthy food options for her students. In her view, this affected their productivity – which had downstream implications for their future success. She saw an opportunity to wrap her interest in tamping down food waste into the venture, too.
Re-Nuble recently closed a $1.1 million seed round led by Global Sustainable Future. She1K, SOSV, SVG Ventures, WOCstar, and others participated in the round as well.
The fundraising process involved some education, Pina explained. Investors at first considered Re-Nuble’s need for a constant supply of food waste as a risk – but the former teacher taught them that there’s certainly no shortage.
“The other thing we had to really educate investors on was how food waste is handled differently region to region,” she said. “Agricultural economies are going to have different regulations. Here in New York, by 2022 a lot of the industrial and commercial food scraps or food waste generators have to divert to an organic recycler within 20 miles.”
Pina said she met with prospective investors all over the US, but ended up having most success raising from investors on the East Coast.
“[That’s] because I think the sophistication of seeing the potential with agtech, especially in the NYC metropolitan area, helped us. And, to be quite honest, I think the diversity of seeing a woman of color in agriculture. That is an anomaly in some states based on what I have experienced.”
The new funds will be used for typical seed-stage tasks like hiring, R&D, manufacturing, and general acceleration. Pina estimates the product market pipeline is worth at least $2 million.
Thanks to a lot of upfront diligence, Re-Nuble is confident that it has reached product-market fit and that securing customers won’t be too much of a challenge. The startup spent seven years studying different food waste characterizations and their biochemical reactions when applied under different environmental controls for a group of specialty crop varietals.
“We’ve been really drilling down and making sure the product works consistently in each type of farm, which is very different,” Pina said. “Some use deep water culture systems, some vertical farming systems are using tray racking systems and ebb and flow. Others are nutrient film techniques. We really wanted to spend the time to make sure that it is consistent in all farm types.”
In addition to its core nutrients product, Re-Nuble has also developed what it calls its ‘On-Site Food Waste Recovery System.’ This captures residual product waste — such as plant matter like vines, leaf cuttings, and perishable produce — as well as a farm’s wastewater for conversion into sterilized biostimulants and potable water. These byproducts are then reused for reduced water and agricultural input consumption.
The startup has faced some serious Covid-related challenges, according to Pina. It had a $500,000 loan rescinded that caused the team to completely redesign its manufacturing process, while also trying to work with manufacturing equipment under a cash-strapped budget.
“We’ve overcome that and we are now on pace to continue working with the farms that we’ve been doing case studies with, which we will release Q1 of next year,” she said. “That will definitely lead to growth and allow us to accelerate more farms getting access to our product.”
New York City Startup Called Re-Nuble Turns Food Waste Into Fertilizer
A New York City startup is using potato peels, apple cores, and rotten tomatoes to help farmers grow fresh fruits and vegetables
It Can Be Used To Grow Crops in Indoor Hydroponic Farms.
February 5, 2020
Re-Nuble CEO and founder Tinia Pina. (Image credit: Re-Nuble video)
A New York City startup is using potato peels, apple cores, and rotten tomatoes to help farmers grow fresh fruits and vegetables.
“We take produce waste from food distributors and food processors – anything that can’t go to a food bank or farm,” says Tinia Pina, founder, and CEO of Re-Nuble.
The company converts food waste into organic fertilizer pellets that can be used in indoor, hydroponic farms.
Pina says when dissolved in water, the pellets make the nutrients immediately available to the plant, mimicking the biological nutrient systems found outdoors.
So she says the technology can help make it easier to grow organic food indoors in urban areas, where fresh local food is often scarce.
And it helps the climate. It keeps food out of landfills, where it would otherwise decompose and release methane, a potent greenhouse gas.
It also reduces the need for synthetic fertilizers, which create a lot of carbon pollution when they’re manufactured.
So far, the company has facilities in New York City and Rochester, New York, and plans to expand to the West Coast. Pina hopes to eventually help cities across the country use their food scraps to grow local, organic food.
Reporting credit: Sarah Kennedy/ChavoBart Digital Media.
How Urban Agriculture Can Contribute To Food Security
Urban agriculture has a major role to play in providing healthy, affordable and accessible food to poor urban households in South Africa, according to Prof Juaneé Cilliers, chair of the Urban and Regional Planning Unit for Environmental Sciences and Management at North-West University
October 23, 2019
Urban agriculture has a major role to play in providing healthy, affordable and accessible food to poor urban households in South Africa, according to Prof Juaneé Cilliers, chair of the Urban and Regional Planning Unit for Environmental Sciences and Management at North-West University.
Worldwide, an average of three babies are born every second. This means that the global population grows by about 162 600 people per day, roughly equivalent to the population of George (157 000) or Midrand (173 000).
At the same time, spatial change is at a peak within the urban landscape, with 65% of South Africa’s population currently residing in cities.
READ How agriculture can ease the global urban water shortage
Our growing cities are also increasingly expensive living places characterized by urban sprawl and amplified travel distances, growing carbon footprints, increased energy consumption, and complicated distribution networks.
All this leads to higher food prices and greater food wastage, neither of which are beneficial to the urban poor. Recent data from Statistics South Africa suggests that 70% of urban households in South Africa live in conditions of food insecurity.
Bringing green spaces to urban areas
The world’s growing cities host more people, but less nature. Green spaces in cities have been susceptible to urban development pressures, evident in the depletion of green spaces and the associated downward spiral of living conditions.
In the search for “inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable cities”, one of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, the interrelated role of nature as a catalyst to reach the objectives of sustainability, is emphasized.
READ Eastern Cape urban agri projects to be rejuvenated
There is a consensus that we need to reclaim nature in cities in order to mitigate the challenges associated with these growing urban sprawls while capitalizing on the range of ecosystem services provided by nature.
Cities, which were once viewed as places where nature ends and urbanization begins, are today considered as a central nexus in the relationship between people and nature.
It is within these contemporary cities that we need to find sustainable future solutions as a matter of urgency because the challenge of sustaining life as we know it is becoming more complicated by the day.
Growing cities, increasing populations and escalating poverty levels mean that we cannot continue with a business-as-usual attitude.
One of the most important conservation issues of the 21st century is where and how food is produced in order to feed a growing and fast-urbanizing population.
Traditional agricultural practices have been widely criticized for their negative environmental impact.
This includes deforestation, threats to wild species, the destruction of habitats and biodiversity, pollution of water, air and soil, high water consumption and water quality degradation, as well as greenhouse gas emission and climate change.
Growing cities place further pressures on agricultural practices. With urban sprawl comes prolonged distribution networks, complex food supply chains, more costly processing, and packaging, and ultimately, more expensive produce, greater food waste and increased food insecurity.
Despite these negatives, agriculture remains one of the most important frontiers for conservation at the moment due to the industry’s deep connections with the global economy, human societies, and biodiversity.
Our challenge lies in finding ways to best utilize space, energy, and logistics in order to sustain an increasing urban population. In short, we need to rethink our cities, but we also need to rethink traditional agricultural practices.
Smart cities: easier accessibility and greater choice
The concept of smart cities is increasingly recognized as part of the discourse on sustainable cities.
To most people, a ‘smart city’ is one that is technology-driven and futuristic, where real-time intelligence informs decision-making and anticipates and mitigates a range of societal problems. From a spatial planning perspective, a smart city implies accessibility and choice.
Accessibility refers to better-structured networks and connections between communities and their host cities, while choice refers to a range of housing and transportation options. From an agricultural perspective, accessibility and choice pertain to options to ensure food security within the contemporary city.
Agricultural technologies and smart data and analytics are set to increase food production within cities. They will also help meet the ever-growing global demand and logistical distribution of food without further disturbing the urban environment. This smart city solution is encapsulated in the notion of urban agriculture.
Grow food in places where it was previously impossible
Urban agriculture offers innovative, sustainable solutions to the improvement of food security in cities, and simultaneously assists with mitigating the environmental challenges faced by cities.
Urban agriculture can be as simple as small, outdoor community, rooftop and backyard gardens, or as complex as indoor vertical farms with nutrient-enriched water and UV lighting to mimic the effects of the sun.
READ Women in agriculture are key to boosting food security
New technologies enable food to be grown in places where it was previously difficult or impossible, making urban agriculture a viable option for cities where space is limited.
Although not all crops can be grown indoors, urban agriculture has the potential to become a dynamic economic sector that can quickly adapt to changing urban conditions and demands, diversifying the functions of the city.
Urban agriculture makes it possible to produce fresh, nutritious food with low carbon and water footprints, while conserving land, reducing emissions and waste and providing healthy, affordable, accessible food to a city’s poorest residents.
It is, therefore, not surprising that a growing number of cities worldwide have already designed policies and programs to include urban agriculture as part of city planning.
Perhaps South Africa, too, should consider the integration of urban agriculture in mainstream spatial planning, and guide cities towards the creation of demarcated zones for urban agricultural production.
When urban agriculture is formalized as a land use, it has the potential to change the entire urban and agricultural landscape, increase access to healthy food options in urban areas, and mitigate the environmental impact of feeding the world.
Although urban agriculture might not be the only solution to solving food security across the world, it is certainly part of the solution to feed the 70% of urban poor households in South Africa, adding to the development of sustainable, socially inclusive, food-secure and environmentally healthy cities.
The views expressed in our weekly opinion piece do not necessarily reflect those of Farmer’s Weekly.
Email Prof Juaneé Cilliers at juanee.cilliers@nwu.ac.za.
The World Loses $400 Billion of Food Before It Reaches Stores
Some 14% of all food produced is lost annually, with central and southern Asia, North America and Europe accounting for the biggest shares, the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization said in a report, citing the latest data as of 2016
October 14, 2019
About 14% of food supplies are lost each year: the United Nations
Food wastage causes unnecessary pressure on the environment: FAO
The world loses about $400 billion of food before it evengets delivered to stores, according to the United Nations.
Some 14% of all food produced is lost annually, with central and southern Asia, North America and Europe accounting for the biggest shares, the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization said in a report, citing the latest data as of 2016. Better cold storage and infrastructure would help reduce losses, but more detailed data on the supply chain is needed to tackle the problem, it said.
Food wastage is drawing increased scrutiny because of the contribution to greenhouse gas emissions and as more than 820 million people are estimated to go hungry each day. World leaders have pledged to try to halve global food waste at retail and consumer levels by 2030 and reduce food production losses. Companies are also trying to improve efficiency in the food industry.
Perished Food
Share of food that's lost from post-harvest to distribution
“Losing food implies unnecessary pressure on the environment and the natural resources that have been used to produce it in the first place,” Qu Dongyu, director-general of the Rome-based FAO, said in the report. “It essentially means that land and water resources have been wasted, pollution created and greenhouse gases emitted to no purpose.”
Consumers also squander huge amounts. As much as 37% of animal products and potentially a fifth of fruit and vegetables may be wasted after being purchased, according to the FAO. Rich nations have higher levels of waste due to limited shelf life or poor consumer planning, while poorer countries typically grapple with climate and infrastructure issues.
Lost Produce
Share of produce lost from post-harvest to distribution
Reducing the world’s food losses and waste is a challenge because more information is needed in order to take effective action, the FAO said. Still, adequate cold storage, in particular, can be crucial, as well as good infrastructure and trade logistics. Boosting farm productivity through research and development has been found to be more cost-effective than curbing post-harvest losses, it said.
RELATED COVERAGE
Explore Future of Food In Virtual Reality At University of Cambridge Festival of Ideas
Did you know that only 20 per cent of the fish we harvest each year actually ends up in our stomachs? Now Natural Machines is using its Foodini 3D printing technology to create an edible product from offcuts that would otherwise be wasted
By Paul Brackley- paul.brackley@iliffemedia.co.uk
08 September 2019
Did you know that only 20 percent of the fish we harvest each year actually ends up in our stomachs?
Now Natural Machines is using its Foodini 3D printing technology to create an edible product from offcuts that would otherwise be wasted.
Future Kitchen VR workshop in the Botanic Garden's classroom, Esme Booth with a device being placed on Emanuel Bernardo. Picture: Keith Heppell. (15994444)
And, in an immersive virtual reality video that you can see at the University of Cambridge’s Festival of Ideas, you can go inside the 3D printer as it operates.
It is one of an extraordinary series of food technology videos released on FoodUnfolded.com, created by an international team involving the university.
Designed to show how food tech can improve the sustainability of our food and transform ways it is produced, the series of videos in the ‘Future Kitchen’ project gives viewers a 360-degree, fully immersive experience that makes them feel like they are part of the story
.Dr Holly T Kristinsson, consultant for innovation and market analysis at Matis and co-ordinator of the Future Kitchen project, says: “We are trying to explore the potential of virtual reality to connect people with food tech more effectively.
“With consumer trust in the food system at an all-time low, we need to step up, reconnect with people and inspire them.”
Another video explores how farmers in Iceland are able to grow tomatoes despite the sub-zero temperatures outside. Viewers get to look around the greenhouses, powered by geothermal or hydropower energy. Bees are brought in to pollinate the tomato plants - and no pesticides are required.
“When we are using the bees, we get something like a 90-95 per cent yield from the plants, which is an enormous increase from a farmer’s point of view,” horticulturalist and biologist Guðríður Helgadóttir tells viewers.
A third video explores Plantcube, an intelligent vertical farming system for the home, created by Agrilution.
The German company was founded by Max Loessl and mechatronics engineer Philipp Wagner to bring the freshest vegetables, salads and herbs to the home, grown without pesticides and as close and to the place of consumption as possible. The Plantcube - which will set you back 2,979 euros - provides an indoor garden for growing lettuce, microgreens and herbs on eight ‘fields’, with automated watering, optimal LED lighting and sensor-based climate control.
Future Kitchen VR workshop in the Botanic Garden's classroom, Esme Booth with a device. Picture: Keith Heppell. (15994450)
This vertical farming system even notifies you via an app of the perfect time to harvest to your food.
The VR project is funded by EIT Food, Europe’s leading food innovation initiative, and is a response to the need to connect, and reconnect, people with food.
While technology in a food context tends to have negative connotations among the public, the series aims to show how it can be used to improve sustainability.
The makers believe it could act as a pilot for the food industry to help engage consumers as well as entice those interested in food-related careers.
Further videos are coming, which will introduce viewers to future kitchen devices, explore the origin of food, robotics, metabolomics, personalised nutrition, macro and micro algae processing and novel food processing, including how alternative proteins are made.
Regular focus group lunchtime sessions are being held in Cambridge where visitors can view the videos and share their thoughts.
After watching the Foodini video, one University of Cambridge student said: “I never knew how 3D printing food worked, and to be immersed in the whole process is fascinating.”
And at the Festival of Ideas - supported by the Cambridge Independent once more this year - two sessions will be held at the Alison Richard Building on West Road on Saturday October 19 to introduce members of the public to the videos. Bookings open on September 23.
Tom Dixon and IKEA's Urban Farming Solutions Will Be Available as Early as 2021
The two-level garden will feature over 4,000 plants, as well as a horticultural lab that integrates technology into the system
By Emily Engle - May 14, 2019
As part of the 2019 RHS Chelsea Flower Show, Tom Dixon and IKEA have designed an experimental model for urban farming. Titled "Gardening will Save the World," the exhibition demonstrates how people can grow food at home and do their best to reduce food waste, through the combination of design and technology.
The two-level garden will feature over 4,000 plants, as well as a horticultural lab that integrates technology into the system. "Aiming to give back to cities and create productive landscapes within urban zones, the garden includes a raised modular landscape with edible and medicinal plants and an enclosed based garden fueled by hydroponic systems and controllable lighting," says Dixon.
IKEA has explored gardening systems in the past, but this is the first time the company is working on a scalable system that can be applied to both large spaces and the individual home. "We want to create smart solutions to encourage people and to make it easier for them to grow plants anywhere they can, whether that's in their community garden, rooftop or in containers on balconies and window sills," says James Futcher, Creative Leader at IKEA Range and Supply.
A few of the solutions for urban growing that resulted from this collaboration will actually be available at IKEA stores globally in 2021. After the Chelsea Flower Show comes to a close, "Gardening will Save the World" will be donated to Participatory City and moved to East London for at least three years.
Emily is Core77's Editor, footwear enthusiast and resident stress baker.
How Google Saved Over 6 Million Pounds of Food Waste in its Cafés
Five years ago, Google starting measuring the quantity and value of food being tossed at its facilities. It’s still got a long way to go, but it’s an object lesson in how focusing on a problem can bring solutions
04.24.19
Five years ago, Google starting measuring the quantity and value of food being tossed at its facilities. It’s still got a long way to go, but it’s an object lesson in how focusing on a problem can bring solutions.
[Photo: courtesy Google]
In a kitchen at Google’s headquarters in Mountain View, California, as chefs work on part of the lunch menu for the day–vegan fajitas over sapporo noodles, and a quinoa bowl–any ingredients that can’t be used end up in trays on a scale, where the staff tracks exactly how much food is wasted each day. It’s part of the company’s strategy to cut food waste as much as possible, part of its overall mission to become a more sustainable company. Over the last five years, the company calculates that it has avoided more than 6 million pounds of food going to landfills or compost.
[Photo: courtesy Google]
Each day, the company serves more than 200,000 meals in its office cafés, from pulled pork tacos to lobster, and it recognizes that its operational scale makes food waste a critical problem to deal with both from an economic and environmental perspective. “We know [food waste] is such a massive global problem and even worse in the U.S.,” says Kristen Rainey, the global procurement and resource utilization manager for Google’s food program. Worldwide, around one-third of the global food supply is thrown out. “So we really feel like we have an obligation and an opportunity to take it seriously in everything we’re doing every day.”
[Photo: courtesy Google]
In 2014, Google started working with Leanpath, a company that provides equipment to measure and track food waste, and it coaches chefs on how to use that data. “Most chefs are deeply interested in food waste prevention–they were taught that food had value and you want to avoid wasting it, so that’s an instinct,” says Andrew Shakman, CEO of Leanpath. “But then they get into the day-to-day challenge of running a high-volume food service operation, and they typically don’t have a lot of time to spend analyzing data and understanding some of the trends.”
[Photo: courtesy Google]
Just collecting that data started to change kitchens. “The reality is that the act of measurement is, in and of itself, a very profound intervention,” Shakman says. “The moment that you ask someone to take the time to pay attention to food waste, you are communicating that that is a significant concern and an opportunity.” The dashboard on the equipment that weighs the food automatically displays the value of the wasted food, something that Rainey says gives additional motivation to chefs.
Using the data, teams can adjust how much food they’re ordering or begin to make other changes, including repurposing food for the next meal; leftover risotto might turn into arancini, or the stems from root vegetables might be used to make pesto or chimichurri sauce. Leftover bananas from one of the company’s “micro kitchens,” where employees make snacks, might be used in banana bread or added to other leftover fruit at a DIY crepe bar. At a juice bar, whole carrots go into blenders along with the carrot tops, and dehydrated fruit pulp can become a powder to add to other food.
The company also sources some foods that reduce waste earlier in the system, like a type of nutrient-rich flour made from coffee cherries, the fruit around coffee beans that is normally wasted. “For us, that’s a huge win because it’s providing jobs in a coffee-growing community, it’s using a waste product that might otherwise just have rotted, and then it’s actually making some items more nutritious than they would be otherwise,” says Rainey. Chefs have experimented with using the flour in brownies, tortillas, and other foods. “We’re really trying to think about items that we could scale so that we could actually be using a significant amount of the product and make a difference,” she says.
[Photo: courtesy Google]
At the cafés, chefs cook in batches to avoid preparing too much food, and adjust through a meal. Near the end of lunch, they might change to shallower pans at the salad bar. “It’s still giving an impression of abundance, but it’s actually much less likely to have tons left over,” says Rainey. Many of the changes focus on what happens in the kitchen, but the company is also beginning to work on the problem of employees throwing food out–something that can be even more of a challenge when everything on the menu is free and there’s no financial incentive to eat what you paid for. In some cafés, employees have the choice of smaller plates, something that can also help people eat less. The company serves some foods, like desserts, in smaller portions. In some cafes, it works with Leanpath to measure wasted food, not only in kitchens, but also at the point where employees return plates, and then uses a digital display to track that waste so it’s visible to diners when they order. “We’ve worked with behavioral scientists to optimize the messaging to figure out what is most likely to cause people to pay attention and take only what they need,” Shakman says.
The LeanPath systems are now in daily use in 189 of Google’s cafés, in 26 countries. “We know that this is a daily habit that has to be kept central in people’s minds, and measurement does that,” Shakman says. As menus and staff change, the system keeps the focus on waste. “It’s not just about discovering an insight once and then fixing it and moving on. It’s really about continuous learning and improvement.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Adele Peters is a staff writer at Fast Company who focuses on solutions to some of the world's largest problems, from climate change to homelessness. Previously, she worked with GOOD, BioLite, and the Sustainable Products and Solutions program at UC Berkeley.
USDA Launches Ace The Waste! Food Waste Contest For Students
WASHINGTON, April 23, 2019 – Food waste is a problem everyone can tackle, including our nation’s youth. As part of Winning on Reducing Food Waste Month, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), is launching Ace the Waste! A student competition for food waste reduction ideas. This first-ever competition calls on students to come up with creative solutions to reduce food loss and waste in the United States.
The problem of food waste affects everyone. More than one third of food in the U.S. is lost or wasted. This amounts to 133 billion pounds, or $161 billion worth of food each year. Food is the single largest type of waste in landfills. Students age 11 to 18 are encouraged to submit proposals on reducing food loss and waste anywhere along the supply chain, from the farm to the dinner table and beyond. Topic ideas for the proposal include:
Preventing food waste - such as ideas to prolong the storage life of food; improve efficiencies in the processing of food and its distribution; and create new products from unharvested or unsold crops (like so-called “ugly fruit and vegetables”) or from food processing by-products.
Recovering wholesome, excess food to feed people – such as innovative approaches for getting excess food to people who need it and measuring the value of food donations.
Recycling food scraps to keep them out of landfills – such as ideas to connect food waste generators with recyclers and to create animal feed, compost, and energy.
Raising awareness – such as ideas about how to make students more aware about the amount of food being wasted and let them know how to reduce it.
Students may submit 1-2 page proposals or 1-2 minute videos. Proposals will be judged on impact potential; originality and creativity; clarity of expression; and adherence/appropriateness to theme. Judges will include representatives from USDA, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). One winner will be selected from each of two categories – ages 11-14 and ages 15-18. The winner of the challenge will be honored with recognition on USDA’s social media accounts and website, receive a certificate of appreciation, and will have the opportunity to discuss their proposals with USDA leadership.
The deadline for proposals is 5 p.m. EDT, Friday, May 24, 2019. Submit your ideas to the Ace the Waste! competition (PDF, 238 KB) today.
About the Winning on Reducing Food Waste Initiative
The Winning on Reducing Food Waste Initiative is a collaborative effort among USDA, EPA, and FDA to affirm their shared commitment to work towards the national goal of reducing food loss and waste by 50 percent by 2030. The agencies agree to coordinate food loss and waste actions such as: education and outreach, research, community investments, voluntary programs, public-private partnerships, tool development, technical assistance, event participation, and policy discussion on the impacts and importance of reducing food loss and waste.
During Winning on Reducing Food Waste Month and beyond, join the conversation on social media with the #NoWastedFood hashtag. Learn more about USDA, EPA, and FDA programs and resources to reduce food loss and waste.
Here's How Much Your Food Waste Hurts The Environment
When you let broccoli rot in your fridge, you add noxious gases to more than just your veggie drawer
You probably bought this, not knowing what it is, but that you might get around to using it.
When you let broccoli rot in your fridge, you add noxious gases to more than just your veggie drawer.
By Sara Chodosh September 5, 2018
Our species is pretty good at wasting food. Some we discard at the farm for being undersized or oddly shaped. Others we allow to decay in their shipping containers, thrown away before they even reach shelves. We leave even more foodstuffs wasting away in grocery stores, often by letting it sit there until it reaches its sell-by date. As consumers, we don’t have much control over most of the process that brings our food to the grocery store, but we do have control over how much food we personally waste.
Let's face it: We’ve all found liquified lettuce in our veggie drawers. Don't fret. It's arguably impossible to consume 100 percent of the food we buy. But a healthy reminder of the effect food waste has on the environment might help us all to be more conscious of the amount of food we eat—and don't eat.
Consumer food waste varies extensively depending on the area. In South and Southeast Asia, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimates that only around 5 percent of total wastage comes from consumers. Most, instead, comes from the agricultural and handling/storage phases of production. But in America, as in Europe and “Industrialized Asia” (that’s China, Japan, and South Korea), consumers are responsible for about a third of all food wastage. Agriculture also accounts for about a third, and the remaining third is split evenly between the handling/storage, processing, and distribution phases.
That’s no small amount for consumers to be wasting. Globally, we fail to use about a third of all food produced for human consumption. The FAO cites both bad “purchase planning” and “exaggerated concern over ‘best-before dates’” as reasons for the significant wastage on the consumer ends in affluent countries. That is, we buy too much food and let it rot in our homes before we get around to eating it, or we throw out perfectly good food because a printed date says it’s expired. Historically, it’s been difficult to figure out just how much impact any specific food has on the environment.
To estimate a number like that, you have to do what’s called a life cycle analysis. For example, to calculate that amount for a tomato, you’d have to work out which agricultural processes go into farming that fruit. How much fuel does the tractor use? How much energy goes into the fertilizer? And when it comes to meat, how much does a cow burp? How much energy do you need to make the feed for chickens? Interestingly, life cycle analysis doesn’t include the emissions involved in transporting food from farm to market. As Martin Heller, a chemical engineer at the University of Michigan’s Center for Sustainable Systems, previously told Popular Science, “The whole local food movement has really emphasized the impact of food miles, but most of the research points out that that’s not really a huge part of the total. What goes on at the farm is a much bigger piece.”
Engineers and other researchers like Heller have put an enormous amount of collective time into calculating exactly how much greenhouse gas emissions are a tomato or a steak embodies. It’s mostly other researchers who use this kind of data, but we here at Popular Science used it to figure out how wasteful we’re really being when we fail to eat the food in our fridges.
The more you learn about beef, the less good you feel about eating it.
Infographic by Sara Chodosh
This is just a small sampling of the database, but there’s a trend that jumps out pretty quickly: Meat is extremely polluting; beef most of all. That’s because animals require a lot of feed, which itself must be grown, and that extra step of growing mostly grain-based chow really adds up. Cows also burp methane, which is about 30 times more potent than carbon dioxide as a heat-trapping gas.
Cheese also places pretty high, since it requires a lot of milk to make. Depending on the cheese variety, and assuming you’re using cow’s milk, you need around 10 pounds of milk to make one pound of cheese—that’s 10 pounds of milk coming from a burpin’, grain-consumin’ bovine.
You may also notice that oils rank fairly high. Like trendy nut milks, oils have inordinate environmental impacts because they’re purified. A liter of olive oil requires five kilograms of olives (a tree only makes between 15 and 20 in a whole year). That’s why a kilo of the oil represents 3.206 CO2 equivalents, but a kilo of actual olives only represents 0.482 CO2 equivalents.
So the next time you throw out food, think back to this chart. Think about all the fertilizer and tractor fuel that went into making it. And then think about how easy it would be to buy a little less food than you think you might need, or how you could search for recipes to use up that leftover cheese. There’s even a website where you can choose which ingredients you have on hand and it will give you a list of dishes you can make. (Consuming less meat—especially beef—would also help, a lot.) And at the very least, you should make an effort to compost the food you end up throwing away. Otherwise it will continue to produce greenhouse gases as it slowly decomposes in a landfill.
The bottom line is, a third of the food we waste in America gets wasted in our homes, but we have the power to change that.
tags: food pollution greenhouse gas emissions diet environment
Innovative Consortium Reduces Post-Harvest Loss and Food Waste
WASHINGTON and AMES, IOWA (April 17, 2019)
Food loss and waste is a global problem that negatively impacts the bottom line of businesses and farmers, wastes limited resources and damages the environment. The Foundation for Food and Agriculture Research (FFAR), The Rockefeller Foundation and Iowa State University today launched the Consortium for Innovation in Post-Harvest Loss and Food Waste Reduction at the 2019 Iowa International Outreach Symposium. Through this consortium, thought leaders and experts from across the globe will work in tandem with industry and nonprofit organizations to address social, economic and environmental impacts from food loss and waste.
“Feeding a growing global population demands innovation at all levels — from planting to processing to consumption. This consortium will help farmers across the globe use technology to continue using resources efficiently,” said Sally Rockey, FFAR’s executive director. “Optimizing food production practices is critical for ensuring that farmers are profitable, food is plentiful and accessible, and the environment is preserved.”
Due to the volume of food that is moved globally, food loss and waste affects producers, manufacturers, distributors and end-users. More than 40 percent of fruits and vegetables in developing regions spoil before they can be consumed. These goods include mangoes, avocadoes, pineapples, cocoa, and bananas, many of which are exported to the United States. This loss negatively impacts the bottom line for farmers, who are not compensated for their products. Consumers then don’t have access to these popular foods. Additionally, food waste forces farmers to use precious natural resources producing food that either never makes it to the supermarket or is otherwise thrown out by consumers due to quality issues, creating a significant drain on environmental resources.
In 2016, The Rockefeller Foundation launched the YieldWise Initiative aimed at reducing both food loss in developing nations like Kenya, Nigeria and Tanzania, and food waste in developed markets like the United States. In sub-Saharan Africa, YieldWise provides farmers with access to segmented markets, technologies and solutions that curb preventable crop loss and facilitates training that helps them solidify buyer agreements with markets in African communities.
“To nourish, sustainably, nearly 10 billion people by 2050, we must implement a menu of solutions that simultaneously shift diets toward plant-based foods, close the yield gap, and reduce food loss and waste,” said Rafael Flor, Director, Food, The Rockefeller Foundation. “This is paramount to meeting both the Paris Agreement on Climate Change and the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goal 12. Failing to reduce food loss and waste will make the challenge of achieving a sustainable food future significantly more difficult.”
Food loss and waste highlights the inefficiencies in our food system. According to the FAO*, nearly 1.3 billion tons of food—costing roughly $940 billion—are either lost or wasted yearly, generating about 8 percent of annual global greenhouse gas emissions. Food is lost more at the consumption stage in higher-income countries, while more food is lost at handling and storage stages in lower-income regions.
This consortium will work collaboratively to develop a scalable approach for adoption of the YieldWise model and provide farmers with cost-effective strategies and technologies that link their crop supply to the market demand. This will allow farmers to gain more value from their crops and become more profitable, while also stimulating local economic growth and improving the resiliency of rural communities.
“Our consortium approach will build academic and entrepreneurial capacity of the next generation by engaging researchers and students in multi-national, multi-disciplinary teams in the project identification, planning, and execution phases together with professionals from the private and public sectors,” said Dirk Maier, a professor in the Department of Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering at Iowa State University and the consortium director.
FFAR is contributing $2.78 million for this three-year project, which partner organizations from around the world are matching for a $5.56 million project budget. Participating institutions include The Rockefeller Foundation, Iowa State University, USA; University of Maryland, USA; Wageningen University and Research, Netherlands; Zamorano University, Honduras; University of São Paulo, Brazil; Stellenbosch University, South Africa; University of Nairobi, Kenya; Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Ghana; and the Volcani Center, Israel.
###
Foundation for Food and Agriculture Research
The Foundation for Food and Agriculture Research (FFAR), a 501 (c) (3) nonprofit organization originally established by bipartisan Congressional support in the 2014 Farm Bill, builds unique partnerships to support innovative and actionable science addressing today's food and agriculture challenges. FFAR leverages public and private resources to increase the scientific and technological research, innovation, and partnerships critical to enhancing sustainable production of nutritious food for a growing global population. The FFAR Board of Directors is chaired by Mississippi State University President Mark Keenum, Ph.D., and includes ex officio representation from the U.S. Department of Agriculture and National Science Foundation.
Connect: @FoundationFAR | @RockTalking
About The Rockefeller Foundation
The Rockefeller Foundation advances new frontiers of science, data, policy and innovation to solve global challenges related to health, food, power and economic mobility. As a science-driven philanthropy focused on building collaborative relationships with partners and grantees, the Foundation seeks to inspire and foster large-scale human impact that promotes the well-being of humanity throughout the world by identifying and accelerating breakthrough solutions, ideas and conversations.
*FAO. 2015. Food wastage footprint & climate change. Rome: UN FAO.
UK: Scientists Work On Tech To 'Smell' When Produce Goes Off
Scientists in the UK are working to develop new technology which will be able to ‘smell’ when fruit or vegetables are going off
Scientists in the UK are working to develop new technology which will be able to ‘smell’ when fruit or vegetables are going off. Their aim is to potentially save tonnes of waste; waste advisory body WRAP claims 1,200,000 tonnes of fresh fruit and vegetables are needlessly wasted each year.
Now, a UK-based research team are hoping to develop a new system by utilising a technique commonly used in space science. They say this new technique can assess the quality of the produce, which will help in waste reduction and allow the industry to make better informed assessments of shelf-life.
Not only would this help reduce waste, but allow food suppliers to be able to pinpoint when the produce is at its peak condition and therefore when it has the most nutritional value to consumers.
Researchers have already identified the unique set of molecular markers given off by rocket leaves before they are about to go off, but wanted to see if they could apply this to other produce. However, there are a number of logistical issues to overcome before they can make a device suitable for the food and drink industry.
Small and portable
Initial work utilised an expensive laboratory technique, Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry (GC-MS) for this research – which is a way of separating and identifying different chemical compounds. This technology has been used for a number of different applications, from climate science to planetary science.
Farminguk.com quoted Dr Hilary Rogers, from Cardiff University as saying: “Our biggest challenge now is to take this complex technology and apply it to a cost-effective platform so that it can be used at different points in the supply chain, from production through to retail.”
Publication date : 3/12/2019
This Urban Pop-Up Farm is Powered by Coffee Grounds
Melbourne roaster Cirrus Fine Coffee grows vegetables and herbs in a tiny garden, thanks to the help of coffee waste.
By Audrey Bourget
17 JAN 2019 - 1:20 PM UPDATED 17 JAN 2019 - 1:56 PM
The pop-up farm on Cirrus Fine Coffee’s parking lot is a little green oasis in the industrial area of Port Melbourne.
“We have heritage varieties of tomatoes, corn, zucchini, pumpkin, spring onion, beetroot, rainbow chard, spinach, silverbeet, flowers to attract beneficial insects and also a range of herbs like chives, basil, oregano and coriander,” says Brendan Condon. And all of this only takes up two parking spaces.
Condon is the director of sister companies Cirrus Fine Coffee, Biofilta and Australian Ecosystems, which have collaborated to develop super-efficient compact pop-up farms. “We often think that we have overcrowded cities, but if you look at them from the lens of urban farming, we have huge amounts of space. We can flip cities into becoming super-efficient food growers,” he says.
These beans deliver more than a caffeine hit.
From landfill to compost
Each year, caffeine-loving Aussies produce around 75 000 tonnes of coffee waste, most of it ending up in landfill where it contributes to the production of methane, a greenhouse gas. But coffee grounds don’t have to end up there; they can be composted and used to produce food.
Cirrus Fine Coffee’s own pop-up garden uses a mix of composted coffee grounds (rich in minerals and nitrogen), husks from the roastery (a good source of carbon), food scraps and a small amount of manure, to help produce around 300 kilos of food per year. With the World Health Organisation recommending adults consume a minimum of 146 kilos of fresh fruits and veggies per year, it means that one of these pop-up farms could provide enough for two people for a whole year.
The Biofilta wicking (self-watering) garden beds are easy to install and low maintenance. The design holds enough liquid to water the garden for a week in summer and a month in winter.
“We want people to take advantage of the abundant resources for urban farming and to engage with it, so we improve nutrition and health, and divert waste from landfill,” says Condon.
Cirrus Fine Coffee is committed to sustainability in more ways than one. Its coffee beans are ethically sourced, the brand's packaging is biodegradable and its offices run on clean energy.
It's also partnered with Reground, an organisation that goes to cafes to pick up coffee grounds and transport them to community gardens and pop-up farms.
“We all need to work together,” says Ninna K. Larsen, founder of Reground. “We work at changing the system rather than just collecting coffee. Coffee is just a great conversation starter. It’s about getting people talking about what organic waste can do, instead of going to landfill. We can grow food with it.”
Condon would like to see cafes and people around Australia embrace urban farming. “If you have a cafe where you recycle coffee grounds to grow food, people will want to go there and support that business,” he says. “Hopefully, in a few years, it will be common practice.”
The Artist Creating Urban Farms To Feed Philadelphia
With fresh fruit and vegetables hard to come by in some of the city’s soup kitchens, Meei Ling Ng plants gardens to provide hyper-local produce to the homeless.
2018
Not many churches can boast their own Garden of Eden, but South Philadelphia’s historic Union Baptist Church (UBC) can. When Loretta Lewis and other veteran congregants of UBC opened a soup kitchen 20 years ago, they made a solemn pledge: “We just vowed that we’re not going feed people anything that we wouldn’t eat or feed our families,” she says. “The people who come are used to eating substandard food, but here they have never had substandard food.”
The soup kitchen volunteers have always prepared for the weekly Friday luncheon by shopping for and cooking food in an industrial kitchen in the church’s basement, adjacent to a dining room with cloth-covered tables, where people from nearby shelters are welcome to enjoy a free, nutritious meal.
And for the past year, sourcing fresh vegetables—often a big challenge for the church—has been easy. The soup kitchen’s pantry is now supplemented by hyper-local produce, harvested the same day from a new garden in a previously underused plot next door to the church.
Meei Ling Ng, an artist and urban grower who lives nearby, began a collaboration with the church a year and a half ago to develop what they’ve jointly called the UBC Garden of Eden. “I want to promote ‘grow food where you live,’” Ng says. “That’s always my project title, everywhere. And ‘provide fresh, healthy food to the needy, to the homeless.’ It benefits the rest of the community, too, through educating how to grow.”
Meei Ling Ng visiting with Loretta Lewis at the UBC Garden of Eden. (Photo courtesy Karen Chernick)
In essence, Ng and UBC have cooperated on of a farm-to-table soup kitchen that supports the church’s need for (often costly) produce, while simultaneously involving the community by inviting them to help tend the garden two days a week. “We were pretty much supporting the soup kitchen on our own,” says Lewis, “but with Meei Ling, even early in the [garden’s first] year, we had salad.”
Ng planted an unusual variety of crops that include black heirloom tomatoes, rainbow chard, summer squash, purple cauliflower, Asian pears, and almonds, all cultivated in raised beds and in an orchard along the church’s perimeter. In a way, she has replicated the model of her childhood home on a five-acre orchid farm in Singapore, where her family self-sustained all of its produce needs.
“We had rows and rows of vegetables and fruit trees everywhere,” Ng recalls. “I grew up in that kind of environment. Everything we picked we ate fresh.” Having lived in Philadelphia for more than two decades, Ng is undeterred by her current home’s urban density in finding places to grow food.
As a working artist, Ng considers the UBC Garden of Eden to be an extension of her multimedia installation sculptures, many of which are food- and farm-themed. Some of her past works in Philadelphia include a musical garden at SpArc Services and the Deep Roots series of installations at two of the city’s urban farms.
The UBC Garden of Eden is the second of her spontaneously developed hunger-relief urban farms; the first such project was at Sunday Breakfast Rescue Mission, Philadelphia’s largest homeless emergency shelter. There, a string of raised beds along the edge of the mission’s parking lot have provided the high-volume kitchen with fresh vegetables (such as tomatoes, salad greens, and fresh herbs) since 2015, as well as farming instruction for those overcoming homelessness.
The Sunday Breakfast Mission garden. Photo © Sang Cun
“Fresh produce is extremely hard to come by,” says Rosalyn Forbes, the director of development at Sunday Breakfast Rescue Mission. “We rely heavily on donated nonperishable food items, which means that much of the fruits and vegetables we serve are canned. The Sunday Breakfast Farm provides fresh produce that can then be served in our kitchen.”
Salads are composed of freshly harvested greens; the herb garden is thoughtfully situated outside the kitchen door so that it is easy to reach while cooking. “It has elevated the quality of the food being served at the Mission,” Forbes continues. “Too often, those experiencing homelessness also suffer from health problems related to a poor diet.”
Solving the Problem of Scale
Sourcing fresh produce—and staying within budget—is a challenge for many soup kitchens. Individual donations of perishable items are rare, so some organizations choose to work with hunger-relief nonprofits that have the logistical capability to glean fruit and vegetable gifts directly from local farmers. The Philadelphia Orchard Project, which contributed fig, almond, and Asian pear trees to the UBC Garden of Eden this year, has a fruit gleaning program. Philabundance, another local nonprofit, is known by Philadelphia-area farmers as a way to keep excess or less cosmetically attractive produce from going to waste.
Distribution of this donated produce requires complex transportation, however, and so soup kitchens must often meet certain volume criteria in order to receive deliveries. Philabundance, for example, requires that its soup-kitchen member agencies serve at least 500 monthly meals in order to qualify. For smaller-scale operations that don’t reach that number, such as UBC’s soup kitchen (which has fed around 70-80 people per week in previous years and feeds between 20-30 each week now), this usually means they have to purchase produce themselves or rely on non-perishable items.
“Produce is hard to come by [for] smaller operations, and [direct] donations of produce [by farmers] could have a major impact,” says Scott Smith, director of food acquisition at Philabundance.
By growing the produce themselves, Ng and the UBC soup kitchen volunteers are slowly sidestepping the need to seek produce donations or purchase fruits and vegetables for the program. Phil Forsyth, executive director of Philadelphia Orchard Project, praised this solution, saying, “Of course, another approach is for soup kitchens to plant their own gardens and orchards to supply themselves with the most fresh, local produce possible.”
Planter beds in the UBC Garden of Eden. (Photo courtesy Karen Chernick)
Even for larger organizations such as Sunday Breakfast Rescue Mission, which serves over 400 meals daily and qualifies for delivery from organizations such as Philabundance, the parking-lot farm developed by Ng serves an important function. “There never seems to be enough donated fresh produce to keep up with the demand,” notes Forbes, “which is why we decided to think outside the box and grow it ourselves.”
As an added benefit, Ng’s farms engage their surrounding urban communities and teach city dwellers that even figs can grow on a city block. An herb garden can flourish in a parking lot, and heirloom tomatoes can thrive in a raised bed built out of salvage materials from the demolition of a nearby growhouse.
The care Ng takes in nurturing the crops at UBC Garden of Eden matches the motivation that the church’s soup kitchen volunteers have for serving food they would feed their own families. The symbiosis has been apparent since Ng’s first harvest last summer. “I was so happy and delighted to see a green area of the plate,” Ng says. “I want to share that experience of fresh produce with people. It tastes different, because it’s so fresh.”
Top photo: Meei Ling Ng in the Sunday Breakfast Rescue Mission Farm. (Photo © Sang Cun)
Tesco’s CEO Calls On Food Industry To Tackle Food Waste
Every year, a third of the world’s food goes to waste.
Posted By: Martin White on: September 25, 2018
Tesco CEO Dave Lewis will today call on the global food industry to be more transparent and publish their food waste data, to ensure that no food goes to waste across the global food chain.
Lewis will announce his call for action at the Champions 12.3 conference in New York today, and a statement from the retailer said that 27 of Tesco’s major suppliers such as Müller Milk & Ingredients, Kerry and Arla will soon publish their food waste data for the first time.
The statement also claimed that major branded Tesco suppliers such as Mars, General Mills and Unilever will commit to measure and publish their food waste data within the next year.
Tesco published food waste figures for its Republic of Ireland and Central European operations for the first time last year, and the retailer claims that it is “70% of the way towards its target that no food, safe for human consumption, goes to waste.”
According to the statement, Lewis will say: “Every year, a third of the world’s food goes to waste. That’s the equivalent of 1.3 billion tonnes of food being thrown away and we think that’s simply not right.
“We hope every country, major city and company involved in the food supply chain publishes their own food waste data, so that together we can take targeted action to reduce waste.
“We believe that what gets measured gets managed. Ultimately, the only way to tackle food waste is to understand the challenge – to know where in the supply chain food is wasted.”
Champions 12.3 is a coalition of executives from governments, businesses and international organisations which aims to halve global food waste at the retail and consumer levels by 2030.
North Carolina’s Hog And Poultry Farmers Are Directly In The Path of Hurricane Florence. Are They Ready?
Previous storms prompted manure-related environmental disasters. This week, North Carolina could get very smelly.
September 11th, 2018
by H. Claire Brown
As of Tuesday afternoon, more than a million people are under mandatory evacuation orders in Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina as Hurricane Florence draws closer to the coast. Meteorologists are predicting that the Carolina coasts will start seeing tropical storm-force winds late Wednesday night, with hurricane-force winds arriving at around noon on Thursday and official landfall likely on Thursday night. North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper declared a state of emergency on Friday.
The governor also lifted restrictions on weight-limited vehicles like semi-trucks so that farmers could harvest crops ahead of the storm. Heather Overton, assistant director of public affairs at the North Carolina Department of Agriculture & Consumer Services, says the agency sent 12 regional agronomists to survey farmers around the state. They estimate about two-thirds of the state’s tobacco and three-quarters of the corn have already been harvested, but sweet potato and peanut harvests are just getting underway.
“Farmers are working to get as much out of the fields as they can,” Overton says. “We urge them and everybody else to take the situation seriously.”
Hog and poultry farmers have more to worry about than flooded barns.
Meanwhile, the state’s pork and poultry farmers are stocking up on feed and fuel and moving animals to higher ground. “Some of the farms will have sent their birds to the processing plant a little early to move them off the farm,” says Bob Ford, executive director of the North Carolina Poultry Federation. “We’re in pretty good shape,” he adds. The pork industry seems similarly nonchalant: Andy Curliss, the North Carolina Pork Council CEO told Bloomberg he’d only be concerned if the state got more than 25 inches of rain.
In reality, hog and poultry farmers have more to worry about than flooded barns. Animal agriculture produces about 10 billion pounds of wet waste a year in North Carolina, and a lot of that waste is stored in open lagoons. During Hurricane Floyd in 1999, those lagoons broke open and dumped waste into public waters, an environmental catastrophe that was later blamed for algal blooms and fish kills. During Hurricane Matthew in 2016, 14 lagoons flooded and millions of animals died. Yet in a blog post admonishing readers to “beware of misleading narratives and check facts,” the North Carolina Pork Council argued that the vast majority of lagoons operated as advertised during Matthew, which minimized the damage.
Overton says North Carolina hog farmers have begun spraying manure onto fields to free up space in the lagoons should major rainfall accompany Florence. Transferring waste from the pit to the field helps minimize the risk of a flooded lagoon, but the state’s Department of Environmental Quality regulates the amount of manure farmers are allowed to apply. Overton says that farmers have had several days to prepare. “From what we understand, they are in pretty good shape.”
North Carolina doesn’t always know where poultry farms are located.
Farmers are required to stop applying manure at a certain point after weather watches and warnings are issued by the National Weather Service—typically hours before the severe weather begins. This can put them in a double-bind: leave the manure in the lagoons and risk a breach caused by flooding, or break the law by applying it on the farm too late and risk letting it run off into the public water supply when the storm comes. There’s a powerful incentive to break the rules.
“We have consistently, in advance of similar storms even of lesser intensity, witnessed illegal spraying after that prohibition is triggered,” says Will Hendrick, staff attorney for the Waterkeeper Alliance, an environmental advocacy group. “That’s part of what we will be on the lookout for during our pre-storm monitoring.”
Hendrick’s team will also be monitoring agricultural flooding from the air so that it can alert state agencies to mobilize a response. He points out that the state of North Carolina doesn’t always know where poultry farms are located—they’re not required to apply for a permit.
“I don’t think anyone is as optimistic as to assume that there won’t be considerable damage in North Carolina,” Hendrick says. “We’re going to do our best to determine it, assess it—and in particular, the damage that’s caused by threats to water quality.”
ENVIRONMENT, FARM, HOME FEATURE, SYSTEMS,CAFO DISASTER PREPAREDNESS HURRICANE FLORENCE NATURAL DISASTERS NORTH CAROLINA
NatureFresh™ Farms Partners With Forgotten Harvest To Reduce Food Waste Footprint
Leamington, ON (August 30th, 2018) – In an organized effort to reduce their food waste footprint, NatureFresh™ Farms has partnered with Forgotten Harvest, a perishable food rescue, and redistribution organization, to deliver nutritious food to people in need. So far in 2018 2018, NatureFresh™ Farms has successfully donated over 150,000 pounds of produce to the Forgotten Harvest program.
The issue of food waste, both at the commercial and consumer level, is beginning to gain more recognition as a serious global problem. Every year, roughly 1.3 billion tons of food gets thrown out globally, and this food ends up in landfills where it is not used and begins to emit greenhouse gases (primarily methane). As food wastage becomes a more recognized problem, consumers and businesses in the food industry are improving their efforts to curb the issue of food waste.
The NatureFresh™ Farms team has made a firm commitment to consistently collecting and donating greenhouse-grown products that cannot be sold at the retail level but are still nutritious and fully edible, to Forgotten Harvest. The food rescue organization then gleans and repackages the produce into family-friendly sizes that are redistributed within their network of food banks.
Justin Guenther, the Allocation/Shipping Manager at NatureFresh™ Farms, has been a driving force for this program’s development: “The initial creation of this donation program saw some obstacles, as every new program does, but once people started to realize how much food we were saving, it really opened their eyes to the good we could do as a company.” In 2018, NatureFresh™ Farms is projecting that they will reallocate roughly 600,000 pounds of produce to feed food insecure families through Forgotten Harvest’s food bank network.
NatureFresh™ Farms has been donating produce to Forgotten Harvest since 2011, but the food rescue organization has been feeding members of the metro-Detroit area since 1990. With 35 tracks, over 16,000 annual volunteers, and a massive local and international network, Forgotten Harvest is committed to providing food insecure families with fresh, nutritious food as quickly as possible. Chris Ivey, Director of Marketing & Public Relations at Forgotten Harvest, cites the importance of their partnership with NatureFresh™ Farms: “As metro Detroit’s only fresh food rescue, our partnership with NatureFresh™ is a critical portion of our supply chain. Because of these efforts, Forgotten Harvest can deliver on the promise of providing a fresh nutritious mix of food, delivered free of charge, to the over 250 partner agencies we support in our community.”
Forgotten Harvest’s mission to provide people with access to essential foods is a mission that Peter Quiring, the Founder and CEO of NatureFresh™ Farms, also champions: “Working with an organization like Forgotten Harvest, as well as many other community food banks, means that our company can help even more people live healthier lives. To build strong communities, it’s essential to work hand in hand with like-minded organizations.”
In addition to their work with Forgotten Harvest, NatureFresh™ Farms constantly seeks to engage with local food banks and food rescue organizations, including Southwestern Ontario Gleaners.
Kara Badder
Marketing Project Manager