Fighting Hunger With Technology

Americans waste A LOT of food.  I’m talking tons of edible fruits, veggies, grains, nuts and meat tossed into the trash every year.  Literally.

It's estimated that Americans waste 27 percent of the food available for consumption.  That equals out to one pound, per day, for every single person in the U.S.  If you're counting at home, that’s 305 million pounds of discarded food each day.

If we were able to recover just five percent of the food that's wasted, we could feed four million people a day says the U.S. Department of Agriculture.  Recovering 25 percent would feed 20 million more people.  These figures alone would put a giant dent in the numbers of those living with a constant scarcity of food.

The U.S. produces twice as much food as is required per person.  These numbers should also help us understand that hunger is not a problem of supply but rather one of distribution and access.  In order to make our supply meet the demand of the hungry, what is desperately needed is a way to link institutions which produce excess food to the people who need it most.

The USDA agrees (pdf) and notes that “Food recovery efforts are often limited by financial and logistical constraints that make it difficult to match recovered food with potential recipients.”

Utilizing the power of technology and social networking, a group called Food2.org is trying to address these constraints as part of the 2009 Dell Social Innovation Competition.  Food2.org is being conceived as an:

Online tool that will match non-profits feeding low-income individuals with the produce from groceries, markets, and farms that would otherwise go to waste. Imagine online dating meets your neighborhood produce section. “Food need profiles” will match up information fields including produce type, amount, geographical location, refrigerator storage space and availability of transportation for pick ups, so that the produce reaches the organizations with the greatest need, and no food is wasted.

By targeting non-profit organizations (instead of individuals) with more capacity to procure, transport and distribute food, this tool has the ability to turn the pounds upon pounds of wasted food in the U.S. into a much-needed infusion of nutrition into the lives of the food insecure.  But there’s one important condition.

Restaurants, cafeterias, farms and even ordinary eaters must be committed to turning their waste into another’s food.  Without buy-in from supply-side groups, this tool is bound to be nothing but a food “wish list” for non-profit organizations.

If realized and effective, Food2.org would also allow non-profit organizations to reallocate funds which would have been used to purchase food to other much needed services.  By recovering unwanted food, non-profit budgets could be used more effectively to combat the multiple causes of hunger and poverty instead of simply meeting an immediate need.

If you think Food2.org has a great idea, I encourage you to vote for their project.  The winner of the competition receives a $50,000 grand-prize to put their idea into action.  I’d love to see what a little technological innovation could do to fight hunger and end food waste.

(Photo credit: jbloom on Flickr)