Food rescue is having a moment. How do we make it stick?
by Leslie Pyo, Aloha Harvest Community Resource Coordinator
COVID-19 has exposed and worsened deep inequalities in community access to food, shelter, healthcare, and a living wage. As “business as usual” fails, a few paradigm-shifting solutions have received increased public visibility and support. Food rescue is one such solution. Food rescue, if given aggressive state support as its potential is demonstrated more clearly than ever before, could reshape our future.
Rescued food
You may know that globally, about a third of the food we produce gets wasted. But did you know that if we were to rescue and redistribute all that food, we’d have enough to feed the world’s hungry twice over?
In Hawaiʻi, the formal work of food rescue and redistribution began in 1999 with the founding of the nonprofit Aloha Harvest, which serves Oʻahu. I’ve been working here since November of last year. What I’ve learned has completely changed the way I understand the problem of hunger – along with environmental sustainability and economic resilience.
In our state, where 1 in 5 people rely on food pantries for assistance, 474 million pounds of food is wasted annually. That’s 26% of the available food supply. Since we import about 85% of our food, the climate impact of our food miles is especially severe in light of this waste. And consider the resources and byproducts of food production, a top contributor to global climate change. Those are resources used and greenhouse gasses emitted only to produce food that gets thrown out. The economic cost of food waste to our state? $1.025 billion per year!
Loading up the truck
Aloha Harvest works to capture as much of this would-be wasted food as possible and deliver it to community agencies feeding the hungry. Every year, for the past 21 years, we’ve rescued over 1 million pounds of quality excess food from 250+ food donors and redistributed it to 175+ recipient agencies. This comprises the largest and most successful collaboration between businesses (wholesale, grocery, restaurants) and nonprofits (food pantries, shelters, churches) in the state. Thanks to generous funders, we've always provided this service free of charge.
In response to COVID-19, our operations are scaled up 175% over last year, and we've worked with more than 130 new partners. As of August, through expanded collaborative programs, we've provided an estimated 1.58 million meals to about 10% of Oʻahu’s population.
Now, let’s hold these numbers in context. Is 1 million+ pounds of rescued food per year really enough when compared to the 474 million being lost? Is it enough when Feeding America predicts that Hawaiʻi’s food insecurity rate may rise by 57% due to COVID-19? Can we ethically and financially afford to continue wasting food at the current rate, even as we see food insecurity spike?
This time of crisis is an opportunity for systemic change toward eliminating food insecurity and other inequalities that stem from or intersect with it. But for that change, our state must invest long-term financial, legislative, and educational support into new solutions. Aloha Harvest currently runs on an annual budget of $850,000. Over 80% of our 2019 budget was from private grants and donations, which means our ability to expand services fluctuates based on the generosity of private foundations and individuals.
If our state government chooses to invest in food rescue as a permanent, essential key in addressing hunger, environmental sustainability, and economic resilience, this time of crisis could lead to incredibly improved social services in Hawaiʻi.
Here are some resources to learn more about: