AWARD YEAR
2023
CATEGORY
Work
GOALS
No Poverty
KEYWORDS
farming, agriculture, food waste
COUNTRY
United States of America
DESIGNED BY
James Kanoff
WEBSITE
https://www.farmlinkproject.org
The Farmlink Project
Connects farmers to food banks, delivering millions of pounds of farm fresh products.
How does it work?
No one should have to go to bed hungry while perfectly viable produce goes to waste. This produce shouldn’t have to be “rescued” from rotting in fields or being sent to the landfill, either; why were we ever letting this produce go to waste in the first place? These are systemic issues that our society needs to address. In a perfect world, The Farmlink Project wouldn’t need to exist—systems would be in place to streamline the supply chain so that zero percent, rather than 30 to 40 percent, of food grown in the United States went to waste. For now, The Farmlink Project is acting as the “link” connecting the broken supply chains in the agricultural and food access industries. Our long-term goal is to set up infrastructure which will render our work obsolete. If there were no food waste, if there were no hungry people lining up outside understocked and underfunded food banks, there would be no need for The Farmlink Project.
Why is it needed?
While food banks are facing an unprecedented increase in demand, millions of pounds of produce are being dumped or wasted as commercial farms around the country struggle to adapt to cancelled orders. The Farmlink Project connects such farms with under-stocked and understaffed food banks.
How does it improve life?
Fighting food insecurity.