A single web app could feed thousands in the San Joaquin Valley while significantly reducing food waste.
A win-win if there ever was one and YOU can help. First, though, understand the victims and the problem.
As we enter the holidays and a time of visible abundance, a drought is tightening its grip on the San Joaquin Valley. Unemployment is already escalating. In the last drought — all of 3 years ago — many of the rural communities were 40% or more unemployed.
I was there, trying to help a little. Like gathering the California State Board of Food & Agriculture in Mendota and other places, listening to heart-wrenching testimony.
It is a supreme irony there is hunger in the nation’s breadbasket.
It is equally ironic one third of all food is wasted, according to the UN Food & Agricultural Organization. The Grocery Manufacturers Assn. found the US waste amounts to 390 pounds per person per year, or 121 billion pounds, of which two-thirds is shipped to landfills.
The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) in an issue paper on food waste cited these motivating and foundational facts:
· 40% of US food is not eaten or composted.
· Reducing food waste and returning it to consumers would feed 25 million Americans annually.
· 7% of fields go unharvested.
· Manufacturers account for nearly 40% of wasted food; retail destroys another 10%.
· American consumers do our parts – tossing about 25% of what we buy.
Food, according to the UN study, is wasted at all points on this food chain during harvest, transport, processing, warehousing, retail display, restaurant and home consumption.
Food waste is escalating. "American Wasteland" author Jonathan Bloom blogged in the Washington Post: " ‘Farm to fork’ has become ‘farm to dumpster’, as American farms, processors, manufacturers, grocers, restaurants and homes increasingly waste food."
OK, here’s how a few techies can help:
Design a secure web app to connect major donors with the California Food Banks Assn&hellip.which, will, in turn, forward the information to the California Trucking Assn. for free transport to a food bank.
Simple as that&hellipif you’re a web designer. No, really. The necessary information populates about a half-page of fill-in-the-blanks.
Save lives and food. Lend your creativity to the pro bono and decidedly ad-hoc California Food Waste Roundtable.
Send me an email before you read the next paragraph. Bob_gore@gualcogroup.com
Thank you from the Roundtable, whose volunteers represent the California Food Bank Assn., California Trucking Assn., California League of Food Processors, California Farm Bureau Federation, California Restaurant Assn., NRDC, California Board of Food & Agriculture, California Department of Conservation, CalRecycle, University of California at Davis, US Department of Agriculture, Bank of America and The Gualco Group, Inc.
