Food imagined Socially

Good food is a basic human need.

Is it possible to create a supply and demand chain from raw food produce to reach the socially needed while still able to address the food lost or waste problem that has big impact on the environment ?

Introduction

“One-third of food produced for human consumption is lost or wasted globally, which amounted to 1.3 Billion tonnes per year” - Fruit and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) of U.N.

“Food waste is responsible for 3.3 Giga tonnes of greenhouse gases, which is inclusive of all of the emissions attributable to the growing, harvesting, processing, transportation, and distribution” - FAO

“9.2 percent of the world population (or slightly more than 700 million people) were exposed to severe levels of food insecurity in 2018. An additional 17.2 percent of the world population, or 1.3 billion people, have experienced food insecurity at moderate levels, meaning they did not have regular access to nutritious and sufficient food” - FAO

The combination of moderate and severe levels of food insecurity brings the estimated total to 26.4 percent of the world population, amounting to about 2 billion people.

To feed these 700 million to 2 billion people, we just need to divert 12.38% - 35.38%* of the food lost or wasted to these people that supposedly able to feed them for the WHOLE year.

*Assumption of each person consume an average of 230kg of fruits and vegetables per year based the same amount the E.U. residents consumed per year as stated in a report by WHO.

Overproducing adds more burden to natural and human resources, generating more environmental pollution and yet to include the purpose for having a viable economical model to solve the hunger issue.

In the U.S. Environment Protection Agency’s food recovery hierarchy, which “prioritises actions organisations can take to prevent and divert food lost or waste,” ranks “feeding hungry people” near the top, second to reducing food waste at its source.

With the current pandemic Convid-19 accelerating worldwide, which could seriously impact already affected communities with economic slowdowns and downturns. This could also give further rise in unemployment and decline in wages and incomes, challenging access to food and essential social services for the needy.

When this report is created, it is during the Spring season of 2020 and coming into the summer season when key fruits and vegetables would be ripen and to be harvested. With many governments lockdown initiatives, recruiting of harvesting and logistics workers would become challenging where more food could be wasted if not harvest due to its highly perishable condition.

Today’s Initiatives

Before evaluating on the solution, let’s take a look at various initiatives and programmes that are being carrying out to address the same issue as ending food insecurity should not depend solely on charity, food donations and community organisations;

1. Creative community programs provide food security through local farming and gardening, such as CSA, a Community-Supported Agriculture program that allows members pre-pay for a share in a local farm to grow fresh produces and deliver to them upon harvest,
2. Piloting programs to bring healthier food into rural areas with out-of-balance food environments, such as creating App for food delivery to make fresh and healthy food accessible in rural areas,
3. Having grassroots initiatives to work directly with communities such as developing free cooking classes, as a vital skill with a direct impact on the health and well-being of the community,
4. Zero Waste Zero Hunger initiative by Kroger, Co. (supermarket chain in U.S.)- diverting food to “hungry people” might simultaneously address the scourge of hunger and food waste reduction,
5. Hungry Harvest /Imperfect Produce /Misfits Market - companies in the U.S. that buy up excess or “ugly” produce from growers and wholesalers around the country and sells it to consumers for less than supermarket price,
6. The Felix Project, a London-based charity collects fresh, nutritious food that cannot be sold and deliver to charities and schools. They estimated there are 1.5 million adults in London struggle to afford to eat every day, while 400,000 children are at risk of missing the next meal.
7. Fruta Feia, a non-profit cooperative setup in Portugal to divert imperfect fruits and vegetables from the producers that are supposedly rejected by supermarkets to the communities via membership program.

What could be the practical solutions to these social and environment challenge?

The criteria for evaluating the solutions could involve the combination of innovation, opportunity and resourcefulness;

• Linking producing or farming community to community with food insecurity
• Enabling cooking to the portion needed — smaller size entices less wastage as one of the findings form University of California’s cafeteria survey and testing.
• Gathering of cooks at community kitchen to cook and feed the needy — volunteering, jobs creation, education and empowering of women.
• Connecting farmers and producers to community kitchen — supplying of produces to be cooked in a circulator economy where farmers now able to have feedbacks on what to grow best to reduce potential waste and recovering some of the revenue.
• Connecting the kitchen to communities — cooking of food for the people in a community of needs, such as isolation, immobility, elderly, children, families in need, etc.
• Technology — forecasting based on consumption needs to supply with AI, data collection, scheduling of pickup, delivery based on limited time for freshness of the produces,
• Technology — with possible study of using similar ones to the airline food catering facility which allow preparation the food and yet preserve long enough to be consumed at later time by heating up when ready to be consumed . A smaller scale setup with similar technology that a community kitchen can adopt to prepare the food to be stored with possible delivery to rural areas for needy families or community groups.

Innovation through a new approach

With the possible challenge on shortage of workers to harvest the fresh produce during or after the Covid-19 situation, technology platform could also be leveraged while having the right policies in place to ensure the health and safety of the workers. One possible option is to leverage on mobile platform to do sourcing and recruitment of temporary workforce within the community through development of the App to help the farmers to harvest the ripen food.

The other area of leveraging on App platform for this social enterprise to fulfil the objectives can be;

• Planning for transportation with schedule and locations to pickup the necessary produces from the farmers to allow more efficient transporting to reduce the necessary emission and better allocation of resources.
• Membership subscription for updates, information sharing, resources requests such as volunteering works, social works, jobs, etc.
• Users (the consumers) who care about the environment and food waste for possible purchase of meals, boxes of produces, etc. via delivery, drive though or pickup.
• Channeling the support from the users to feed the community by way of donating meals which would keep the kitchen running while having a sustainable demand for delivering the food to the needy.
• The consideration of various available toolkits within App environment to empower this effective supply and demand chain of food produce to consumption:

1. Machine learning for better forecasting of demand and supply and effective distribution and scheduling of fresh produces,
2. Maps and location tracking for transportation and route planning of the delivery schedule to enable effective use of vehicles to reduce carbon emission and allow shorter time for the produces to reach the kitchens,
3. Cloud platform services for management and storage of information of fresh produces, demand and supply, orders, schedules, etc.,
4. Secure profile and personalisation for users and consumers management of their own data and payment for commercially available products from the kitchen,
5. Accessibility and voice control - enabling of users with mobile device access challenges to participate in the program.

What can be focus on social and environmental value creation?

Social : Feeding the needy who could be potentially missing their next meals.

Social : The community recruitment allows drawing of the people to participate in various volunteering or social works activities to keep an active life with good mental health, giving them a good ‘life purpose’ while possibly earning some incomes and contributing to the circular economy within the community and hence, the running of the society.

Social : The social network of works created involve in the areas of harvesting, distribution, logistics, community kitchens, organisations and management, etc.

Environment : The major beneficiary for the environment would be redirection of potential food lost or waste to areas of social and commercial values instead of having it to decompose and releases dangerous methane gas into the atmosphere.

Environment : The availability of common kitchens at specific locations such as schools, commercial shops that can be leveraged by the program. The utilisation allows reusing of existing facilities instead of building new ones.

Which aspects can we focus more on the ideal than the deal?

The ideal of every produce farmers own is able to be consumed without wastage.

The ideal of having food to reach the needed communities.

The ideal of not having the people with food insecurity to go hungry again.

The ideal of having a sustainable economic activities where everyone in the community can participate to contribute and benefit others.

Risk Factors

The possible risk factors that can be faced by the program are considered as follow:

The need of participation from transportation companies to bring food from source (farmers, cooks) to destination (cooks, communities, customers),

The value propositions and benefiting factors for the participation of farmers where they are able to obtain cost savings or revenue from the produces,

To have enough gathering of community cooks or volunteer cooks to participate in the kitchen to prepare the foods and meals to be provided to the needed communities,

The willingness to participate by the members from the communities,

The time and distance factors for bringing fresh produce or cooked foods to the respective processing points or consumers,

The coordination and distribution works of fresh produces from farmers and food to the community.

What could be the business engagement model to solve this great social, environmental, cultural and governance challenge?

A social business model can be used as the tool to evaluate the engagement between various components and activities of the business platform such as key partners and resources needed to create the value propositions to the customers and beneficiaries while addressing the economic, social and environmental cost and benefits.

The following is the social business model canvas while a more detailed explanation of the canvas can be accessed via a separate article — Social Business Model for Empowering the Community with Sustainability.

Social Business Model Canvas — Empowering Community for Sustainability

The article is written for the challenge of developing a social entrepreneurship by a team of contributors who are engaged in the learning journey on professional App development platform with extension to business development path. The members are:

Giuseppe Zuppa
Philip Lim
Tina Pourramezan

You can email to us via ecs.biz@icloud.com to get in touch with us for any further recommendations, suggestions or follow-up on your interest to explore and enabling such program in your community.