Produce industry experts tackle zero food waste at SPS

Among the robust roster of educational sessions at this year’s Sustainable Produce Summit, hosted by The Packer, a panel titled, “Waste Not, Want Not: Advancements Toward Zero Food Waste” explored how fresh produce companies can drastically reduce — and even eliminate — food waste for a more sustainable future.

Click here to watch the full 2022 Sustainable Produce Summit On-Demand. 

Held on June 2 at the JW Marriott Desert Springs Resort and Spa in Palm Desert, Calif., the session brought together industry experts including Amy Tranzillo, global head of marketing, AgroFresh; Aidan Mouat, CEO, Hazel Technologies; Luis Yepiz, chief procurement officer, FarmLink Project; and Stephanie Morris, sustainability coordinator for the San Diego, Calif.-based natural grocer Jimbo’s.

Each panelist brought a unique perspective and area of expertise, which made for a lively and important discussion centered around how the industry can best come together in the fight against food waste.

The role of technology in reducing food waste

“AgroFresh is an ag-tech leader working across a product supply chain offering a variety of different solutions to preserve the freshness and sustainability of produce across the supply chain,” Amy Tranzillo said. The Philadelphia, Pa.-based company offers a variety of solutions for extending freshness, including plant-based coatings and SmartFresh, “our revolutionary groundbreaking solution for ethylene management,” she added.

“I think that we're all here because one-third of all food wasted is still one-third of all food wasted and over half of that 45% is fruits and vegetables,” Tranzillo said, noting the need for that statistic to change.

“One thing we talk about at our company is there's not just one solution, right? You have a variety of different interactions where that fruit goes from the field, all the way end-to-end to the retailer,” Tranzillo said. “And that waste happens all along that continuum.”

For example, there are hundreds of varieties of apples and different varieties may require different solutions, whether it be a fungicide, a wax coating or tracking in transit.

“When we say end to end, we really mean in order to really make a dent in this whole food waste problem, you have to find solutions for every step of the way,” Tranzillo explained. “So, what we do is think about that individual customer, that individual piece of fruit, and the unique challenges happening with that piece of fruit — whether it be the distance it travels, or the storage conditions, or the different pathogens that are coming into play during the processing stage.”

But food waste is a critical problem that takes more than one company to solve, she continued.

“That's why it's really important to be at these kinds of conferences and meet and talk with people from different industries, so that we can work together to really solve this challenge,” she said.

Chicago-based Hazel Technologies, another company focused on shelf-life extension, uses a novel and proprietary biochemistry platform to extend the shelf life of perishable foods from within storage and transport environments through the use of active packaging materials and active packaging material inserts, Aidan Mouat explained.

“I'm fond of pointing out that feeding the world is no longer a production problem; it's a supply chain problem,” Mouat said. “We have a great food system that's fundamentally focused on overproduction, and the way that we know that is because we waste 30 to 40% of everything we produce every year.”

In order to successfully redistribute the food, Mouat said, you need market demand, which is already there, and “a mechanism to ensure that food can be distributed effectively across a wide range of geographies and transportation, logistics and so forth.

To underscore the importance of freshness solutions for produce in transit, Mouat pointed to the Hass avocado’s explosive volume growth in the early 2000s.

“The reason Hass is doing better than any other avocado is that the technology support is there to proliferate that avocado from its production regions to all of these different markets,” Mouat said. Hazel Technologies is currently working with customers in the Dominican Republic to increase their avocado market presence by providing logistics solutions.

“So that's what we do. That's how we think of the world. We are enablers or technological enablers trying to connect those disparate pieces of oversupply and unset demand,” Mouat said.

Food recovery and redistribution

Luis Yepiz, chief procurement officer with FarmLink Project, a national food recovery organization that provides supply chain services, such as procurement and transportation to food banks and food distribution organizations throughout the United States, shared the latest on the organization’s efforts to fight food waste.

“We are focused on providing food to those communities that fall outside of the regular distribution systems of the food recovery conglomerates, and to reducing food waste and providing access to those the people that need it the most,” Yepiz explained.

FarmLink prides itself in providing fruits and vegetables to areas where the nearest grocery stores is 50 or even 100 miles away, said Yepiz.

One of the biggest challenges in food recovery, said Yepiz, is procuring donations from farmers, many of whom are already struggling to remain profitable.

“What we're trying to do is to provide incentives for wholesalers and farmers to be able to make it more feasible for them to provide food for donation,” he said. Farming is a tough business. There's not a lot of wiggle room and it can be difficult to let go of the produce.”

FarmLink seeks to create a more cost-effective and simpler solution to produce donations. The organization offers a tax incentive program that Yepiz said, provides farmers and wholesalers with the largest possible tax incentive at the end of the year. As a national organization, FarmLink also allows farmers and wholesalers from across the country to make donations by making phone.

“We take care of all the placement and all of the transportation to make it as easy as possible for wholesalers and farmers to donate,” he said.

A Retailer committed to reducing food waste

Jimbo’s, is a four-store grocer focused on natural, non-GMO and organic-certified products. Stephanie Morris has served as the retailer’s sustainability coordinator for two years.

“I'm very fortunate to have stepped into a business where food loss and waste and connecting with the community is intertwined,” Morris said. “It has been important to Jimbo’s since the beginning, so we've had long standing relationships with a lot of local food recovery organizations.

“Last year, we were able to track 20,000 pounds of donation just from the produce department alone, which is incredible considering the logistics involved in food rescue. Gleaning, however, has been a new program for us,” she said.

Jimbo’s works with a local nonprofit that sends gleaners and volunteers to its stores to pick produce that can’t be sold and deliver it to a food pantry. “Between the last quarter of 2021 and the first quarter of 2022, Jimbo’s has already donated 13,000 pounds of gleaned produce,” she said. “So, we've hugely increased our ability to reduce the waste from produce without seeing any increase in our losses.”