The Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine (DAFM) is to provide €165,000 in funding for a food waste reduction project.
Following a recent call for proposals for food waste reduction initiatives, the department has confirmed that the FoodCloud Growers Project has been selected for support.
The funding will be supplied under the department’s Rural Innovation and Development Fund.
Project
The FoodCloud Growers Project aims to establish a national programme for the redistribution of surplus food from growers to community and volunteer organisations (CVOs) across Ireland.
It will reduce farm level food waste while providing fresh, nutritious produce to CVOs supporting those who need it most in communities across the country.
The objective of the project will be to redistribute over 150t of surplus produce via FoodCloud’s three redistribution hubs in Dublin, Galway and Cork, making it available to more than 180 CVOs.
DAFM supported the initial research to establish this project as well as a pilot programme which took place in 2023.
During the pilot, FoodCloud engaged with five growers and established that there were significant quantities of surplus vegetables available.
They redistributed some of the surplus through new partnerships with three local development companies (LDCs) in Donegal, Kerry and Cork and through FoodCloud’s existing charity network.
The new funding being announced today will go towards expanding the project in scale and ramping up the redistribution of surplus produce.
Food waste
According to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Ireland generates 770,000t of food waste each year which costs the average household €700 a year.
29% of the waste comes from households, the same amount comes from the processing and manufacturing sector, 25% is generated by restaurants and food service, with the remainder coming from retail and distribution (10%) and primary production (7%).
Within food production 189,485t of food is lost or wasted before the farm gate or at harbours. Vegetable production accounts for around 122,395t/year.
DAFM said that the main reasons relate to produce not meeting retail specifications and seasonal lack of consumer demand.
As part of Food Vision 2030 stakeholders developed a National Food Waste Prevention Roadmap which was published in November 2022.
The Food Waste Charter was relaunched last year to promote a collective industry commitment to measure, reduce and report waste along the supply chain.