Pitch
Cooperatively owned innovative, virtual farmer's market coupled with door-step delivery for metro areas desiring locally grown fresh food.
Description
Summary
A virtual farmer’s market, coupled with a doorstep delivery distribution system will improve operational efficiency while reducing costs and other barriers, providing critical supports to allow smaller scale urban and near-urban farmers access to shared distribution systems while adding marketing capacity in local urban and near-urban markets. The system will provide for demand planning, helping farmers better meet demand with less waste and improve product quality and profits, while reducing transportation costs, food miles and greenhouse gas emissions. Innovation in local food marketing and distribution that meets consumer demands for cost, choice and convenience could become a catalyst supporting greater local food independence and food resilience.
Category of the action
Urban adaptation
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References
A Few Facts About Food Waste
According to a National Resources Defense Council report, getting food from farm to table uses 10% of our nation's energy budget. This morning on MPR, Jonathan Foley, director of the Institute on the Environment at the University of Minnesota, said that "The need to feed the present 7 billion people already uses about 40 percent of the (non-ice-covered) land on the planet. Seventy percent of all the water we consume is used to irrigate crops. And also, agriculture is one of the biggest contributors to climate change...."
That's an extremely costly food chain and yet approximately 40% of all food produced in the world is never eaten. According to the EPA, 21% of our municipal waste is food waste. More food goes to landfills and incinerators than any other type of material. Not only are we losing an estimated $165 billion in food that could be used to feed hungry people, but food in landfills produces methane as it decays. Landfills account for 20% of all methane emissions. Methane is 21 times more potent as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide so this is a very big deal.
Our Goal: Reducing Food Waste
By:
HARVEST2go
