Abstract
In this paper we study the simultaneous problems of food waste and hunger in the context of food (waste) rescue and redistribution as a means for mitigating hunger. To this end, we develop an empirical model that can be used in Monte Carlo simulations to study the dynamics of the underlying problem. Our model's parameters are derived from a data set provided by a large food bank and food rescue organization in north central Colorado. We find that food supply is a non-parametric heavy-tailed process that is well modeled with an extreme value peaks over threshold model. Although the underlying process is stochastic, the basic approach of food rescue and redistribution to meet hunger demand appears to be feasible. The ultimate sustainability of this model is intimately tied to the rate at which food expires and hence the ability to preserve and quickly transport and redistribute food. The cost of the redistribution is related to the number and density of participating suppliers. The results show that costs can be reduced (and supply increased) simply by recruiting additional donors to participate. With sufficient funding and manpower, a significant amount of food can be rescued from the waste stream and used to feed the hungry.
Highlights
There is a contradiction present in the United States (US) today: up to 50% of food produced for consumption is wasted in some stage of production, distribution, or preparation [1,2,3]
There is not a clear enough autocorrelation in the data to permit using time-series models. We find that this process is described extremely well using a peaks over threshold (POT) model where events greater than zero are modeled using a Generalized Pareto distribution with Maximum Likelihood Estimator (MLE) fitted parameters provided for each donor category in table 1
Simulation results show that when we set the daily demand to 5,454 lbs, the mean recieved by Community Food Share (CFS) in our data set, the demand is met on the majority of days when we use E~0:5
Summary
There is a contradiction present in the United States (US) today: up to 50% of food produced for consumption is wasted in some stage of production, distribution, or preparation [1,2,3]. The idea of food recovery is not new — there are dozens of nonprofit food rescue and gleaning organizations (e.g., [4,5,6]) that have been recovering and redistributing food for more than 30 years. These organizations receive food donations from grocery stores, farms, retailers, and restaurants that are overstock or close to the ‘‘best by’’ date and would otherwise be discarded. A coalition of major grocers and retailers organized under the Feeding America project with the goal of large scale food rescue, redistribution, and documentation [7].
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