Full Harvest, an online marketplace for commercial buyers and sellers of fresh products, will now handle all grades of produce — from USDA Grade 1 to surplus and imperfect. The platform, which already has helped growers sell more than 85 million pounds of surplus and imperfect produce, aims to digitize the entire produce supply chain and provide valuable data and insights that are critical to solving the food waste problem.
Globally, an estimated 2.5 billion metric tons, or 40% of all food grown, goes to waste, according to a World Wildlife Federation report. And while agriculture and food-related industries contribute more than $1.2 trillion to U.S. GDP, according to the USDA, the produce industry remains predominantly offline. The lack of accurate data and operational transparency due to offline inefficiencies exacerbates the food waste problem.
“Everything edible should be consumed,” said Christine Moseley, Founder and CEO of Full Harvest in a statement. “We are on a mission to eliminate food waste in the produce ecosystem and create a more sustainable produce industry. While imperfect and surplus produce was an important first step, the entire produce industry needs to move online to maximize efficiency and eliminate waste.”
USDA Grade 1 is the primary produce grade used in the food industry to ensure cosmetic and quality standards, with guidelines on shape, color, size, texture and quality. Expanding the Full Harvest marketplace to include USDA Grade 1 will provide current buyers and suppliers, most of which buy and sell all grades of produce, with a one-stop shop to manage their produce online.
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Suppliers that want to learn more about the marketplace can visit https://www.fullharvest.com/farms, and produce buyers can find out more about Full Harvest at https://www.fullharvest.com/buyers.
