FY2024 GFN Annual Report Nourshing People and Planet - Flipbook - Page 28
Food Banking
Kenya
Tackling Hunger
& Waste
Not long ago, village elder Robert Chege
embraced a new voluntary role in the
community of Kamae: He helps hundreds
of small-scale farmers throughout the
surrounding area to offload surplus produce
they can’t eat or sell, while gaining access
to foods they otherwise wouldn’t be able
to obtain.
Food Banking Kenya brokers this exchange,
working through a facility it built that is
known locally as the produce depot. The
depot addresses a cruel irony of food
insecurity: while there is enough food to
feed everyone, it’s not always available in
places where the people who need it can
get it. In Kenya, for example, 40 percent of
the food produced—worth $655 million—is
wasted each year, as about 37 percent of the
population goes food insecure.
In a place like Kamae where most everyone
has a small plot of land to cultivate,
certain types of food are almost always
in abundance, like the cabbage, kale, and
potatoes that grow well in the area’s cool
climate. At the depot, Chege takes in
donations of this surplus food, recording
them in a small notebook, as villagers arrive
with bundles of food.
