By Ephrem Murindabigwi
A strange contradiction is happening across the United States of America’s fields: while tens of millions of people struggle to get their next meal, vast quantities of perfectly edible food are being left behind where it is grown—rotting from disconnection. On farms in Idaho in the country, surplus harvests sit waiting for a market that is never gained, even as food banks are grappling with historic
demand—a gap that commendable initiatives supported by Tony Robbins and leading food rescue organizations are actively working to close. The entire world should emulate these initiatives.
This is where food rescue becomes more than an idea—it turns into an urgent system that must exist everywhere food can be left behind. Since the solution lies not only in producing more food, but also in rethinking ways to successfully handle all that we obtain: capturing abundance at the farm gate, redirecting it before it becomes rubbish, and transforming overlooked harvests into meals that are delivered to families in need.
“Food insecurity in America is at its highest level in nearly a decade.”
Robbins is widely referred to as a self-made billionaire, rising from an extremely modest background as broke janitor. This American engages actively in charitable work to provide necessitous people with food. He has been shaped by intense hardships which have toughened him to achieve unimaginable success. He started this work just at the age of 17 when he gave food to two needy families.
He then did so, especially motivated by the impetus to recognize a generous act which his family enjoyed from a stranger who furnished them with food while they were lacking it. “I’ll never forget what it felt like as a young boy thinking we wouldn’t be able to sit down to Thanksgiving dinner. Then a stranger gave us the food we couldn’t afford,” Robbins shares. ”For more on him and the adversities, click on “Who would have guessed that this decision would bring me to such an incredible moment?” Robbins. Never give up and Tony Robbins’ hardships: proof that with adversity, you are on the right path to incredible success and transformation.
Behind the globally recognized personal-development empire of Robbins stands what is commonly identified as Team Tony Robbins — a broad network of staff responsible for running the empire’s programs and communications. Team Tony Robbins says “Food insecurity in America is at its highest level in nearly a decade. An estimated 48 million people—including 14 million children—face hunger. And at the same time, perfectly good, safe food is being wasted every single day.”
Feeding America is a nationwide network of food banks, food pantries and local meal programs. It reports “1 in 5 Children [:] 14 million kids don’t have enough food to grow up strong.”
The number— 48 million people— accounts approximately for 14% of the U.S. population. Causes of this crisis that the network provides include where people live, insufficient income, the high cost of living, barriers to the future, and health challenges. “Where we live matters [.] Lack of transit, safe places, or good schools can make it harder for some families to get the food they need. Low pay, losing a job, or having a disability can make it hard for even working families to afford enough food.
When rent, health care, heat and electric bills, and child care cost more, families often have to spend less on food. Discrimination impacts people differently and can create cycles of poverty and hunger that are hard to break. Health problems and few care options can lead to hunger. Without the right kind of food, health can get worse.”
Robbins and food rescue organizations’ work to handle the issue
Despite the alarming situation, action is being taken to address this crisis in the United States. Robbins is aiding various rescue food organizations, in effort to alleviate hunger, enabling poverty-stricken individuals to obtain food.
Team Tony Robbins reports “Earth Month [every April] is the perfect time to work together and do something about it. Tony is supporting some of the most innovative food rescue organizations in the country, turning waste into meals and urgency into action. In Idaho, there’s a mountain of surplus potatoes waiting at a farm in Idaho—12 million pounds of them. They’re perfectly edible but can’t be sold on the typical market due to a drop in demand. And without intervention, they’ll all go to waste within the next month or two.
Sharing Excess [a food rescue organization] is on a mission to save them all. It will take 300 truckloads to get these potatoes to food banks across North America. Each truckload costs $1,600 and can carry over 80,000 potatoes, which could help provide thousands of meals. The potatoes themselves are completely free. All that’s needed is the cost of transportation. When Tony heard about it, he committed to covering 100 truckloads.”
Sharing Excess is one of the food rescue organizations. This organization began in a very simple way, so that one would hardly believe that it would eventually develop into what it has become today. Sharing Excess says that it rescues and distributes more than 2,000,000 lbs. [907184.74 kilograms] of food every week in partnership with grocers, wholesalers, and farmers. It states “From a student’s meal swipes, to a national movement. What started as a student-founded nonprofit has become one of the most powerful forces in food rescue.
In 2016, Drexel student Evan Ehlers realized he had extra meal swipes he wouldn’t use before the term ended. So, he did something simple — he gave them away. Driving around Philadelphia, handing out meals to anyone who needed one, he saw a heartbreaking truth: there was no shortage of food, there was a shortage of access. That day changed his life — and sparked the idea for Sharing Excess.”
It adds “Today, we’ve redistributed over 100 million meals and we’re growing fast, bringing our mission to new cities and communities across the country. We believe everyone deserves access to the basic resources they need to thrive — especially when those same resources are being thrown away by the billions. Food waste isn’t just bad for the planet. It’s a missed opportunity for humanity.
THE PROBLEM [:] 120 billion+ meals are wasted every year. All the while, at least 47 million Americans experience food insecurity. If we rescued even 7% of the food that goes to waste every year in America, we could close the 9.1 billion meal gap that still exists. In the United States, nearly 40% of food goes to waste while 47 million Americans go hungry. We believe food should be shared– not wasted.”
Sharing Excess concludes with these words. “733 million people globally lack consistent access to fresh and healthy food. Our work to end hunger and food waste needs your support. You can help us deliver food directly to communities in need — creating access to nutrition, stability, and food security for millions of people.”
The Farm Link Project is another food rescue organization which has also partnered with Robbins. It says “What started as a student-founded nonprofit has become one of the most powerful forces in food rescue. The Farmlink Project locates surplus food and connects it with food banks and community organizations fighting hunger across the country. With the support of Tony and The Tony Robbins Foundation, the impact has been extraordinary: 87 million pounds of food moved [,] 70.7 million meals enabled [,] 77,908 metric tons of CO₂e emissions avoided—equivalent to the carbon sequestered by 77,909 acres of U.S. forests [,]2.7 billion gallons of agricultural water saved [.]
Every pound of food the Farmlink Project saves is measured to show how much pollution is prevented, using a new system that has been independently checked and verified. To date, the organization has moved 450 million pounds of food, making 375 million meals possible and preventing 300,000 metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions from entering the atmosphere.”
Commenting on Feeding America, Team Tony Robbins reports “As the largest food rescue organization in the United States, Feeding America works with multiple partners to save nutritious food that would otherwise go to waste. In Feeding America’s 2025 fiscal year alone, they rescued 4.29 billion pounds of food and delivered it safely to communities across the country.
Tony is proud to continue his partnership with Feeding America through his Next Billion Meals Challenge. This initiative seeks to provide another billion meals to families facing hunger in the United States by 2035, as part of Tony’s larger global mission to provide 100 billion meals worldwide. Food rescue reduces waste, alleviates hunger, and promotes sustainability within communities. And when we get creative and work together, we can have a significant impact on our planet and improve the life of a friend, neighbor or coworker.”
Message to the world?
The message to the world is becoming impossible to ignore: hunger today does not merely amount to the result of scarcity, but increasingly the consequence of disconnection, preventable waste, and unequal access. While millions of people struggle to secure their next meal, enormous quantities of perfectly edible food are continuing to be discarded, disclosing a moral contradiction at the heart of modern abundance.
The growing work of Feeding America, Sharing Excess, The Farmlink Project, and Robbins demonstrates that solutions already exist when societies pick cooperation over indifference and rescue over waste. In the end, food rescue does not simply involve saving surplus harvests—it entails reestablishing human dignity, safeguarding the planet, and proving that compassion can transform what would have been rubbish into hope for millions.
The World Food Program, in its 25 June 2024 story headlined “5 facts about food waste and hunger”, highlights “Global hunger isn’t about a lack of food. Right now, the world produces enough food to nourish every child, woman and man on the planet. But nearly a fifth of all food produced each year is squandered or lost before it can be consumed. In many rich countries, this food waste happens in the kitchen — when we prepare foods that go uneaten, or leave food to spoil in fridges and kitchen cabinets.
For millions of people in developing countries, this food waste happens at harvest time. Poor storage facilities in farms lead to pest infestations and mould ruining crops. Lack of access to technology and markets means many farmers are forced to watch their crops rot in fields as the labour and financial investment required to harvest them is often unavailable. Along with chronic poverty, conflict and economic shocks, food loss is one of the root causes of hunger worldwide. Food loss also represents a waste of the very resources used to produce food — such as land, water and energy.”
This program provides other crucial facts on the crisis of hunger. “One-fifth of food produced for human consumption is lost or wasted globally. This amounts to one billion meals a day. The total cost of food loss and waste for the global economy is estimated at roughly US$1 trillion.
Food loss and waste generates up to 10 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions – almost five times the total emissions compared to the aviation sector. Sixty percent of food waste happens at household level. Food waste is higher in hotter countries, both at the household level and in the post-harvest phase, with high temperatures affecting storage, processing and transportation of food.”
This issue is not being raised only today. As we have read on Research Gate, in July 2012, the Journal of Sustainable Agriculture released a piece of writing which emphasized “We already grow enough food for 10 billion people … and still can’t end hunger.” This piece was authored by, among others, Eric Holt-Giménez from the Institute for Food and Development Policy and Miguel A. Altieri from the University of California, Berkeley. Currently, we neither possess updated information on these authors nor know whether they are still affiliated with these institutions.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration–a U.S. federal scientific and regulatory agency, through its undated piece titled “How Do We Feed Nine Billion People (Or 7.6 for that Matter)?”– also highlights “There is in fact enough food produced every year to feed 10 billion people. And yet, around 11 percent of people are hungry worldwide, and 98% of that hunger is concentrated in ‘developing’ countries. So hunger is a more complicated problem than sheer quantity, and there is a issue of distribution.”
The evidence unmistakably reveals a system where abundance coexists with preventable hunger. Doesn’t that constitute an undoubted contradiction that demands urgent global attention and coordinated action? Ultimately, food rescue does not form optional charity, but a necessary correction to a broken system of distribution and waste. In fact, until food is treated as a shared human responsibility rather than a discarded surplus, the crisis will persist in the shadow of excess.
New cold-chain partnership between the Africa Centre of Excellence for Sustainable Cooling and Cold-Chain (ACES) and Rwanda’s Ministry of Agriculture and Animal Resources [MINAGRI] marks a strategic shift toward reducing post-harvest losses– through modern and climate-smart infrastructure. By upgrading and deploying 10 cold-room packhouse facilities across key agricultural zones, the initiative is anticipated to improve food preservation, reinforce market access for farmers, and draw green investment into Rwanda’s agricultural value chains.
Ultimately, the project illustrates how integrated cold-chain systems can transform surplus production into sustained food security while addressing a major source of global food waste. In other words, while still at an embryonic stage, such a partnership offers a model that the rest of the world can no longer afford to ignore.