'How is food not part of civic infrastructure, like water?'

Jerusalem’s surplus produce goes to waste. An upstart NGO seeks to fix the system

Group salvaging up to 10 tons of food weekly launches Israel’s first Urban Food Policy Forum in hope that citywide coordination feeds more hungry locals, keeps edible food out of landfills

Small forklifts weaved through the wholesale produce market in Jerusalem’s Givat Shaul neighborhood on a recent early morning, moving laden pallets as vans and trucks waited to take produce to their grocery stores and restaurants.

Wholesale storeowners waved lists of the day’s recipients, motioning to their forklift drivers, who cried out to one another in Arabic. The same families, both Jewish and Arab, have often worked together for several generations.

Cartons of tomatoes, cucumbers and peppers that had arrived the evening before from all over the country were stacked six feet high, next to bulk containers of melons and huge pumpkins.

With the exception of a few hours in the afternoon, this sprawling enclave near the city entrance thrums around the clock.

It is also home to the logistics center and warehouse of Jerusalem Food Rescuers (Metzilot HaMazon), an NGO founded by social activists in 2019 that seeks to cut food insecurity in the capital, where 39% of families and 51% of children live below the poverty line, according to Ministry of Welfare figures.

During this reporter’s visit, a couple of dozen volunteers, all wearing orange vests, were busy in the warehouse sorting surplus vegetables by suitability for fresh produce or cooking. Waste suitable for animal feed or composting is also set aside, though mechanisms for its distribution need further development.

Food rescue by charitable organizations is long established. Leket, Israel’s leading food rescue organization and food bank, collects surplus food from farmers and leftover meals from institutions such as military bases and hotels. Latet, a nonprofit that distributes $30 million worth of food annually, picks it up from the big food conglomerates. Both distribute through NGO networks.

By contrast, Jerusalem Food Rescuers is an urban organization serving only the city. It currently salvages seven to 10 tons of food per week, 70% from the wholesale market, most of whose 20 or so businesses donate surplus, and the rest from a food aid organization with excess produce, a couple of bakeries, and a farm. It distributes through NGOs and directly to the public, often through pop-up markets, benefiting an estimated 1,000 Jerusalemites weekly.

Now, the organization wants to reform a poorly coordinated system linking surplus food suppliers, distributors and the city administration — one in which the city pays huge sums to transport and bury food waste while many residents struggle to eat properly.

First stop: City Hall

The first step was the launch of Israel’s first Urban Food Policy Forum at City Hall this month, with around 70 people from across the local food landscape. At the event, Mayor Moshe Lion signed the Milan Urban Food Policy Pact, joining over 300 cities working on healthier, more equitable, and more resilient food systems.

“Food security is about access to fresh, nutritious food, physically, economically, and culturally,” said Jerusalem Food Rescuers co-founder and co-CEO Daniella Seltzer.

The closest store might be too far away, too expensive, or too difficult to reach for someone with a disability living in a high-rise building without an elevator, she said.

“I would add that food security is also about preserving choice and dignity. It’s more than just healthy calories.”

She continued, “How can we not see food as part of the civic infrastructure, like water? How can it be left in the hands of different city departments and private companies that manage what we eat?”

After being referred from one Jerusalem Municipality department to another, all of which handle some aspect of food policy, Jerusalem Food Rescuers decided to research how other global cities coordinate urban food systems. Among the different approaches, they found that many have food councils that bring together stakeholders from the city and the community.

Around 18 months ago, the organization proposed such a model, to be co-chaired by civil society and the city, to Lion. He agreed and appointed Ronit Ahdut HaCohen, who holds the city council’s health portfolio, as coordinator. An expert in neuroscience, Ahdut HaCohen teaches at the Hebrew University’s Faculty of Medicine and the David Yellin Education College.

Ahdut HaCohen noted a worrying citywide rise in obesity, along with rising consumption of ultra-processed food, excess salt, and sugar. She told The Times of Israel that local authorities have an important role in encouraging healthier choices, ensuring food security, and formulating “smart, coordinated, and knowledge- and research-based urban policy.”

“The Jerusalem Food Forum was born out of the understanding that real change happens when all relevant parties sit around the same table,” she said.

Matchmaker: Need meets surplus

During the coming months, according to Seltzer, working groups will develop initiatives that can be implemented within a year. One will map all food aid organizations and identify which have surpluses or deficits of food. In Jerusalem, this includes a dense network of institutions operating within the Haredi community. Other groups will research issues such as food aid during times of crisis, formalized consultation with food-insecure residents, equipping schools with kitchens, and teaching about growing food and healthy eating.

The Jerusalem wholesale market, the largest of three in the country — and, like the others, privately owned — handles 10,000 to 20,000 tons of produce each day, according to Seltzer. The complex was built decades ago and has seen little renovation. When it’s hot, much of the food spoils outside because there aren’t enough cold rooms.

Sellers have little incentive to pass on surplus food, and only do so out of goodwill. Their profits come from commissions they take on food sold for the farmers, while they pay flat municipal fees, which means they don’t lose money on the food they discard. According to Seltzer, the Jerusalem Municipality spends roughly NIS 1,000 ($345) to transport every ton of waste to landfill sites, where it emits methane gas, which contributes to global warming.

Jerusalem Food Rescuers has 14 staff members, six young women who work with the group as part of their national service, and 450 volunteers, along with 33 distribution points citywide. Of these, 22 are led by residents and 11 are pop-up markets run by residents or youth in schools, community centers, and community gardens.

The weekly markets, explained Seltzer, give people more choice than delivered food boxes. They also encourage the community to come together around food in a welcoming environment that isn’t branded for the needy. Food is sold for NIS 1 per kilogram. (One dollar would buy around six-and-a-half pounds).

“We want to connect people to food on a one-to-one, community, and municipal basis,” she said.

The charity also runs educational programs and generates income by catering events and organizing cooking and fermentation workshops.

Seltzer’s co-founder and co-CEO, Itay Peled, said the NGO was aiming to triple or even quintuple its operations within three to five years by reaching out to as many as possible of the 2,000-plus food businesses on a list compiled by the municipality.

One challenge will be partnering with the big supermarket chains, which over the past couple of decades have created their own farm-to-retail systems, sidestepping wholesale markets like Jerusalem’s and using their huge economic clout to squeeze farmers’ prices and reap healthy profits from the public.

These chains are responsible for discarding nutritious produce long before it hits retail shelves.

“Farmers measure the mangos and look at the color and weight to check that they’re perfect,” Seltzer said. “In Israel, there isn’t enough public control over the food system. A lot is left in the hands of those geared to making profits.”

These chains control around 60% of Israel’s produce market, according to Agriculture Ministry data.

Peled added that organizations like his could not solve food insecurity alone because many factors, including low salaries, limited access to public housing, and a lack of equal opportunities in the workplace, contribute to the poverty that often drives the phenomenon.

“These are policy issues,” he said. “You can’t leave everything to the market.”

“I’m very passionate about food and believe it’s a gateway to social change,” Seltzer said. “We all need to eat. It can create entry points that are often harder to create within and between different communities.”

“With the municipality, we’ve been able to progress fast with different people from different backgrounds and political orientations because we work with everyone, and we do it around food,” she said. “So far, we haven’t found anyone who disagrees that food shouldn’t be thrown away.”