Why We Invested in Farm to Feed: The Odd-Looking Solution to Post-Harvest Losses
Farm to Feed is Africa’s first digital marketplace for imperfect and surplus produce
In Sub-Saharan Africa, post-harvest food losses are estimated at US$4 billion a year, enough to feed at least 48 million people. While most losses happen at the producer stage, a significant share of perfectly edible food is discarded simply for being unattractive, too close to expiry, or because of minor damage. Addressing this challenge requires solutions that create real market access for produce that would otherwise go to waste.
One such solution is Farm to Feed, a women-led startup tackling post-harvest losses by purchasing and aggregating full harvests from farmers, including rescue-grade produce.
Background
Farm to Feed emerged during the COVID-19 pandemic to support local farmers who lost market access. What began as a GoFundMe campaign to distribute surplus food to people living in the slums has evolved into a comprehensive solution addressing food waste, farmer income, and climate change.
Farm to Feed first joined the Mercy Corps family in 2022 through a partnership with Mercy Corps AgriFin where the company got support in the design and development of the digital marketplace and building robust data capture capabilities to track CO2 savings, food loss reduction and the advancement of sustainable, climate-smart supply chains. We are now excited to welcome them into the Mercy Corps Ventures portfolio.
The Market Need
Many of us have walked past a perfectly good vegetable or fruit at the market simply because it looked a little “odd”. Each year, tons of perfectly edible fruits and vegetables go to waste simply because consumers judge them by their appearance. In fact, farmers are estimated to leave as much as 30% of their harvest in the field because it isn’t considered visually appealing enough to sell.
Before working with Farm to Feed, 46% of farmers reported using their surplus and imperfect produce as animal feed, 25% composted it, and 15% discarded it entirely. But what if there was a way to bring this produce to market, increasing farmer incomes while reducing food waste? That’s precisely what Farm to Feed is trying to achieve.
The Imperfect Produce Solution: How it works
Farm to Feed sources fresh produce from both smallholder and larger farms, purchasing the farmer’s entire harvest, aggregating it, and reselling through its B2B marketplace to commercial kitchens. The company works with two categories of produce:
Grade 1 & 2 Produce: High-quality fruits and vegetables sold at prevailing market rates.
Rescue Grade Produce: Edible but visually imperfect fruits and vegetables that would otherwise go to waste.
How does Farm to Feed Create Demand for Rescue Grade Produce?
Decades of marketing have taught consumers to equate perfect appearance with quality. An oddly shaped tomato is often dismissed as spoiled, while a misshapen cucumber is assumed to be old. Changing these perceptions is difficult, but Farm to Feed has carved out a niche with commercial kitchens by offering a one-stop shop for fresh fruits and vegetables. Through its platform, restaurants, schools, and other institutions can conveniently source their entire basket of produce in one place.
Today, businesses mostly use rescue-grade produce in dishes where appearance doesn’t matter, like soups and sauces, while relying on Grade 1 and 2 products for salads and other visually sensitive meals.
In the future, Farm to Feed plans to expand demand for rescue-grade produce by introducing semi-processed products, a rollout that has already begun, in order to expand its catalogue of B2B customers, both regionally and internationally. These products will drive adoption in two key ways:
Reducing prep time for commercial kitchens with items like peeled garlic, underscoring convenience as a powerful value proposition in food service.
Developing new consumer-friendly formats, drawing on precedents like the commercial success of baby carrots in the 1990s, which exemplify how product innovation and repositioning can reshape consumer perceptions and drive widespread market uptake.
Investment Rationale
Farm to Feed aligns closely with our Climate-Smart Technologies and Adaptive Agriculture and Food Systems theses. It demonstrates how market linkages and value addition can reduce post-harvest losses and strengthen food systems. By cutting waste, improving farmer incomes, and addressing climate impact, Farm to Feed represents the kind of scalable, sustainable solution we seek to support. We’re also inspired by their model of preserving the value of surplus and imperfect produce by keeping it in the food chain rather than letting it end up in landfills or animal feed. Importantly, their platform enables the capture of granular data on the drivers of post-harvest loss across regions and value chains, providing critical insights to build an evidence base that can inform the design of system-level interventions. We’re excited to partner with Farm to Feed on this journey.