About Andy Knowlton
Andy Knowlton, is a produce manager working with Feeding America to address food rescue through technology. Feeding America is a company catered towards creating sustainable food banks. Feeding America is partnered with over 200 food banks connecting itself to 46 million Americans each year through 60,000 food pantries across the country. Feeding America is a growing company dedicated to fighting food insecurity, “The hunger issue that we are working on is more than technology, it’s more than trying to solve all the components involved, but it is a real human issue.”
In Knowlton's lecture, he makes an emphasis on hunger impacts. For example, children's ability to learn is compromised, along with their cognitive and physical development, and other impacts as well. Feeding America has a goal to ensure access to enough nutritious food for people struggling with hunger and make great progress to end hunger by 2050. Feeding America is proud to say that 46 million Americans are served annually through their partnerships with food banks and food partners.
To remedy a solution to food waste and insecurity, Feeding America has created a platform, Regional Cooperative and partnered with Accenture as well as MealConnect, which divides the United States into 8 regional structures in order to gather statistics on localized needs; identifying supply and demand for specific products. Utilizing Regional Cooperative, in addition to Accenture, Feeding America is able to create a supply/demand analysis of local areas creating real time and interactive maps depicting which food is donated to a region.
MealConnect is aimed towards the consumer businesses such as grocery stores. MealConnect allows agencies to connect to local food banks through an online app posting food online which can not be sold but donated to a food bank. A local food bank will accept the offer and send a truck to pickup donations. MealConnect has rescued over 1 billion pounds of food and is connected to 140 food banks with over 20,000 donors. Feeding America is a growing company dedicated to fighting food insecurity, “The hunger issue that we are working on is more than technology, it’s more than trying to solve all the components involved, but it is a real human issue.”
Credits:
Feeding America