In California, Full Harvest, a marketplace for excess produce that would otherwise go to waste, closed an $8.5 million Series A round led by Spark Capital.
“An astounding amount of produce is wasted today in the United States, but the intuitive and beautifully designed Full Harvest online marketplace is starting to change this dynamic and is already delivering dramatic business benefits for its customers,” said Spark Capital investor John Melas-Kyriazi. “By aggregating excess produce supply at scale and providing a superior user experience to growers and food buyers via software, Full Harvest is shifting the way the industry thinks about how produce is bought and sold.”
While the food industry struggles to meet increasing global production demands, more food reaches U.S. landfills and incinerators than any other waste, according to the EPA, including 20 billion pounds of produce that goes to waste each year due to surplus or cosmetic reasons.