The 2025 ReFED Food Waste Solutions Summit, ReFED, the U.S.-based nonprofit working to solve food waste, announced the next cohort of grantees to receive funding through its Catalytic Grant Fund, a first-of-its-kind initiative designed to support food waste solutions with catalytic funding that can unlock outsized impact. The latest open call, Maximizing the Harvest, focused on supporting organizations providing solutions to address the 17 million tons of fresh produce that goes unharvested or unsold on America’s farms every year.
The five grantees selected offer solutions spanning automated harvesting, on-farm cold storage, and new sales channels for surplus produce and byproducts. These organizations and their projects receiving support are:
Feeding New York State will conduct a statewide assessment of over 3,000 farms to identify untapped surplus produce in collaboration with Matriark Foods, and outline opportunities to convert it into shelf-stable, culturally relevant food for food-insecure communities. The resulting roadmap will be publicly shared to support broader efforts to reduce on-farm surplus.