The Shocking Truth About Produce Waste In America & Fixing The Broken Food Supply Chain Ft. Melissa Ackerman of Planet Harvest

What It Covers

Melissa Ackerman, founder and CEO of Planet Harvest, explains how 30% of U.S. produce never leaves farms due to size specifications, broken supply chains, and financial barriers — and how her company, co-founded with Ivanka Trump, is rebuilding distribution to redirect excess harvest to food-insecure communities.

Key Questions Answered

• •Produce waste scale: 400 million pounds of strawberries are discarded annually in the U.S. solely because they fall outside grocery store size specifications — not due to quality or taste. Consumers can push retailers to stock non-uniform "number two" produce, similar to Australia's Odd Bunch grocery model, to directly reduce this field waste.
• •Supply chain vulnerability: 60% of U.S. lettuce grows in California's Salinas Valley, creating a single-point-of-failure risk for national supply. Rising input costs — water, labor, international competition with government-subsidized foreign growers — threaten farm viability. Supporting domestic produce purchasing and lobbying against restrictive grading specs helps preserve this concentrated supply base.
• •Buying by ripeness stage: Purchase bananas and other produce in multiple ripeness stages simultaneously — one green, one yellow, one near-ripe — to reduce household waste. Match produce purchases to your actual consumption timeline rather than buying uniform batches, which is the primary driver of residential food waste.
• •Food as medicine distribution: Planet Harvest builds produce boxes targeting specific medical conditions — diabetes, hypertension, high-risk pregnancies — using Thrive's data to determine which fruits and vegetables belong in each box. These are delivered directly to patients, with physicians tracking health outcomes, creating a measurable, scalable model for produce-based preventive care.
• •Emergency relief logistics: Planet Harvest deploys produce boxes within 48 hours of disaster events, sourcing locally where possible — Hawaiian produce for Hawaii relief, for example. Boxes are designed for culturally relevant consumption and no-cook scenarios when power is unavailable, containing 10–12 pounds of fresh produce alongside beans, rice, and shelf-stable milk.