Leket Israel

Leket Israel – the National Food Bank, rescues fresh agricultural produce and nutritious cooked meals and produces frozen soups from surplus vegetables and distributes it to Israelis in need throughout the country. Food rescue is the collection and delivery of quality edible food that would otherwise have been discarded to populations suffering from food and nutritional insecurity. Food rescue increases food supply without additional loss of natural and economic resources, reduces food and nutrition insecurity, and contributes to the reduction of pollution and greenhouse gas emissions caused by food production and waste. Joseph Gitler, Founder and Voluntary Chairman, immigrated to Israel in 2000. He founded Leket Israel in 2003 as a one-man volunteer operation to respond to the paradox of growing hunger and poverty in Israel on the one hand and significant food waste on the other.
In 2024, Leket Israel distributed food through a network of 300 nonprofit partner agencies, feeding 415,000+ Israelis in need each week. The recipients include the elderly, Holocaust survivors, the homeless, youth at risk, single parent families, women at risk, and families in need who suffer from nutritional insecurity and lack access to healthy food.
Food rescue has 3 main advantages:

The Economic Benefit: Food waste is detrimental to economic productivity due to the production and labor costs that are irretrievably lost. Food rescue means converting waste with zero or negative value into a product that has a positive economic value and provides nutrition to underprivileged populations without the need to invest additional resources into production. Food rescue can close the food insecurity gap in Israel at only one third of the cost of the current food support practices - food purchase or food stamps. The cost of food stamps required to close the food insecurity gap is NIS 3.3 billion (US $972m) while the cost of food rescue to close the same gap is only NIS 900 million (US $265m).
The Social Benefit: Food rescue improves public health and tackles social inequalities by reducing food and nutrition insecurity and helping close cost of living gaps in vulnerable populations.

The Environmental Benefit: Food production uses land, water, fertilizers, chemicals, and energy, and is responsible for about one-fifth of greenhouse gas emissions worldwide. Food rescue reduces pollutants while conserving valuable land and water resources. It also reduces costs and emissions from waste removal and disposal in landfills, where decomposing food releases significant amounts of methane.

Leket Israel’s 8th Food Waste and Rescue Report was published in 2024 for the fourth time in collaboration with Israel’s Ministry of Environmental Protection and for the first time with Israel’s Ministry of Health and written by BDO. The Report includes a special and detailed chapter on the impact of food security on nutritional health and healthcare costs in Israel (focusing on fruit and vegetables). Economic accessibility to healthy food, ensuring essential nutrition for physical, mental, and cognitive functioning, is a crucial element for achieving national nutritional security and reducing healthcare costs.
While the findings of this Report pertain to 2022, an additional section was added with a preliminary discussion of the consequences of the war on food waste and food insecurity in Israel, and the feasibility of food rescue in light of current events.

Food rescue is a tool for expanding food reserves and ensuring food security during normal times as well as crises. The Swords of Iron War highlights the national importance of implementing food rescue as a key policy tool to address the problem of food insecurity. This war has harmed vulnerable populations in Israel, and exacerbated food insecurity on two levels.
The current national situation as a result of the war, including an unstable local food supply and higher food prices, highlights the importance of local Israeli agriculture for the country’s resilience and continued existence. The government’s policy of importing produce did not successfully solve the problem of rising prices and the shortage of produce that resulted from this crisis. Even during routine times, importing agricultural produce cannot adequately ensure food security, and even represents a risk to it.
The economic reality after this war will be a larger percentage of the population facing food insecurity, and an exacerbation of the situation for those already experiencing food insecurity. At the same time, a greater volume of food is being wasted. This highlights the need to implement a national policy tool of rescuing food and distributing it for consumption by vulnerable populations, to help them in normal times as well as times of crisis.