Rhandi Neal is a BCFWA member and Agriculture & Innovation Assistant Manager at The Greater Vancouver Food Bank. Below she brings us up to date on how BC agriculture helps feed those in need.
The Greater Vancouver Food Bank (GVFB) is demonstrating a new approach to food security by transforming surplus fruits and vegetables into nutritious, long-lasting products such as freeze-dried fruit snacks and cold-pressed juices. What began as a response to large volumes of donated produce that exceeded our distribution capacity has evolved into a food preservation and social impact model that extends shelf life, reduces waste, and creates new pathways to strengthen food security.
Through partnerships with farmers, food producers, and other organizations, the GVFB has begun extending these products beyond our own clients and into the hands of consumers. Most recently, the GVFB partnered with TransLink to launch a series of vending machines in SkyTrain stations, bringing these products directly to the public. Revenue generated through sales is reinvested into food preservation, recovery, and distribution programs, creating a circular model where surplus food becomes nutritious products, and those products help fund access to food for others.
Across British Columbia, significant volumes of edible food never reach consumers due to grading standards, market conditions, or supply chain limitations. By preserving this food and making it available year-round, the GVFB is demonstrating how innovation, partnerships, and infrastructure investment can turn surplus into an opportunity for our food system.
The opportunity extends far beyond vending machines and retail products. To fully capture and utilize surplus food across British Columbia, significant investment is required in logistics, particularly processing, storage, transportation, and distribution infrastructure. Food preservation is not simply a production activity; it requires a complete supply chain that begins at farms and ends in communities.
Many farmers have partnered with the GVFB with support from the BC Farmers’ Food Donation Tax Credit, a non-refundable income tax credit designed to encourage farmers and farming corporations to donate eligible agricultural products to registered charities. By working directly with farmers, the GVFB can repurpose food that might otherwise be left in the field while helping farmers access available tax benefits. This mutually beneficial relationship allows large volumes of surplus fruits and vegetables to be put to better use, year after year.
At the same time, many remote, northern, Indigenous, and food-insecure communities continue to face barriers to accessing affordable, nutritious food. With expanded cold storage, freezing capacity, freeze-drying, juicing, warehousing, transportation networks, and regional processing facilities, surplus food can be transformed into long-lasting products and distributed throughout the province year-round.
The vision is a provincial food recovery and preservation network capable of accepting larger volumes of donated produce, rapidly processing food during peak harvest periods, safely storing products, and distributing nutritious food to communities where fresh food can be expensive, inconsistent, or difficult to access. This approach strengthens food security, supports farmers, reduces waste, creates economic value, and helps ensure nutritious food reaches the people who need it most.
By investing in food preservation infrastructure and supply chain capacity today, British Columbia has an opportunity to build a more resilient food system, transforming surplus into a reliable source of nutritious food for communities across the province.