Digitaaliset varat
Ruoanlahjoitukset tarvitsevat parempaa digitaalista infrastruktuuria
Both supply chains and donations infrastructure suffer from the same issues: mismatch between supply and demand, traceability, waste, and accountability for all actors involved.
So far, blockchain technology has made great progress in providing supply chains with solutions for these problems.
For example, you can consult our articles “5 Blockchain Leaders Driving Supply Chain Transparency”, “Top 10 Blockchain Logistics Service Providers You Should Know”, or “Blockchain Supply Chains Driving Textile Sustainability”.
The same could be applied to food donation, increasing the incentive for food producers and supermarkets to help. Blockchains, but also distributed ledger technologies (DLTs) in general, could provide useful solutions in this domain.
“Despite the potential of food donations to address food waste and food insecurity issues, the major actors in the commercial food sector are still hesitant to donate food surplus to food banks and social charities due to the lack of incentives and various food donation-associated challenges.”
A research paper on this topic, written by two researchers at the University of Applied Sciences St. Pölten (Austria) and the Vienna University of Economics and Business (Austria), investigates just this idea.
It was published in the Journal of Responsible Technology1, under the title “Opportunities of digital solutions for addressing food donation challenges”.
Food Donations Challenges
A Massive Problem
Around 88 million tonnes of food are still wasted every year in the EU alone. Food waste is causing environmental damage to the ecosystem, but it is also a very costly problem, totaling to $2.6T per year globally.
In parallel, the COVID pandemic and financial difficulty are causing food insecurity for a growing segment of the population, particularly due to higher costs due to inflation.
This situation is currently mostly handled by food banks and food aid organizations.
Many different such organizations are currently operating in the EU, as part of the European Food Banks Federation (FEBA), serving around 12.4 million people in need via 351 food banks in the region. Food bank networks outside the EU include The Global FoodBanking Network2 and Feeding America.
Unstable Or Unsuitable Supply & Demand
The limited, unpredictable, variable over- or under-supply of food is often viewed as one of the main problems in food donations, much more so than the variability of demand.
Another recurring issue is that many food donations, if not most in some cases, did not consider consumer preferences, and/or had low nutritional value, with poor food quality and safety overall.
Donations Are Not Labor- Or Risk-Free
Another important issue for many food donors, which mostly comprises small and medium-sized businesses, is that they would rather avoid the extra workload associated with food donations.
Extra bureaucratic labor is costly, unwelcome, and reduces the willingness of employees to participate. This can be made worse by a lack of stakeholder communication, coordination, and information sharing.
This issue of having to establish systems for food donation can be compounded by reputational risk.
The possibility of brand damage in case of quality or safety deterioration of donated food is a serious concern for many brands and supermarkets, while food wastage is an accepted practice and an “invisible” damage to society.
These risks are made even more prevalent by insufficient volunteer training on safety, sanitary, and hygiene requirements, something the food donors cannot control.
Time Sensitive Donations
Contrary to other charitable networks, food donations deal with perishable products. Even more problematic, donated food is usually at the end of its shelf life, so the time to redistribute the food to end beneficiaries plays a critical role.
This creates regulatory risks tied to official hygiene and food quality requirements. To this day, there are no harmonized EU policies for food donations. And existing directives, like for example that products past “best before date” could still be donated, are often not known by potential food donors.
Financial Issues
For many donors, food donation appears in the financial results as profit losses, the same way as thrown-away expired food.
This not only impacts the financial results of the organization as a whole, but can also affect the individual department or supermarket profits, or even the careers of people directly in charge of donations. Many, instead, will see it as cheaper to discard food.
“The biggest challenge is to convince the companies to donate food instead of throwing it away”.
In contrast, tax exemption and other financial incentives were mentioned as significant incentives for the food sector to engage in food donation practices, illustrating the importance of national policies in that matter.
“Food donors and prospective food donors would most likely adhere to regular food donation practices when logistic and economic viability was present, as well as certain cost savings, moral and strategic motives.”
Study Overview
The Study Methods
This study used questionnaires to a food bank network organization in Belgium, and two food banks in Austria.
The food network organization coordinates and collaborates with European food banks, such as charities, social restaurants, food pantries, social kitchens, shelters, etc.
The business partners of the association are local NGOs, retailers and supermarkets, distributors, food banks, farmers, food producers, schools and universities, restaurants, and policymakers.
The food banks were selected to represent different scales and problems, respectively managing on average 1 to 3 tonnes of food donations per month and 4 tonnes of food donations per day.
Existing IT Solutions
Digital solutions are already being deployed in the field of food donation.
Notably, mobile applications have been utilized in food donation contexts to enable food aid recipients to carry out budget management of reimbursable expenses and to document their expenses via digital receipts.
Other solutions linking donors, food banks, and volunteers are also making progress. Digital online platforms were utilized to improve community outreach, coordination, and cooperation as a crisis management solution during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Development benefits of a digital online platform (SavingFood) included an online database of charities and donors, intermediary matchmaking, availability of statistics about redistributed food, and creation of a like-minded community online in the case of food donation redistribution practices in Greece. “
How Can Blockchain Help Food Donations?
Different Needs
Remarkably, immutability and transparency, all key elements of most blockchain projects, might not always be aimed for in this case.
Instead, security, confidentiality, and privacy requirements of involved parties are the priorities expressed by the participants in this study and in academic literature on this topic.
The key difference of this technology compared to existing IT solutions is that it allows each stakeholder group to simultaneously and independently share critical supply, demand, or resource-related information across the supply chain.
This can radically solve the issue of mismatched supply and demand and the logistics of the operation.
“Social services or beneficiaries can determine and communicate own demand in advance so that food rescue operations can equitably optimize the food surplus distribution from food donors; or food donors can allocate and donate food that is in the actual demand among beneficiarie”
Better Visibility
Improving the visibility of unmet demand is a powerful driver in improving motivation to become a donor.
Such visibility could also enable the introduction of necessary and sound policy and regulatory measures to tackle food waste and food insecurity on a state level.
Similarly, improving the visibility of donations in a trusted, third-party ledger can help donors leverage their donations into public relations campaigns and internally for the improvement of ESG ratings.
Anonymity Matters Too
While donors want visibility, receivers of food donations generally prefer to stay anonymous, often feeling ashamed to need such a donation.
So reception of food donation can be anonymized through methods now routine for blockchain projects. This is a steep improvement compared to the regular data breaches that most conventional IT database systems suffer from.
Anonymous post-donation reviews by beneficiaries to share the extent of satisfaction with food aid can also help improve the service, especially regarding real demand and nutritional contents, without fear of losing access or stigmatization.
Adding AI
One key advantage of blockchain or other distributed ledger technologies (DLTs) is that they also create usable data for other tools.
AI/ML with DLTs can enable efficient resource allocation and redistribution, or ML with web technologies for demand forecasting and issue identification in food collection.
Blockchain Future In Food Donation
The challenges of food donations across different regions are largely similar. So a “one-size-fits-all” solution with small possible tweaks could be successful in improving the infrastructure of food donations.
However, food donation actors’ knowledge of distributed ledger is limited, for now, restricting the impact they expect from this technology. This could reduce the speed and scale of adoption of any specialized blockchain in this field.
As more supply chain blockchains are deployed and pushed by independent initiatives to big tech companies (see below), this will likely change.
This is the occasion for food donation systems to latch onto these existing efforts to adopt blockchain throughout the food supply chain and boost the efficiency of food donation infrastructure.
Investing In Digital Donations Infrastructures
IBM
(IBM )
IBM is a giant of IT infrastructure since its inception when it was producing the first mainframe computers. Today, it is still a major actor in providing companies with the computing capacity they need, mostly through hybrid cloud ( public cloud + private cloud + on-premises infrastructure).
It is also a leader in quantum computing, neuromorphic AI chips, and photonics technologies, preparing its position for the next step in computing technology.
Regarding food supply chains, IBM has launched the IBM Food Trust, a blockchain produce tracker launched in 2020.
It allows for information to be traced and shared across the industry, such as how produce is grown, processed, and traveled. IBM Food Trust can also integrate with Internet of Things (IoT) sensors to monitor container temperatures in near real-time.
As a result, it can reduce the checking time for provenance or quality from days or weeks to 2.2 seconds. Accelerated logistics for short shelf-life items can also be highly beneficial for food donations.
Other blockchain projects could also be used for food traceability. For example, OriginTrail (TRAC), which Trace Labs uses the open-source OriginTrail Decentralized Knowledge Graph (DKG) to build Food Data Market (FDM) applications.
Another one is VeChain (VET), an enterprise-grade smart contract platform designed to streamline supply chain management. It uses a highly efficient Proof-of-Authority (PoA) system, requiring less energy than traditional Proof-of-Work blockchains. Here too, NFC chips and IoT temperature sensors can help track the quality of food on this blockchain while providing immutable proof of their donations to corporate donors.
Overall, from giants like IBM to open-source projects, many supply chain blockchains are already being built to improve food donation infrastructures, and will likely be more and more used as more food donors start ot adopt the technology for their logistical needs at large.
(You can read more about IBM in our investment report dedicated to the company.)
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Study Referenced
1. Jamilya Nurgazina, Gerald Reiner. Opportunities of digital solutions for addressing food donation challenges. Journal of Responsible Technology. 27 toukokuu 2026, 100173. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrt.2026.100173
