Potato Project is a program of the Society of St. Andrew. It's a cost-effective way to move produce to the tables of hungry Americans instead of to landfills, reducing waste and fulfilling a social need at the same time. Since the Potato Project was started in 1979, over 500 million pounds of produce have been salvaged through this and other SoSA programs.
Although logistics can get tricky, the concept of the Potato Project is practical and straightforward: tractor-trailer loads of potatoes and other produce are often rejected by commercial markets or potato chip factories due to imperfections in shape, size, surface blemishes, or sugar content. Usually, these perfectly edible rejected loads end up at landfills. Through the Potato Project, however, the Society of St. Andrew is able to redirect these 45,000-pound loads of fresh, nutritious produce to soup kitchens, Native American reservations, food pantries, low income housing areas, local churches, and other hunger agencies for distribution to the poor.
The produce is donated, so the Society of St. Andrew only pays for the transportation and packaging of the food — just six cents per pound or two cents per serving. The food is passed along to those in need at no cost to them. SoSA programs operate on individual donations, church donations, and foundation grants at less than 3% overhead.