Can We Eliminate Food Waste

Or are we just managing a system designed to waste

Canada produces more than enough food to feed everyone, yet millions remain food insecure while enormous volumes of perfectly good food are lost. In this conversation, Lori Nikkel, CEO of Second Harvest, reframes the issue away from scarcity and toward systems failure—how food is produced, priced, moved, and ultimately left behind.

What emerges is a picture of food rescue not as charity, but as infrastructure. Second Harvest operates a parallel supply chain, using data, logistics, and coordination to redirect surplus food to communities across the country. It is precise, efficient, and increasingly scalable. And yet, its very success raises a harder question: if we can move this much food, why does the need persist?

Lori draws a clear line between feeding people and solving food insecurity. Redistribution can address immediate need, but it does not resolve the structural conditions—poverty, policy gaps, market incentives—that produce both waste and hunger at the same time. The absence of a national strategy on food waste in Canada only deepens that contradiction.

This episode sits in that tension. It explores what becomes possible when waste is made visible and measurable, and what remains unchanged even as systems improve. The result is not a simple answer to the question of elimination, but a clearer understanding of what that question demands.