One spot trader's bad investment had left 4,000 tonnes of potatoes sitting in a storage warehouse south of Leipzig. So the farm reached out to Berlin-based search engine Ecosia and the Berlin Morgenpost newspaper to try and find a way to give the potatoes away to people in the city.
On Wednesday, the first truckloads of taters were set to arrive at a number of different distribution points around the German capital.
'Visualise four million kilograms of potatoes'
That's how the story in the Berlin Morgenpost began.
According to that report, 4,000 tonnes of spuds weigh about as much as 800 adult elephants and could be stacked as high as Berlin's iconic TV Tower.
Calorically, it's enough food to feed hundreds of thousands of people.
Who gets the potatoes?
Transport of the potatoes in large truckloads has been arranged and paid for by Ecosia. Starting on Wednesday, and continuing gradually for days to come, huge quantities of potatoes are set to arrive in the German capital.
Berliner Morgenpost had called on organisations and individuals capable of receiving and distributing at least one tonne of potatoes to apply to set up a drop-off point. Well over 1,000 organisations and individuals have arranged to receive bins of potatoes, including the zoo and the Berliner Tafel food bank, which will receive a whole truckload (20 tonnes).
Some of these organisations will manage the distribution of their potatoes alone, such as Berliner Tafel which said it will pass them on to social institutions as well as distributing them at their "loaf-and-soul" distribution points (Laib-und-Seele-Ausgabestellen).
Other drop-off locations, however, are to serve as pick-up points. From January 15th, people in Berlin can stop at one of these spots to score some free potatoes. A map showing pick-up points is available at 4000-tonne.de.
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Some of the tubular tonnage is also being directed to Leipzig, where local newspapers Leipziger Volkszeitung, Sächsischer Zeitung have also joined in to coordinate distribution with local groups.
Re-routing food waste
Osterland Agrar GmbH (that's the farm that grew the potatoes), Ecosia and Berlin Morgenpost say that the joint action is intended to bring attention to the issue of food waste.
According to Germany's Environment Agency, some 10.8 million tonnes of food was wasted within the country's food supply chain in 2022.
That figure does not include surplus and spoiled food that is instead diverted for animal feed or burned in biogas plants. As reported by Berlin Morgenpost, the latter was the most likely outcome for the 4,000 tonnes of Osterland's potatoes in this case, had the farm not made the effort to start this campaign.
Another fun fact highlighted by the initiative is that 4,000 tonnes of potatoes equates to the same caloric value as around 1,800 tonnes of chicken meat, but comes with significantly less environmental impact. The campaign website notes that raising enough chickens to produce that much meat equates to the clearing of 250,000 trees in the Amazon (for land on which to grow the soy needed to feed the chickens).
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