About us
About us
Students asking farms one question, and handing every yes to a food bank.
The Neighbour’s Table is a Canadian, student-run nonprofit. We ask farms about produce they cannot sell and hand every yes to a food bank that collects it.
The work is done by students at Canadian high schools, organized into chapters. Each chapter is a club of its own school, with the principal’s written approval and a Teacher Advisor who is copied on every outside message. Students build and maintain a list of farm businesses in their assigned area, ask each farm one question, and hand every yes to a food bank or food rescue organization that collects it with its own vehicle. Students never handle food. We are unpaid and we are not casual: named roles, a weekly session at lunch, and a record of every farm we contact.
We advocate as well as act. 8.8 million tonnes of edible food is wasted in Canada every year, according to Second Harvest and Value Chain Management International (2024). 24.0% of people in Canada lived in a food-insecure household in 2025, about 9.8 million people, according to PROOF, University of Toronto (2026).
The distance is the problem.
The gap
Canada has 189,874 farms, according to Statistics Canada’s Census of Agriculture 2021. An estimated 13% of the fruits and vegetables grown in Canada go unharvested or are discarded after harvest, according to Environment and Climate Change Canada. That gap is our reason.
Why we exist
The mission
We work toward a food system that treats edible food as food. Our mission page sets out what we stand for and how the work lines up with three UN Sustainable Development Goals.
Our mission
The evidence
We use seven published figures, each with its named source, on food waste, food banks, food insecurity and Canadian farms. The numbers page carries all of them with links.
The numbers
