MEXICO CITY — The Central de Abastos, with more than half a million daily visitors, feels more like a city than a market. Stretching across 800 acres on the eastern side of the Mexican metropolis, this wholesale produce market is the machine that feeds tens of millions of people every day.
It is also a huge source of food waste, with hundreds of tons of unsold vegetables and fruit consigned to dumpsters at the close of each market day. But since 2020, the government-run Central de Abastos has pioneered an approach to redirecting some of that unused produce into the mouths of the hungry — a program that has contributed to reducing the market's daily food waste by 24% and delivered almost 800 tons of food to soup kitchens.
