Leket 2025 Annual Report
Israel is emerging from a profoundly difficult period, with the social and economic effects of the war still permeating the country. Since the outbreak of war in 2023, disruption across the agricultural sector and food distribution networks have increased food loss, driven up the cost of living, and intensified food insecurity. In response, Leket Israel leveraged its operational resilience, partnerships across the food supply chain, and broad volunteer network to support vulnerable populations throughout the war. In 2025, as daily life gradually stabilized following the ceasefire with Hezbollah in late 2024, Leket scaled back emergency initiatives and reinforced its core rescue operations while continuing to support communities most affected by the conflict. Organization-wide, Leket met rising demand while reducing reliance on food purchase, adapting to limited rescue opportunities, and managing ongoing labor shortages as staff moved in and out of reserve duty. Despite renewed escalation with Iran in June, Leket achieved significant progress in 2025, improving logistical efficiency, strengthening nutrition programming, and advancing national food rescue policy.
In 2025, Leket distributed 33,939 metric tons (74.8 million lbs.) of food that was delivered to 346 partner nonprofit organizations (NPOs) serving 470,000 Israelis from all backgrounds in 121 towns. Although understaffed for much of the year, these achievements reflect Leket’s relentless determination to support those in need under any circumstances.
Leket’s operational expenses totaled $30.4 million in 2025, of which $3.8 million was emergency support expense. General operating costs rose due to increases in Israel’s Consumer Price Index (CPI) and increased outsourced trucking costs, in part due to rising fuel prices.
Highlights of the Year 2025
- Distributed 32,049 tons (70.69 million lbs.) of fresh produce collected from the agricultural sector.
- Distributed 2.2 million hot meals primarily collected from the catering sector and IDF bases.
- Manufactured and distributed 803,160 pints (500g) of frozen soup and vegetable dishes.
- Assembled and distributed 14,280 dried food packages.
- Conducted 401 nutrition education workshops for populations at risk in Hebrew, Arabic, and Amharic, and 136 nutrition education classes in elementary schools.
- Recruited 120,000 volunteers to assist Leket’s operations and war-affected farmers.
Invested $666,654 in NPO capacity building. - Distributed $1,685,294 in low-interest loans and $105,882 in grants to farmers affected by the war.
- Distributed 64,697 holiday-specific produce boxes and 2,389 festive and nutritious ready-to-eat meal boxes to families in need for Rosh Hashana.
- Distributed 1,505 digital supermarket vouchers valued at NIS 800 each to long-term IDF reservists and their families experiencing financial hardship.
Project Leket
Despite a temporary return to emergency produce purchase during the June escalation with Iran, Leket reduced its overall reliance on purchase and strengthened core rescue operations. Following the appointment of a new COO, Yehuda Hie, Project Leket transitioned to a revised structure led by an Agricultural Operations Manager and organized by region (North, Center, and South). Each region has its own manager, supported by a team of field coordinators and a dedicated call center representative. This shift increased responsiveness and strengthened partnerships, enabling regional teams to lead
outreach and recruitment using real-time field insights to expand farm and packing-house partnerships and increase rescue volumes. To make up for reduced rescue opportunities from farms due to the war, Project Leket increased rescue operations
from packing houses, a highly cost-effective approach since it does not require professional pickers. Strategic marketing and PR events improved visibility and deepened relations within farming communities, supporting growth in rescue quantities.
Project Achievements in 2025:
- Rescued 29,000 metric tons (63.9 million lbs.) of 61 types of produce through 6,045 rescue opportunities, a 45% increase over 2024.
- Purchased 3,091 metric tons (6.8 million lbs.) of 25 types of produce from 32 farmers, a 73% decrease over 2024.
- Collected produce from 700 farms and packing houses, including 61 new partners.
- Increased rescue from packing houses by 89% over 2024 for a total of 424 partner packing houses.
- Conducted an average of 27 quality inspection visits per month to partner NPOs, which found that 93% of produce provided to partners was A grade and 6% B grade, a 1% reduction in low-quality produce over 2024.
- Recruited 18,150 volunteers to sort and pack rescued produce at Leket’s central Logistics Centre and 17,180 volunteers to glean produce at Leket’s Rishon Etzion fields to send to partner NPOs.
Farm Hands for Israel
This program continued providing critical on-farm labor as farmers faced mounting challenges. Restricted access to farmland, damage to crops and equipment, and severe labor shortages due to the War contributed to widespread farm closures and a significant decrease in agricultural output. This project helped stabilize farms and mitigate additional closures by easing workforce gaps, preventing further food loss and helping farmers bring produce to market, offsetting inflated labor costs.
Project Achievements in 2025:
- Mobilized 73,894 volunteers on 2,761 buses to 383 farms throughout the country.
- Volunteers harvested an estimated 18,990,758 lbs. of produce valued at $18,041,220 ($0.95 per lb.).
- Recruited diverse volunteer groups from Israel and abroad, including expanded partnerships with army preparation and national service organizations and a dedicated initiative that fostered meaningful connections and solidarity between Israelis and non-Israelis.
Meal Rescue
Leket ran 18 meal rescue routes and added a 19th in August, expanding coverage in central Israel. Meals were stored at 10 overnight distribution hubs nationwide. The program faced ongoing supply volatility as IDF bases, Leket’s primary source of surplus meals, opened and closed unpredictably for security reasons, requiring day-to-day route planning and rapid shifts to alternative suppliers to maintain consistent distribution to partner NPOs. Staffing remained an ongoing challenge, as reserve duty and driver shortages, particularly in central Israel, required constant rebalancing to maintain service. Despite these constraints, the project succeeded in distributing a weekly average of 43,139 meals.
Project Achievements in 2025:
- Rescued 2.15 million meals from 104 suppliers, a 20% increase over 2024.
- Purchased 89,794 meals, a 64% decrease over 2024.
- Diverted 1,290 metric tons (2.8 million lbs.) of healthy and nutritious food from landfill, mitigating the emission of methane, a greenhouse gas significantly more warming than CO2.
- Provided meals to 33 NPOs and schools in 30 towns and cities throughout the country.
Capacity Building
Leket’s partner NPOs are at the core of Leket’s mission, with adept understanding of the needs of their demographically diverse communities that inform Leket’s operations. Local NPOs are first to absorb rising need. Since October 2023, partners have faced sharply rising demand while contending with war-related disruptions and, in some cases, direct rocket damage, further straining limited resources in organizations that are often volunteer run and chronically understaffed. To maximize the impact of Leket’s rescue operations, strengthen community resilience, and invest in local economies, Leket provides targeted capacity-building support to NPOs, funding equipment purchases and facility upgrades that improve partner food safety, storage, and distribution. This assistance enables NPOs to safely handle larger quantities of food and serve more at-risk recipients in their communities.
Project Achievements in 2025:
- Invested $229,742 in infrastructure improvements at 27 partner NPOs, $40,500 in Operations Support for Partner NPOs, and $429,412 in donor-designated, project-specific support for NPOs. Notable allocations include:
- The construction of a refrigerated room at a partner NPO in Akko, significantly increasing the volume of food they can safely store and provide local recipients.
- The replacement of damaged and essential kitchen equipment at Chabad of Kiryat Shmona, a long-time partner NPO, following a direct rocket hit of the building.
Nutrition Education
Leket has sharpened its focus on nutrition as the unifying thread across its operations. Given the disproportionate likelihood of nutrition-related diseases in low-income populations, Leket’s mission is not only to reduce food insecurity but also to improve the long-term health and functioning of Israel’s most vulnerable groups. Beyond nutrition education, Leket upholds high nutritional standards across all its programs, from soup production ingredients to holiday basket contents.
Nutrition Education for At-Risk Youth (Leket Briut)
Leket’s 2025 cost-of-living study found that many families struggle to provide their children healthy school lunches: one in five families (nearly one in three with below-average-income) skipped healthy options due to cost, and two-thirds prioritized fullness over nutrition.
Leket Briut addresses this challenge through curriculum-based nutrition education and produce provision in elementary schools in low-socioeconomic areas across the country, reaching students in all grade levels and their families. The program includes in-school sessions for students, joint family-child workshops, and biweekly boxes of fresh, rescued produce for participating families. A survey on the program’s impact in the 2024-25 school year showed promising results: 40% of families reported an increase in their children’s daily fruit and vegetable intake, and 18-20% noted an increase in willingness to try less-familiar vegetables.
Building on this success, Leket Bruit has expanded to operate in 10 schools in the 2025-2026 school year in the following cities: Migdal HaEmek, Nof HaGalil, Karmiel, Hadera, Jaffa, Lod, Netanya, Petah Tikva, Tirat Carmel, and Ashkelon, reaching a total of 2,000 families.
Community Workshops
Leket continued to establish itself as a leading expert in nutrition for at-risk populations in Israel, expanding its evidence-based programming to help participants build healthier habits on limited budgets. Delivered as a four-session series by Leket’s nationwide team of registered dietitians, tailor-made workshops serve a range of vulnerable groups including at-risk mothers, single-parent and large families, older adults, immigrant communities, and those coping with mental health challenges.
Project Achievements in 2025:
- Conducted a total of 401 workshops in 63 cities led by 27 registered dietitians, reaching 2,287 participants.
- Ministry of Health and The Joint Recognition: As part of a new community resilience and national health-promotion initiative, Leket was selected as an approved nutrition education provider, one of only 60 organizations authorized to offer services to municipalities.
- Ethiopian Community Initiative (Ministry of Health): Delivered targeted workshops through community centers in 10 cities with large Ethiopian populations, focused on adapting to the Israeli food environment to reduce chronic disease risk and support sustainable lifestyle change.
Advocacy in National Food Rescue Policy
Leket’s persistent advocacy has driven meaningful national recognition of the importance of food rescue and the urgent need to reduce food waste. An amendment to the 2018 Food Donation Act, passed in late 2024, now makes surplus food donation from large government institutions mandatory, opening new rescue opportunities for Leket and other NPOs. In September, the Israeli government released its first National Plan to Reduce Food Loss and Waste, developed with significant input from Leket, an important step toward recognizing the social, environmental, and economic value of food rescue. In November, Leket published its 10th annual Food Waste and Rescue Report in collaboration with the Ministries of Health and Environmental Protection, with the Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security joining as an official partner next year. The report found a 125% increase in the volume of rescued food over the last decade, reflecting the tangible results of Leket’s advocacy, policy engagement, and the scaling of its rescue operations.
Nevertheless, food waste remains staggeringly high at 39% of Israel’s total food production: in 2024 alone, 1.2 billion lbs. of produce was lost on farms and over 507 million lbs. of cooked food was lost in the institutional sector. The challenge is not the existence of surplus food but capturing it. With 2.8 million Israelis now considered food insecure, Leket Israel’s mission to rescue and redistribute this surplus remains as critical as ever.
Moving Forward in 2026
In the coming year, Leket Israel will work to further strengthen its core rescue operations while continuing to phase out food purchase. The organization aims to (a) grow produce rescue to 35,000 metric tons (77.2 million lbs.), continuing to expand rescue from packing houses; (b) increase prepared food rescue to 2.2 million meals by beginning to rescue from hospitals and public bodies; (c) provide NPOs with 1.2 million shelf-stable vegetable dishes and frozen soups; and (d) continue sending over 72,000 volunteers to farms nationwide to support the recovery of Israel’s agricultural sector and safeguard long-term food security.
To further strengthen the organization’s operations and goals, Leket will:
- Develop technology to advance rescue activity, including a real-time surplus reporting application for farmers, developed by the Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security. Used in conjunction with Leket’s systematic agricultural surveying and a new centralized digital system to track field activity, this will enable accurate, up-to-date mapping of rescue potential.
- Introduce the distribution of vacuum-sealed, shelf-stable vegetable dishes alongside frozen soups, expanding variety, seasonality, and storability for NPOs and their recipients.
- Strengthen national advocacy leadership to increase public awareness of the importance of food waste reduction, continue dialogue with government ministries to incentivize surplus produce donation by farmers, and continue to advocate for food rescue as essential to national food security, building on the momentum of the government’s first National Plan to Reduce Food Loss and Waste.
- Advance the “Food as Medicine” paradigm in Israel by participating in a BARD-funded feasibility study on a fruit-and-vegetable “prescription” model for people with diabetes experiencing food insecurity, in collaboration with Meuhedet Health Fund, Israel’s Ministry of Health, and leading U.S. and Israeli researchers.