Modelling the problem of food distribution by the Portuguese food banks

Abstract

A food bank is a non-profit, social solidarity organisation that typically distributes the donated food among a wide variety of local non-profit, social solidarity institutions which in turn feed the low-income people. The problem presented by the Portuguese Federation of Food Banks is to determine, for a specific food bank, the quantities of the donated products that must be assigned to each local social solidarity institution in order to satisfy the needs of the supported people as much as possible, without favouring any institution. We propose a linear programming model followed by a rounding heuristic to obtain a solution to the problem described. Computational results are reported.