Ceasas: 16.6 million tonnes and the end-of-day surplus

Brazil's wholesale supply centers sold 16.6 million tonnes of fruit and vegetables in 2025, worth R$ 68.7 billion, according to a Conab report released on July 28, 2026. Part of that volume is not sold in time and ends up discarded. Exactly how much, across the whole country, there is still no single public measure.

What happened

The National Supply Company (Conab) tracks, through the Prohort program, the activity of the wholesale supply centers, the Ceasas, where growers and wholesalers sell the produce that supplies the cities' street markets, produce stores, supermarkets and restaurants. The 2025 report, published by Conab, covers 54 centers and brings these figures:

• Total volume: 16.6 million tonnes of fruit and vegetables.
• Value: R$ 68.7 billion.
• Ceagesp, in São Paulo: 2.99 million tonnes, worth R$ 13.9 billion, the largest volume among the centers assessed.
• Southeast: 52% of the volume and 54% of the value.
• Vegetables: a 2.8% drop in volume, attributed to adverse weather.

The report measures what was sold, not what was left over. The loss appears in other records. In November 2023, during a heat wave, Ceagesp reported that discards at its market in the city of São Paulo were at a level considered normal, close to 2% of what comes in. On November 15 of that year, according to Exame, 242.58 tonnes were discarded, out of a daily average of 10,053.81 tonnes arriving at the market, or 2.41%. The company explained that heat speeds up the product's loss of water and nutrients, and that the figure includes inedible parts, such as straw and peels.

Part of what is not sold but is still good goes to donation. The Banco Ceagesp de Alimentos (Ceagesp Food Bank), created in 2003, operates at the market in the capital and in 11 other units in the interior of São Paulo state. In September 2026, according to Ceagesp itself, the bank served 329 organizations and another 18 food banks in the São Paulo Metropolitan Region.

Why it matters

Two percent seems small. But the math changes scale when you look at the volume. Purely as an illustration, and not as official data: if a similar rate applied to Ceagesp's entire year, it would be close to 60,000 tonnes of fruit, greens and vegetables discarded at a single market. The calculation is ours and serves only to show the order of magnitude. The real number depends on how each center measures, on each week's weather and on what counts as the edible part.

The lack of a national measure is, in itself, news. Brazil knows precisely how much is sold at the Ceasas and knows much less about how much is lost in them. Without that number, it is hard to plan where to take the surplus, how big to make a food bank or where to install a recovery facility.

In Bairo's view

Bairo Leandro Gonzalez Martinez knows the supply centers from the inside. It was for those who produce, sell and buy there that he designed CEASA Bank, and it is there, he says, that he began to see the flip side of hunger: at the end of the working day, good food left over because it was not sold in time.

For Bairo, the Ceasa is the right place to attack the problem because it concentrates a lot of food in one spot, every day. In his reading, instead of searching for leftovers scattered across thousands of markets, a recovery facility can sit right next to where the surplus forms. He sees in the work of the food banks that already exist at the centers proof that the path works, and believes it can gain scale with information and industry.

Where this meets the ecosystem

Instituto CEASA proposes a factory next to the supply centers that turns still-good surplus into shelf-stable food, processed in an autoclave. The project is being set up, and the goal of a food that lasts up to two years without refrigeration depends on a stability study and sanitary registration. Stated website: institutoceasa.org (site under construction).

CEASA Bank, an agribusiness financial platform that operates on the infrastructure of an authorized institution, proposes a missing piece: data. A trader who records price, volume and sale time generates, with no extra effort, the information the surplus needs to find a destination before it becomes waste.

Sources

• Conab, 07/28/2026: Comercialização de frutas e de hortaliças nas Ceasas brasileiras totalizam 16,6 milhões de toneladas em 2025 (Fruit and vegetable sales at Brazilian Ceasas total 16.6 million tonnes in 2025)
• Exame, 11/17/2023: Ceagesp diz que perda de alimentos no atacado está em nível normal, apesar da onda de calor (Ceagesp says wholesale food loss is at a normal level despite the heat wave)
• Ceagesp, September 2026: Ação do Banco Ceagesp de Alimentos com Ford e Instituto Movere (Ceagesp Food Bank initiative with Ford and Instituto Movere)

Read also

• Why use CEASA surplus against hunger?
• Law 15,224: food donation after Law 14,016
• Food Waste Index: 1.05 billion tonnes wasted
• CEASA Bank: what it is and why it matters