Peter Sargeant has devoted his working life to growing food for Britain’s dinner tables, so nothing irks him more than having to plough perfect, ripe crops straight back into the soil.

Yet it is a fact of life in farming that food goes unharvested not because nobody wants it, but because it is too expensive to get it to people who are going hungry.

Mr Sargeant, the chief operating officer for salads and mushrooms at G’s Fresh, which has almost 30,000 acres under cultivation, must decide each month whether excess crops are simply left in the field or if, somehow, he can get them to charities that turn them into meals for those who need them most.

That is where FareShare, which is being supported by The Telegraph’s Christmas Charity Appeal, comes in.

FareShare arranges for surplus food to be collected from food producers and taken to thousands of charities across the country that feed people for free, ranging from hospices to church halls.

It’s a complex business that involves far more than simply arranging for a lorry to turn up at the farm gates and load up with carrots or potatoes to be driven to a depot.