How are we going to feed 9 billion people by 2050? The answer to this question — or the lack thereof — is one of the biggest issues in agriculture today. Experts estimate that we need to grow 60 percent more food than we currently produce. And as a result, there is a push to constantly create more. More miracle crops. More monocultures. More monocrops. More seeds. More food.
But are we missing the point? Currently, in the U.S., almost half of our food — 40 percent of what we grow— ends up in the garbage. Globally, food waste is rising to 50 percent as developing nations struggle with spoilage and Western nations simply toss edible food away. Instead of turning our food system inside out to meet that 2050 deadline, why don’t we simply waste less? (...)
Farm to Table to Landfill
In Hackettstown, New Jersey, vegetable farmer Greg Donaldson leads informal tours around his fields to show visitors a large rotting pile of mostly edible produce.
The pile is a hub for perfectly good cucumbers (bent), strawberries (overripe but delicious), tomatoes (small blemishes), peaches (bruised) and garlic (split cloves). Stalks of broccoli, ears of corn, full heads of lettuce, eggplants, pears: It’s a perverse cornucopia, left to decay in the sun. At the beginning of summer, the pile fits in a dumptruck bed; By fall, it needs multiple tractor-trailers to haul it away.The sight of so much wasted produce used to eat at Donaldson, make him feel bad. But he and other farmers have learned to live with it as part and parcel of being a farmer. According to the charity Feeding America, more than 6 billion pounds of fruits and vegetables go unharvested or unsold each year. It’s because much of the food on a farm falls victim to aesthetic trifles: the misshapen peach, the tomato too large to fit in a three-pack. Or in an uncertain economy, a farmer grows more than he market demands, then leaves entire fields and orchards unharvested. We are growing more food than we know what to do with.
And this early-stage waste is only the beginning. From transport to processor to retailer to consumer, food waste affects every step of the supply chain between farm and fork. In developing countries, nearly 50 percent of the loss happens early in foods’ life: inefficient harvesting, spoilage, inadequate processing, obsolete transport technologies and other systemic problems. In Western nations, the problems are heavily weighted toward consumer and retail waste. A comprehensive 2012 report by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) found that a whopping 43 billion pounds of food in the U.S. was thrown away just on the retail level in 2008. Reducing food losses by only 15 percent would be enough food to feed more than 25 million Americans each year. But supermarket food is marketed with an eye toward bulk, convincing shoppers to take home more than they can use. “There is a terrible push to make consumers buy more than they need, through family-sized packaging and buy-one-get-one-free promotions,” says Tim Fox, co-author of “Global Food: Waste Not, Want Not,” a report from the Institution of Mechanical Engineers (IMechE).
Still, all this pre-consumed food waste doesn’t let consumers off the hook. Think of your own fridge right now — the unappealing leftovers, the wilted lettuce, the expired milk and yogurt. A quarter of those items, according to the NRDC, will ultimately end up in the trash. (...)
The environmental toll for throwing away so much uneaten food is also costly. Of the millions of tons that we waste in America each year, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimates 96 percent ends up in landfills. And currently, food waste is the number one material taking up landfill space, more than paper or plastic. This produces methane gas, one of the most harmful atmospheric pollutants. It’s true that some food waste is inevitable. There will always be a percentage of food grown that is not consumed. But there are also many ways to prevent unnecessary loss.
by Jesse Hirsch and Reyhan Harmanci, Modern Farmer | Read more:
Image: Grant Cornett
But are we missing the point? Currently, in the U.S., almost half of our food — 40 percent of what we grow— ends up in the garbage. Globally, food waste is rising to 50 percent as developing nations struggle with spoilage and Western nations simply toss edible food away. Instead of turning our food system inside out to meet that 2050 deadline, why don’t we simply waste less? (...)
Farm to Table to Landfill
In Hackettstown, New Jersey, vegetable farmer Greg Donaldson leads informal tours around his fields to show visitors a large rotting pile of mostly edible produce.
The pile is a hub for perfectly good cucumbers (bent), strawberries (overripe but delicious), tomatoes (small blemishes), peaches (bruised) and garlic (split cloves). Stalks of broccoli, ears of corn, full heads of lettuce, eggplants, pears: It’s a perverse cornucopia, left to decay in the sun. At the beginning of summer, the pile fits in a dumptruck bed; By fall, it needs multiple tractor-trailers to haul it away.The sight of so much wasted produce used to eat at Donaldson, make him feel bad. But he and other farmers have learned to live with it as part and parcel of being a farmer. According to the charity Feeding America, more than 6 billion pounds of fruits and vegetables go unharvested or unsold each year. It’s because much of the food on a farm falls victim to aesthetic trifles: the misshapen peach, the tomato too large to fit in a three-pack. Or in an uncertain economy, a farmer grows more than he market demands, then leaves entire fields and orchards unharvested. We are growing more food than we know what to do with.And this early-stage waste is only the beginning. From transport to processor to retailer to consumer, food waste affects every step of the supply chain between farm and fork. In developing countries, nearly 50 percent of the loss happens early in foods’ life: inefficient harvesting, spoilage, inadequate processing, obsolete transport technologies and other systemic problems. In Western nations, the problems are heavily weighted toward consumer and retail waste. A comprehensive 2012 report by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) found that a whopping 43 billion pounds of food in the U.S. was thrown away just on the retail level in 2008. Reducing food losses by only 15 percent would be enough food to feed more than 25 million Americans each year. But supermarket food is marketed with an eye toward bulk, convincing shoppers to take home more than they can use. “There is a terrible push to make consumers buy more than they need, through family-sized packaging and buy-one-get-one-free promotions,” says Tim Fox, co-author of “Global Food: Waste Not, Want Not,” a report from the Institution of Mechanical Engineers (IMechE).
Still, all this pre-consumed food waste doesn’t let consumers off the hook. Think of your own fridge right now — the unappealing leftovers, the wilted lettuce, the expired milk and yogurt. A quarter of those items, according to the NRDC, will ultimately end up in the trash. (...)
by Jesse Hirsch and Reyhan Harmanci, Modern Farmer | Read more:
Image: Grant Cornett
