From Farm to Fork to Landfill

At this point in my research, Dana Gunders’ 25 page paper for the Natural Resources Defense Council sounds all too familiar. I take this as a good sign that I have become more aware about the issue of food waste! Her paper echoes many of the same beliefs and suggestions as the book I recently finished: American Wasteland. Additionally, the studies and reports she synthesizes are identical to ones used by other arguments I’ve read. Unfortunately, these reoccurring sources demonstrate the extremely limited number of studies conducted on food wastage in America. In fact, the last comprehensive report on food loss in the U.S. was issued by the USDA in 1997 (the year I was born).  I’m sixteen now and I would appreciate having a report from the 21^st century for solid evidence, so get on it USDA!

I realize that I haven’t shared many statistics with you guys, since frankly, numbers are hard to visualize. But when a percentage shocks me into flailing my arms and ranting to my mom while she’s cooking dinner, it must be good. Take a minute to really think about these numbers: “Getting food to our tables eats up 10 percent of the total U.S. energy budget, uses 50 percent of U.S. land, and swallows 80 percent of freshwater consumed in the United States. Yet, 40 percent of food in the United States today goes uneaten” (4). I am ashamed.

The majority of that food is ditched at landfills where it “accounts for 23 percent of all methane emissions in the United States… and [gives] off methane, a greenhouse gas at least 25 times more powerful in global warming as carbon dioxide” (14).

Helpfully, Gunders gathers every possible idea to reduce food waste into a surprisingly clear and concise plan for increased efficiency. She emphasizes that businesses, government, and consumers must all attempt to remove inefficiencies at each stage in the food supply system. Otherwise, it will be impossible to feed the expected 9.1 billion people with increasingly meat-dependent diets by 2050.

Though America has yet to conduct new research since Gunders’ paper was published in 2012, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) released the 1^st study to analyze global food wastage from an environmental perspective, looking specifically at its consequences for the climate, water and land use, and biodiversity. The FAO found that 1.4 billion hectares of land, or 28 % of the world's agricultural area, is used annually to produce food that is lost or wasted. Also significant is the fact that “developing countries suffer more food losses during agricultural production, while food waste at the retail and consumer level tends to be higher in middle- and high-income regions -- where it accounts for 31-39 percent of total wastage -- than in low-income regions (4-16 percent).” Lastly, the FAO prioritizes actions to reduce food waste; 1) reducing food waste in the first place, 2) re-using within the human food chain, 3) recycling and recovery. 

Flailing and ranting,

Tiffany