The Problem With Food Waste

America wastes roughly 40 percent of its food.Of the estimated 125 to 160 billion pounds of food that goes to waste every year, much of it is perfectly edible and nutritious.Food waste also has a staggering price tag, costing this country approximately $218 billion per year.At a time when 12 percent of American households are food insecure , reducing food waste by just 15 percent could provide enough sustenance to feed more than 25 million people, annually.

What Is Wasted Food?

According to the US Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Economic Research Service (ERS), food waste is defined as “the component of food loss that occurs when an edible item goes unconsumed, as in food discarded by retailers due to color or appearance and plate waste by consumers.”Food waste includes the half-eaten meal left on the plate at a restaurant, food scraps from preparing a meal at home and the sour milk a family pours down the drain.What the USDA definition does not include, however, is the amount of food that is lost in quantity at every step of the production process.

Where Is Food Wasted?

In fact, food is discarded at every point along the food chain: on farms and fishing boats, during processing and distribution, in retail stores, in restaurants and at home.

Food Waste on Farms

Food production in the US uses 15.7 percent of the total energy budget, 50 percent of all land and 80 percent of all fresh water consumed.Yet 20 billion pounds of produce is lost on farms every year.Food waste occurs on farms for a variety of reasons. First, to hedge against pests and weather, farmers often plant more than consumers demand. Second, food may not be harvested because of damage by weather, pests and disease. Third, if the price of produce on the market is lower than the cost of transportation and labor, sometimes farmers will leave their crops unharvested. Cosmetic imperfections or “ugly” produce is another significant source of food waste on farms both before and after harvest as are food safety scares and improper refrigeration and handling.Finally, in recent years, farmers have been forced to leave food in the fields due to labor shortages caused by changing immigration laws.

Food Waste on Fishing Boats

A recent study by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) estimates that eight percent of the fish caught in the world’s marine fisheries is discarded — about 78.3 million tons per year.Discards are the portion of the catch of fish that are not retained and are often returned dead or dying back into the water.Other studies estimate that 40 to 60 percent of the fish caught by European trawlers in the North Sea are discarded at sea.And a recent US study found that 16 to 32 percent of by-catch are thrown away by American commercial fishing boats.Tropical shrimp trawling has the highest discard rate and accounts for over 27 percent of total estimated discards.Discarding throws the ocean’s ecosystem off balance by increasing food for scavengers and killing large numbers of target and non-target fish species. 

For more of this information , visit this website: https://foodprint.org/issues/the-problem-of-food-waste/