What a Waste

According to a policy brief issued by the UN food and agriculture organization close to half of all food produce worldwide is wasted or lost. Food loss occurs as a result of inefficiencies in production and processing, while food waste occurs when retailers and consumers throw out edible food. The contributors to waste are farmers, manufacturers, supermarkets, restaurants and commercial enterprises (schools, hospitals). Worldwide 30% of all food produced for human consumption is wasted (1.3 billion tons), 20% in Australia (43.5 million tons), EU 30-40% (186 million tons), 40% in Canada (9 million tons), 50% in the US (66 million tons), Japan is as bad (20 million tons), up to 70% in Britain (16 million tons). Consumers do not escape blame for the waste problem, in food rich countries waste a combined 222 million tons a year.

The mammoth waste problem is taking on growing significance as food prices skyrocket. The food shortages sparking crisis and riots around the world stand in sharp contrast. Elimination of food waste could lift 1 billion people out of hunger.

In much of the West, produce is destroyed every day of every week, on a much larger scale, and for aesthetic reasons. We’ve grown accustomed to fancy supermarkets with shiny, unblemished fruits and vegetables. But it’s no accident that all that perfect produce lines the shelves: fruits and veggies are culled to ensure that only those with the right size, shape, style or colour end up for sale. A hint of wear is fatal for something otherwise perfectly edible, which then winds up in the trash. Appearance has trumped taste.

Supermarket waste is just one part of a colossal and growing environmental problem: food waste. And consumers share the blame. The way food is produced in the West has changed more in the past 50 years than in the previous 10,000. The agricultural industry can now produce unlimited quantities of meat and grains at remarkably cheap prices, creating an abundance of food, and profits. Consumers, lulled by cheap prices, are unaware of the hidden costs of producing so much, or the staggering waste required to stock the supermarket machine. For example every pound of beef produced consumes 10 pounds of grains and corn that could otherwise feed people. Overconsumption of meat can also be considered a form of food waste.

The global fisheries is an industry plagued by greed, ignorance, corruption and terminal shortsightedness, responsible for some of the worst examples of waste. The UN Environmental Programme estimates that humans eat barely half of all fish caught. (When waste from scraps, rot, fishmeal and inedible matter are taken into account, the amount of fish-based protein actually consumed amounts to just 10 per cent of the marine animals removed annually from the oceans.

Plenty of waste also comes from profit driven reasons, where produce never even heads to market. Between 25 and 40 per cent of most fruit and vegetable crops are in fact rejected by Western supermarkets. A farmer estimated that fully one-third of his crop is out-graded for cosmetic reasons, creating mountains of reject potatoes. Also there are different farming organizations that manage supply and keep demand as well as prices high. Often they ask farmers to destroy crops to boost prices. In the US alone 6 billion pounds of produce never leaves the farm. It routinely gets plowled under if the market is not there. Take potatoes for example, in 2006 alone 6.8 million hundredweight potato sacks never reached North American markets. 680,000,000 pounds of perfectly good potatoes were plowed right back into the ground

That raises the obvious question: why wouldn’t growers and supermarkets give away the food instead of throwing it out? The effort required to bag up waste produce instead of just chucking it in a dumpster with the rest is often the only reason. Lots of retailers would rather throw it a away than donate it for fear to of being sued if something is wrong. In the US, to encourage supermarkets to donate excess food, Congress enacted an act, which protects supermarkets from legal liability if they donate in good faith. Most supermarkets insist they donate surplus food to charity, though it isn't clear whether food was diverted from waste. In 2007, 10 per cent of its annual discard is diverted, a figure typical of the industry. The amount is increasing today but the reality is that most waste still goes straight to the landfill.

Some waste is inevitable, but the trouble is how much of this has been built into the manufacturing process. Systemic wastage has been dubbed “overproduction waste.” That is, manufacturers will make more of a product than supermarkets can actually sell; in the convenience-food sector overproduction waste levels reach 56 per cent of a company’s total output, meaning that more food is being wasted than sold.

So how did we get here? Government largesse, and the industrialization of agriculture, have brought food prices to historic lows: between 1974 and 2005, food prices on world markets fell by fully 75 per cent in real terms. Until 1952, Americans spent more than 20 per cent of their incomes on food. Last year that portion hit an all-time low of 5.6 per cent. (In Pakistan, by comparison, the percentage of spending on food can reach 75 per cent of income.) Waste and the amount of food available per person have risen inexorably in tandem. One British study from 1938 put food waste at two to three per cent; studies from the 1960s and ’70s put wastage levels at seven per cent. Now rich countries, which produce up to 200 per cent more food than needed to satisfy their population requirements, waste more than 25 per cent of household food. The high availability and low prices, along with advertising, encourage overconsumption. Also now the food often doesn't last as long before going bad.

All of this matters most when you consider the massive environmental trade-off that comes with buying a third more food than we actually eat. The environmental fallout goes far beyond the wasted food. To the heap, add the resources spent to grow the food: fertilizers, pesticides, oil for the tractor and for transport. In the U.S., the energy-intensive food system uses 19 per cent of fossil fuels, more than any other sector of the economy. Modern farming is thought to contribute more greenhouse gases to the atmosphere than anything else North Americans do. Factory farms have become one of the biggest sources of pollution on the continent. So when we waste from the industrial food system, we are also wasting oil, releasing greenhouse gases, polluting waterways and hastening global warming. The large quantities of wasted food translate into equally large amounts of water. Almost half of water consumed annually to grow food is lost or wasted.

Even worse, many of the environmental costs of creating, then wasting, so much food such as deforestation, water depletion and soil erosion are being foisted on developing countries, where increasing amounts of cereals, grains and produce are being grown to sate the West’s growing appetite.