It may be the one thing everyone interested in food and agriculture agrees on: food waste is bad and should be reduced.
“Forty percent of food produced in the U.S. is wasted. It’s shocking how big it is. Most of us really don’t see how big it is and what the consequences are,” said JoAnne Berkenkamp, a Minneapolis-based senior advocate at the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental organization. She’s a member of its food waste team, and her work focuses on food waste prevention, food donation and rescue.
Berkenkamp - who points to the federal government’s effort to cut food waste in half by 2030 - spoke during the recent National Press Foundation fellowship on the Future of Food and Agriculture in St. Louis.
Sixteen percent of U.S. food waste occurs at farms, 2 percent at manufacturing plants, 40 percent by “consumer-facing businesses” (primarily restaurants and grocery stores) and 43 percent at homes, according to information used by her organization.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture puts food waste at 31 percent of food production, not the 40 percent cited by her organization. Berkenkamp says the USDA number focuses on supermarkets, grocery stores and homes, but “doesn’t look up the food chain” at waste on farms and manufacturing plants.
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Given the difference in what they measure, the 40 percent and 31 percent rates “substantiate each other,’ she said.
An estimated 95 percent of wasted food ends up in landfills or incinerators, she said.
She said the biggest tools to reduce food waste are:
Consumer education
Standardized date labeling
Waste tracking analytics
Tax incentives for food donation
Food packaging adjustments, or selling food in sizes that people actually consume.
Making better use of “unattractive” food - safe and nutritious but cosmetically unappealing food, which often goes to waste now - is important, too, and something in which farmers can play a huge role, she said.
To learn more about reducing food waste:
ReFED, or Rethink Food Waste through Economics and Data, was formed earlier this year by more than 30 business, nonprofit, foundation and government leaders to reduce food waste nationwide. Visit refed.com for more information.
