Food is a necessary resource for all human kind. Humanity can function without many thing, but we will parish if we cannot provide our enough food for ourselves. From working at the farm this week, I got to really experience how much waste there is. Those chickens eat better than a lot of humans. I was helping to harvest tomatoes, and it was sad seeing how many tomatoes were unusable for sale. For every tomato that was ripe and fit for sale, at least one other was either beginning to rote, or had some damage to it that caused us to have to through it into the pile for the chickens. And I’m going to be honest, I tried ate some of the tomatoes that were destined for the chickens, and they tasted delicious to me.

This issue is only the tip of the waste iceberg. Food waste is a major problem for many developed countries and the United States of America is one of the leading culprits. Food waste is defined as when edible food is disposed of at the retail and consumer levels and food loss is when edible food is disposed between harvesting and the retail store. It is estimated that approximately 40% of food grown in the US does not get consumed, but is instead goes directly to the landfill. This waste of food is especially shameful when you look at what goes into producing this food. Food requires copious amounts of water, energy, man-hours and land to produce. According to the National Resource Defense Counsel, in order to grow the food that we produce, we dedicate 80% of our water resources and 10% of our energy to it. Water resources and energy are extremely important, especially in areas where these resources are already limited. An example of this is California, which is currently in a severe drought and the agricultural industry has been reluctant to reduce water usage to the same extent as other industries and groups have done.

The land use is also an important factor to consider. As Adam Rome pointed out, there has been a significant reduction in our open space since the 1940s due to suburban sprawl. A lot of land that was formerly farmland has been converted to tract housing for the new middle class. In order to support our still increasing populations, we will either have to increase our crop yields through genetic modification, increased fertilizer usage, or conversion of other lands into farms. If we can eliminate a significant amount of the food waste and loss, there will be a smaller increase in food production required to feed future generation.

Another big issue associated with food waste is what happens to the food that goes to waste. Food waste is goes directly to landfills, where it degrades anaerobic due to limited air flow and the amount of waste that is deposited in the landfill. This is especially a problem because anaerobic degradation results in the production of methane instead of carbon dioxide. Methane is a much more harmful greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. According to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), methane is 25 times more powerful as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. Landfills account for 18% of the methane that is released in the US. Methane is a significant factor in anthropogenic global warming, and reducing its production through the elimination of food waste will result in reduced greenhouse gas.

Overall, food waste is extremely important issue that we need to address. There have been a number of proposed initiatives to help reduce food waste in the US and in other industrialized countries. One of the major plans is to encourage the sale of food that is not as visually appealing. Food that does not meet its exact ideal is often not even harvested, but instead thrown out. This results in a loss for everyone, the farmer, the store and the consumer. A number of stores in both the US and Europe have launched initiatives to sell these foods at a discount, which allows for cheaper food to be sold to customers while still allowing the farmer and retailers to make a profit. Another proposed solution is to reduce waste at home. The sell by and use by dates that are on many products are not regulated by the government except in the case of infant formula. Everyone including myself is guilty of reading the sell by date, seeing that it is expired and throwing it out. This is a complete waste of resources, both for the environment, and for the consumer. Overall, these are just a few of many options on how to reduce the impact of food waste in order to protect the environment, the market and our food security.