Waste Not Want Not

Perfectly good food in a bin; a surprisingly common occurrence.

Source: flickr user US Department of Agriculture, 2013.

In terms of the unsustainable nature of our agricultural industry, perhaps one of the most frustrating aspects is that of food waste. The phenomenal amount of food which goes to waste every year is largely a product of uneven distribution of the total production. It has, in fact, been estimated that food waste could account for around a third of total crop production (Cassidy et al, 2013); an enormous quantity considering not only the huge areas of land dedicated to arable agriculture, but also the implications in terms of emissions and other environmental impacts. Imagine if we could reduce arable emissions by a third, or reforest vast swathes of land currently dedicated to monoculture that doesn’t even make it from farm to fork.

 But why is there so much food waste, you might ask? And, perhaps more importantly, how can it be prevented? Food waste occurs at three main levels: industrial, retail, and consumer (Dou et al 2016). At the industrial level, there is waste occurring as a by-product of overall production; for example, bones in the meat industry, or the inedible parts of meat. There is also an issue of ‘manufacturing mishaps’, whereby a product is overproduced, or the operation changes and some of the original is left over. The former type of waste cannot generally be eaten by humans, but does have the potential for other industrial uses, while the latter tends to be entirely edible. At the retail level, there is the issue of ‘reject’ products; packaging damaged in transport, bruised fruit, or misshapen cakes may be removed from the shelves as they do not meet the consumer-oriented notion of aesthetic perfection. And at the consumer level itself, individuals may over-buy some items, and throw them away when they go out of date. While from a personal perspective, the odd mouldy loaf of bread or blackened banana may not seem like such a big deal, when taken together it all adds up to an astounding amount of waste. In fact, while in less economically developed countries a large part of food waste is often to do with bad infrastructure causing problems for distribution, in more economically developed countries – the ‘global north’ – consumer waste is thought to be the largest of the three.

 It is important to mention here that food waste is not just about, well, wasting food. At face value, it is hedonistic and wildly unfair that millions of tonnes of food are thrown away each year, when one in nine people on Earth doesn’t have enough to eat (Dou et al, 2016), but the problem has far more layers than that. For a start, as already mentioned, agricultural production is a major global emitter of greenhouse gases, driving the effects of human induced global warming. As well as this, to produce all this food large amounts of land must be dedicated to the industry, resulting in the destruction of ecosystems. Swathes of the Amazon rainforest have been cut down to make way for cattle and soy production, and in Indonesia deforestation has destroyed the habitats of many endangered species to allow a monoculture of palm oil to spring up. (For some dramatic scenes of the latter, have a look at Leonardo DiCaprio’s documentary ‘Before the Flood’.)

 Once food reaches a landfill, as so much of it does, it would be easy to assume that it would simply biodegrade. Unfortunately, this is not the case. As so much waste is piled up in a landfill, the pressure and environment in which the organic matter is left lead to anaerobic respiration, resulting in the production of methane (Karthikeyan et al, 2016). So not only do these millions of metric tonnes a food a year, which never make it from farm to fork, emit carbon dioxide in their production; once left to rot, they lead to even more greenhouse gases.

 So, what can be done to reduce food waste? Like the waste itself, the answer to this is more complex than the question. For a start, there are two parts to this reduction, both of which need to be implemented to reduce the waste in a meaningful way. First, food needs to be diverted from landfills to plates – not literally, of course, that would be a tad unsavoury. But biomass which is destined to be thrown out for no reason other than its packaging is a little dented, or the company simply doesn’t want the hassle of selling its meat trimmings on, needs to find its way to useful places. That may be at the tables of those who are not receiving enough food now or, in the case of inedible products, it may be to various industrial uses. The second part is preventing the waste from being created in the first place. At the consumer level, this means educating and encouraging individuals to buy only what they are going to use. At the industrial level, it involves tailoring the amount of production to the demand, and avoiding overproduction.

 In a global agriculture, where just a can of Coke requires ingredients produced in half a dozen countries the world over (sugar, vanilla, cinnamon, lime, caffeine… the list goes on), it is always going to be difficult to perfectly fit the supply to the demand. But when a third of what we produce goes to waste every year, it’s at least worth a try.