Inside D.C.

The shame of food waste

The hottest “emerging” political food issue is waste.  In food-rich America, depending on which organization or group you talk with, somewhere between 30-40% of all food – 34 million tons – is “wasted,” meaning crops so unharvested, surpluses are trashed, restaurant meals half-eaten and foods purchased for the home are prematurely tossed out.  Consumer and foodservice waste are the biggest culprits.

Over 97% of food waste, or roughly 33 million tons, winds up in landfills, making it the second largest component of these disposal sites.  The cost of landfilling food waste is roughly $1.3 billion, says EPA, and the agency is quick to point out every ton of landfilled food waste generates 3.8 tons of greenhouse gases – mostly methane.

Half a dozen bills and resolutions have been introduced in this Congress, with the most extensive being legislation penned by Rep. Chellie Pingree (D, ME), a bill that parallels legislation in her home state.  Pingree’s bill would provide tax and other incentives for various measures taken by farmers to reduce waste, e.g. biofuels, conservation practices, composting, etc., while making it easier for restaurants, foodservice companies and the like to donate excess food to the hungry.  She also identifies consumers don’t understand a “sell-by” date has nothing to do with food safety. Too many consumers apparently toss food not consumed by the sell-by date, a tool for retailers to sell products at their best.  The House FY2017 agriculture/FDA appropriations bill approved last week in full committee carries money to study sell-by dates and similar label information – currently unregulated – and consumers’ use of the information, all in the context of cutting food waste.

The political food waste issue is creating strange bedfellows, as food companies, processors, farmers and others in agriculture with a collective goal of making the best, most practical use of their production, find themselves agreeing with hunger groups and other activists on how best to handle America’s food surpluses.

One of the first to recognize this emerging partnership is House Agriculture Committee Chair Mike Conaway (R, TX), a man in search of a relatively smooth path forward for the nascent 2018 Farm Bill, a path that will hopefully find Conaway and rural lawmakers arm in arm with their urban colleagues.  To that end, Conaway is looking to hold hearings on food waste to broaden the common ground between his committee and urban House members who are often critical of Farm Bill policy and programs.

Conaway is working with Pingree, an organic farmer and promoter of small-scale agriculture, to discover whether there’s a federal solution to the food waste challenge.  The ag committee chair told Agri-Pulse, “Whether there’s a federal solution to the issue is yet to be seen, but it should be addressed.”  It is a very good thing that Conaway has stepped into this issue, as most members of Congress have little understanding of production agriculture or most other parts of the food chain for that matter.

The House ag committee food waste hearing will be one of several Conaway intends to hold over the remaining months of the 114^th Congress and into 2017 and the 115^th Congress, all geared to issues related to urban attitudes toward food production, marketing and consumption, and all tools to build bridges on Farm Bill issues and secure urban support for the next round of “income safety net” and policy debates.

Some more disturbing food waste statistics:

The United Nations reports that each year, industrial nations waste almost as much food as the entire net food production of sub-Saharan Africa – 222 million tons versus 230 million tons – and this amount is the rough equivalent of more than half of the world’s annual cereal crop production.

The European Union (EU) wastes 88 million tons of food each year, at a value of about $160 million, representing about 20% of all food produced/used in Europe.

In the U.S., nearly 50 million Americans live in “food-insecure” households, according to USDA’s Economic Research Service (ERS) 2010 statistics.  According the National Institutes of Health, just a quarter of the food wasted each year could provide three meals per day for 43 million people.