Food Wastage: The Dismissed Reality of Food Production
I’ve always been fascinated by food post-production and post-consumption. The staggering fact that 50% of America’s produced food is wasted is unreconcilable (NRDC, 2017). In Singapore, where I now live, the amount of wasted food has increased by 40% in the last decade alone (NEA, 2017). The increasing accessibility of food photography and “clean eating” has driven global appetites for high-quality food, both literally and visually, but the cost of production is far too high to sustainably support this demand.
The reality is, much of what is produced and distributed never reaches the mouths of consumers. There are many holes in the process of production from the source to last-mile distribution that cause immense food wastage — and most of them are intentionally created.
The Invisible Bottleneck
At the production level, the limited number of farmers and resources given to the production of fresh produce and livestock is the first, and least visible, bottleneck. Farmers make up only 1.3% of the total employed population in the US and yet the demand for food continues to grow (Business Insider, 2019). The growing demand of food placed on a tiny fraction of the population places an enormous burden on farmers and ranchers to produce aesthetically-acceptable food quickly.
In the past two decades, worldwide crop yield has increased considerably. Potatoes, the top-yielded crop as of 2018, increased 30% in production since 2000. Bananas, the second-highest yielded crop, increased at an even steeper rate of 37% in production (Our World in Data, 2018).
Beautiful Good Food
Simultaneously, the demand for beautiful food has become more prominent as well. The pervasive influence of micro-influencers has created a narrow definition of “good” food that ranges the extremities: clean eating — diets based on highly-selective produce, and food porn — the glamorized, and even sexualized, nature of luxury food.
The demand for both high-quantity and quality food has generated a crippling pressure for the food production system. Tons of ugly produce unfit for industrial supermarkets are still thrown away, despite efforts of organizations like UglyFood and Imperfect Produce to salvage them. An estimated 20% of apples produced in the UK that are not at least 50% red are tossed (Independent, 2019). The desire for beautiful food even in its rawest form is partially culpable for the huge amount of food wasted.
A Luxury Ill-Afforded
At a consumption-level, food wastage is the most visible and yet the most readily excused. The privilege that dining affords for the consumer is more than just convenience and taste — it is the luxury to detach from the laborious process of production, and therefore minimizing the consequences of waste. As a result, many customers consistently over-order and under-eat. In 2018, over half of discarded food from restaurants, food services, and hotels in the US ended up in landfill (EPA, 2018).
However, in this profit-driven hospitality industry, consumer preferences trump all. Restaurants are left with little choice but to discard leftovers while customers demand bigger portions for lower prices and leave with unfinished food on the plate. As a collective patron of food establishments, we have directly contributed to food waste frequently and regularly.
Various other shortcomings in the food production process are responsible for its own sustainability: destructive crop management, inefficient or expensive food transportation, marginal profitability for restaurant owners, inaccessibility to technology, and more. There are many gaps that I hope to explore in future posts, but the enormity of the food wastage problem cannot be minimized.
As with many of the global problems today, food production is impacted by multiple factors and cannot be addressed in isolation. Inevitably, the global political arena, ongoing pandemic, technological constraints, and cultural shifts will color the reduction of food waste and ultimately, the success of sustainable food production.
