Friday, July 15, 2016

Good morning,

While Venezuela has just put the army in control food production and distribution because the country cannot produce enough food to feed its people, Americans are throwing away almost as much food as they eat.

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Vast quantities of fresh produce grown in the US are left in the field to rot, fed to livestock or hauled directly from the field to landfill, because of unrealistic and unyielding cosmetic standards, according to official data and interviews with dozens of farmers, packers, truckers, researchers, campaigners and government officials.

From the fields and orchards of California to the population centers of the east coast, farmers and others on the food distribution chain say high-value and nutritious food is being sacrificed to retailers' demand for unattainable perfection.

Food waste is often described as a "farm-to-fork" problem. Produce is lost in fields, warehouses, packaging, distribution, supermarkets, restaurants and fridges.

By one government tally, about 60m tons of produce worth about $160bn, is wasted by retailers and consumers every year - one third of all foodstuffs.

But that is just a "downstream" measure. In more than two dozen interviews, farmers, packers, wholesalers, truckers, food academics and campaigners described the waste that occurs "upstream": scarred vegetables regularly abandoned in the field to save the expense and labor involved in harvest. Or left to rot in a warehouse because of minor blemishes that do not necessarily affect freshness or quality.

When added to the retail waste, it takes the amount of food lost close to half of all produce grown, experts say.