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Guest Post: Almost Half Of All Food Produced Is Thrown Away
Submitted by Charles Kennedy of OilPrice.com
Almost Half Of All Food Produced Is Thrown Away
Between 30 and 50 percent of all food produced globally, equivalent to two billion tons, is thrown away each year according to a recent report written by the UK-based Institution of Mechanical Engineers (IME), titled ‘Global Food; Waste Not, Want Not’.
The Guardian states that overly-cautious sell by dates, buy one get one free deals, and an obsession with only consuming fruit and vegetables that look perfect are some of the main reasons for this colossal waste of, not only food, but also the water, energy, and arable land used in the creation of the food.
The two billion tons of food wasted each year use 550 billion cubic metres of water to produce, with meat requiring 20-50 times more water than vegetables. As the global population increases to nine and a half billion by 2075, will the lack of available water to produce enough meat lead the majority to become vegetarians?
The report found that in the US and parts of Europe nearly half of all food bought by consumers is thrown away; and that 30 percent of all crops grown in the UK are not even harvested because they do not meet the stringent cosmetic standards that are set by supermarkets and other food distributors around the world. These statistics are criminal considering the fact that in 2010 nearly one billion people across the world went without food.
In order to try and reduce the wastage seen across the food industry, the IME recommends better engineering, agricultural techniques, and infrastructure.
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Must be the EBT fuckers. We eat everything, and the pup get some small scraps to liven up his kibble.
Shit's too expensve, Mon.
Bet you don't buy mushy produce.
That is the waste the article is talking about. The stuff that doesn't even reach the store shelves because it's ugly.
Kind of weird, I always thought the ugly stuff wound up being canned or otherwise processed into something where you couldn't tell that it was made from an ugly bit of produce.
So ...everything I eat turns to shit....
Here's another part of food inflaton thats irks me. Pet food prices are " thermal nuclear". I'm not sure if it's retarded idiots that think their pets know the difference between Fillet and Chuck, or the moronic manufacturing gimmicks. I've had quite a few pets in my life, and they don't seem to live any longer off of the shit they sell now as opposed to a bag of " Dog Chow".
Try a grain free product. You may see a difference as your dog may die old AND healthy.Dogs are not genetically engineered yet to consume grain. Usually consumption of grain free food is reduced to half volume of "dog chow". Thus similar in cost.
Love 'em to death either way.
I was just generalizing regarding the brand. Yes, you are correct about grains. The pooches get good kibble. The whackos that feed their pooches like humans are what I'm referring to.
Pet Products as a whole are insanely priced. When I was a kid ,I had the opportunity to tour a pet food plant. We got to see the freezer section of the plant. That was a memory I'll never forget. Pet food is all about marketing, and presentation.
I never waste food... you're a bunch of low lifes!
God dammit we need efficiency!
Efficiency should come first before risky GMO engineering!
The waste hauler who has the contract for the produce dumpster at our local Sysco distribution center hauls tons of reject produce away each month. Yet he only provides a small dumpster that has to be hauled and emptied twice a week. Seems dumb and inefficient.
The produce dumpsters don't make it to the landfill. The truck takes them to a local farmer who feeds his hogs with it. In return the waste hauler gets to hunt the farmer's 800 acres and a steady supply of eggs and pork. Plus twice a week he spends an hour drinking beer and talking shit with his old High School farmer buddy.
The pigs don't waste a morsel. They fight over the over-ripe produce.
Don't ask me how I know all this.
Well my hats off to the waste hauler and to the farmer. It would be a shame to see that food go to the landfill. I hope the hunting was productive.
arrest that man!
that's a fucking awesome story.
Similar use of waste from supermarkets, etc. They compost waste for the nutrients and heat produced, if not using the product for direct feeding of fish.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jV9CCxdkOng
If they had 10 of these in every major city, the reduction in waste, the production of local, cheap food, and the benefit of real food to people who eat MickeyD's as a lifestyle would be immeasurable.
Bored country kids used to hook a hubbard squash out of the farmer lady's garden, about the size and density of a bowling ball. Then they'd heave it into the pig pen.
The porkers know it's food, but they can't get a good hold on the tough skin. You have to use an axe to bust open a hubbard squash. The porkers would squeal like Hell and kick & nose that thing from one end of the pen to the other and back again. It looked like a soccer match, and just as noisy.
Waste of food I guess, but livelier than watching corn grow.
That had to have looked funny as hell ... sitting over here laughing out loud at the thought!
Look at places like Costco and B.J.'s - you can't buy food in less than gigantor quantities. You HAVE to buy 2 dozen muffins, two losfs of bread, and the list goes on..... you can freeze siome but some does go bad - with the irony being it's STILL cvheaper to buy at these places - with the waste than go to some of the other regular grocery stores. You can pair up woth others and split the amounts but too ften some goes to waste.
In the 'good old days' table scraps and such would be fed to the pig or chickens but that's not an option for urban or suburban families.
And - even if you have a freezer - if you lose powewer for a prolonged period, you'd better be prepared to cook like mad because otherwise you're stuck with a ton of bad food. Saw lots of that with Sandy - even with those that had generators. Many couldn't get gas to keep them running.
Maybe in 50 years, when most people on earth will have lived for years of famine, they'll change their habits...
Maybe in 50 seconds people will start living for today, tie a knot in their pointless cocks and have less children, consume whats on offer to help them deal with the utter gibberish of existence, die a dignified death, and STFU!
It's only "criminal" now because we aren't in good high rolling times in which people could buy all they wanted. This is just preparing people to eat lower quality food and to extend and pretend the food supply.
Granted, yes - we shouldn't be wasting food and we should accept that food shouldn't look all shiny and perfect, but logistically for our oil based mass food farming we can't transport too ripened food long distances.
Bring back local production and urban farming type solutions.
"Bring back local production and urban farming type solutions."
What? And deny the likes of Monsanto and ADM their rightful due? Off to the work-camps for the harvest for you so you can get your mind right.
-1 conspiracy minded BS
Just like people, some food goes bad, turn them both into fucking compost and there will be no waste and a better world.
Soylent Green is food!
I thought it was people.
i'm so surprised that westerners are picky little bitches when it comes to reality.
Composting is a great thing to do. The vast majority of people don't have arable land to make composting an option.
The moral of Tylers article is pretty straight forward. Large quantities of "palatable" food are being wasted.
"The vast majority of people don't have arable land to make composting an option"
~~~
I disagree with that YC... Anyone can just toss a lot of compostable crap in a blender, save it in plastic bags, freeze it for a bit if they have to... Then take it by someone who can use it when the time is right... The process is just about as simple as throwing shit away in the first place...
F_S I'm really not in the mood to debate the "time/consumption" formulas with you. In theory that is a very forward and caring thing to do.
What happens to the plastic bags? Who maintains sanitary conditions and liability? (tort reform is another article). What about abuse, in other areas? (Eg; a Chinese smoothie establishment blends the crap into human energy drinks?)
...
YC; look up Bill Mollison. Specifically one of his earlier series, Global Gardener. He takes a look at four very different climates/environments for food production using permaculture methods. There are probably relatively few environments, outside of mountain ranges(but see Sepp Holtzer on those) that can't be made to grow food. And those being multi- as opposed to mono-culture environs. If you can't find it, let me know and I'll make it available as it's probably long past license. Even sea 'zones' can be very abundant but that's outside my realm at this time.
krispkritter That was a fantastic post. I wouldn't profess to be an expert "herb gardener". I suppose you are growing more then "Human Feed"
To each their own/ You can have my refuse any day. Be Well :-)
In permaculture, Hugelkultur, and bio-dynamic methods, can be found the ability to compost waste and produce food that need fractions of the water and chemical inputs that 'modern' farming requires. I do it, live it, and grow it...
how old are your hugelbeds?
Just over a year. Planted blueberries, blackberries(thornless), and raspberries on them. Growing like crazy. They were about 30x6x4 dug in, about 3' tall after but they are settling. Filled with oak, pine, and hickory main logs, plus yards of branches, leaf, and green matter. They benefit from being on a downhill slope, so they not only break the force of hard Florida rains, they collect it. I never water them. I have space and wood for another 4-5 but unfortunately I'm planning on moving out of FL so that probably won't happen. I do aquaponics here as well as container blueberries and conventional raised beds(not great in FL) with exotic hot peppers; chickens, citrus, grapes, Kiwi, bananas, peaches, apples, figs, pineapple, mulberry, etc.
nice...polyculture is the way to go for sure. there's a big debate at permies.com as to whether hugels should be used in warm weather climates. seems you just made the case in favor. personally, i think all raised beds should be hugels. it just makes perfect sense when you think about it. btw, sepp holzer's comin to america this spring to give a couple workshops...debating whether to go...
with your berry expertise, next spot you get, you should start growing gojis. the cool thing about them is that, while you're waiting a couple seasons for the berries to form, the leaves are still edible and mad nutritious to boot.
Thanks for the tip, I'll have to see if I can find Sepp nearby.
Started Goji's and a bunch of other 'rare' fruits/trees germinating but had a down-burst that took out a hoop house and some trees and I never got to restart/reorder them. Even in Florida we get droughts so hugels make sense. I did some 'traditional' raised beds and they heated up and dried out so fast that it's a challenge to even keep peppers in them and peppers like hot soil. Strawberries died in days without constant watering or putting them under plastic to stop the evaporative action of the heating. Worse, if a downpour occured, the raised beds started to get undermined whereas the hugel beds just shed or absorbed the water. I keep them mulched on top to avoid erosion from impacting rain so I only have to keep the hens off them. I'm on a hill with a 60' drop over 500' and the bulk of the property is wooded but the citrus is abundant due to old groves topside. I have a lot of sub-level moisture nearly year-round due to clay layers, so there is a fern garden(moist), a palmetto garden(prostrate anyone?), and typical hardwoods(hickory, oak, etc.) all on less than 10 acres. Bonus is pig, deer, turkey, etc. in abundance. I haven't tapped that resource yet but it was in the plans.
Bilberry has kept our diabetic dog with perfect vision in utter disbelief of his vet. He shoud have been blind a while ago. He refuses to believe the berry is responsible but I know better and the data is out there. Works for a lot of human vision issues too. My dad's gonna try it as his night vision is getting worse. I've noticed something about berries (including Gogi) Seems like the more intesne the natural environment, the more packed with nutrients and anti-oxidants. Makes sense in the end given what the berry represents and the plant's need to reproduce.
Great posts
It's part of the master plan to keep the illiterate working poor who harvest our foods in work so that they don't have time to realise how shitty their lives are and rise up and kill the rest of us. Do your part to defend our way of life by throwing that extra sandwich you got for one quid at Tesco away.
The Alarmist
"It's part of the master plan to keep the illiterate working poor who harvest our foods in work so that they don't have time to realise how shitty their lives are and rise up and kill the rest of us. ..."
Absurd ... don't the illiterate poor have enough distractions and diversions going now? iPhone, iPad, X-Box ... you name it ... for what do you lack?
A bigger house a bigger car - what?
This line here:
"30 percent of all crops grown in the UK are not even harvested because they do not meet the stringent cosmetic standards that are set by supermarkets and other food distributors around the world."
It's bullshit, it least here in the states.
Trust me, I see this right outside my window, yes I can open my window and see farms and farmers, and I benfit personally from this 20 - 30 percent waste.
Allow me to explain, Here is what happens, with, for example, the watermelon crop:
Wartermellons are harvested, the crop is reviewed, 20% - 25% of said crop is un-sellable, (and I guess this number gets written down soemwhere and becomes the source of said report above)
Once this 20 - 30 is written off the books, the commerical farmers pretty much give this stuff away to the locals, some of the mexicans pick the best of the lot and resell it roadside, the really crappy stuff I and other small hobby farmers take for chickens and other livestock, etc.
Same goes for the bean crop, which actually gets fed to cows and people, the 20% - 30% waste from that crop it totally fine for human consumption, i get 10 - 20 POUNDS of this stuff every year at harvest time, and even the extra waste oranges get ground into feed and into additives.
The store waste is also bullshit. The store collects the expired goods, writes it off, and then gives it to again the local chicken and pig farmers for free, off of the books.
Farming communitities are very efficient.
I used to love stopping at road-side farm stands to buy this stuff from the locals ... even if some of it wasn't pretty, it was fresh and tasty. II guess it's only a matter of time before the FDA puts a nail in the coffin for that way of life once and for all.
FDA ... brought to you by Monsanto and ADM ... Better living through chemistry.
I used to love stopping at old rural roadside bars and trying to pick up the local drunk chicks. They'd have bruises and smudges on 'em here or there and even if some of 'em wasn't pretty, it was fresh and tasty.
I appreciate your comments in general knukles, but that one makes it into the archives.
Nicely put.
Yeah, thanks to Monsanto, the farm chicks now all look like Jessica Simpson, but they no longer do lap dances for a drink.
Monsanto feels the same way about cute little farms. Only they do the bruising
Absurd, all of it. I'll bet Monsanto evens SELLS to those cute little farms ...
I'm going to open my own food stand and call it, "Cheap Ass Ugly Food".
"2nds and surplus" - name is already taken ...
Are you going to eat the rest of that burger in the photo? if not...pass it this way. Some of us don't throw half of our food away, esp if you are over 60 and a Cheap Bastard.
There are still lots of great farmers markets to go to.
The next time you go one , notice the purple tomatoes, deep orange and red squash varieties. The biggest varations and gen.mods can be found at your local farmers markets.
When I go to the S.D. Wild Animal Park during the winter into spring they have great roadside local growers that I buy from. That shit is crazy good and definitely crossbreed.
How about genetically engineering a nanobrain to go on each fat cell and running the experiment in the San Fernando Valley.
"Hey! Sit back down. You're not leaving the table until you clean your plate. Don't you know there are kids starving over in China?" Remember that? Surely I'm not the only one whose parents sang that refrain. And yes I know don't call you Shirley. I also know not to start a sentence with and.
And (oops did it again) now back in the present there are probably parents in China saying "Hey leave that on your plate. Don't you know there are kids in America so fat they can hardly stand up? Now go out and play."
Off/topic. Has anyone watched that "Bat Shit" crazy guy on Discovery network, that searches for Arabica coffee all over hell and back?
It's called "Dangerous Grounds", and the crazy bastard calls his cameraman " Hollywood".
I always find it funny when people talk about wasting water. Its mostly a closed loop. Sure, some actually drifts up high in the atmosphere freezing and evaporating into the edge of space - but most of it enters the same loop on the ground.
That 40 tons of tomatoes? Yep, threw in the garbage, ends up in a landfill, the juices of which that didn't evaporate seeping into the ground where it is filtered and then evaporated again once reaching the surface - or gets incorporated into a body of water where it bumbles around before evaporating into the atmosphere and forming clouds -- which then rains down upon you.
I suppose its the distribution of water that matters, not that we're "losing" it. If a lot of fresh water hits the ocean - until it evaporates and leaves its briny brothers behind it won't be available to water crops, etc...
Of course, there is always the other part of this cycle - you are digesting molecules of water that passed through a million different digestive tracts of animals and people before you.
How about a nice cold cup of filtered brontosaurus piss? Mmmm the pause that refreshes.
Piss would be drinkable if the sodium content wasn't so high.
Drought monitor may have something to say about this.
http://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/
CTRL + F <Freeganism>
Not found: Total fail.
Anyone who isn't aware of the wastage rates of modern supermarkets and, more importantly, their efforts to prevent the usage of any and all perfectly good food is a muppet. Chucked out to maintain the supply-line and get-it-to-the-consumer-when-they-have-to-come-back-in-three-days-due-to-our-packaging-data?
What the fuck have you been doing with your lives if you don't even know this basic point on Supermarkets? More over, have you no idea about the difference between "sell by" and "use by" dates? This has been known since the 70's. One of the largest market secrets in the world is % of food wastage in the supermarket business.
Always has been, even when WalMart get into the "We'll provide you with non-perfect vegetables". The breakdown is roughly: of all vegetables, about ~50% don't make the initial mark, due to either bruising or "consumer" constraints (you're a carrot too big? bad luck; you're a bananana too curvy? bad luck; a pepper a little curvy? bad luck, and so on); of those surviving, another 15-20% don't make packaging constraints (usually, damage during shipping) - and don't worry, the supermarkets do not pay for any of this.
Yep, the producer pays for all of this (including, WalMart shipping issues where they deliver spoiled goods due to attempting to pick up too many soft fruit shipments in a line). Add to that the industry standards of spraying "unripe" fruits with industrial chemicals to "ripen" them during transit, industry standards to force-grow both fruit and flesh [I think it's about 23 days for a chick to a chicken now] and so on.
That's not to mention the multi-billion $ chilled / frozen shipping industry that allows all of this to happen.
Grow up. If you don't know what's going on in the industry, then don't complain. And don't complain about wastage in this way: you idiot, 70% of the wastage happens before anything is ever shipped. Jesus wept, it's as if you've no idea about how your world works. And you want to get annoyed because you read a source from the MSM, and re-packaged it for ZH? Baaaa-Baaaa-Black-Sheep.
If this is the first you've ever learnt about this, and you're over 25? You're a sheep. Deal with it, or get involved and educated. It ain't hard. I'm not even getting started on EU butter mountains, USA subsidies, and Indian grain burning; those can wait until there's a sensible answer to this thread. Bottom line: food = power. Results are expected, and this topic needs some decent minds. Oh, and you might want to look into Republican States banning illegal migrant workers, and loosing entire crops in 2011 / 12. Because, yes, that happened, and yes, you're totally fucked.
Ideology: only works if it isn't suicidal, muppets. But, sure: get on that mound and act all proud as the Romans come and build their ramp. Oh, and trust me: The "Romans" are coming, and to be honest - I've no sympathy for the 1.0's anymore, let's just get rid of them. [Edit: Not allowed to say the rest of that // too future predictive]]
Since I'm being cropped by my more angelic over-sight commitee, a simple point: The cost to provide [total infrastructure / industrial plant build & production / etc etc] the entire world with clean water is roughly ~ $9 billion. Yep, that's about ooooh, less than a fortnight of USA Fed spending on the petro-dollar. You're all cunts if you don't rebel against this basic math. And, ironically, the opposite is true: if you ignore this, the dollar will cease to exist.
Promise.
What?
Translation: An infamous part of the post AD 70 Jewish revolt is that "the Jews" [or rather, an ultra-orthodox sect] committed mass suicide in their impregnable fortress when the Romans used science & technology to build a huge ramp to access it. It's commonly referred to as the point when blind ideology ("faith" if you will) meets realpolitik, in a very messy and final way. The Romans, after all, had only one real rule for their Empire: Pay your taxes, and don't revolt.[1]
NCADAC draft report released recently; 147 meg total, but split into easy to digest partitions.
All of it is very useful, but the section on Agriculture [warning PDF] is telling; not once are the dynamics of the supply chain [in terms of exploitative contracts by retailers etc] mentioned. I'll have to dig further into the other sections to see if anyone has done the work on the increased energy costs in chilling etc. Look long and hard at the comparison tables between the 1950's and 2007 however; the results are not pretty.
Translation, as I was a bit irked: The costs to start addressing the effeciency issues and insanity of modern food are large up-front, but huge down cycle. The USA has been politically stagnant against any kind of proper action for far too long now, letting the large Corporations turn the entire process into one that ironically increases wastage while decreasing the producers' benefits. In fact, as I mentioned in regards to immigrant labour, many of the politically motivated laws put in place recently regarding agriculture have crippled it instead of improving it.
My $9 billion comment is a literal one: mass provision of clean drinking water isn't rocket science [many countries managed it, after all, looong before the USA got to that point in the 1970's], and anyone who isn't an gigadeath proponent would consider spending less than a month's FED easing on a global issue might, just might, lead to better business, more culture and some better minds being able to play along without dying of easily preventable things like schistosomiasis.
Time to get politicians, religion and the pork barrel out of this issue, and let the real solvers step up to it; largely scientists and engineers.
[1] For the history buffs, this leads into Trajan, and the Jewish revolts of AD 115 - 117, where at least three major revolts occurred and were put down ruthlessly. Contemporary sources claim ~400,000 Roman citizens were massacred in these revolts by Jewish hands, although these figures are largely considered to be exaggerated; another nice echo is that at least two had at their heads men who proclaimed themselves the Messiah & "King of the Jews". You may-or-may-not be able to parse this onto Modern US politics and various family members around all looking to Jerusalem.
The latest NCADAC should terrify any rational American....
For example this figure
http://thinkprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/Assessment2.gif
That is a really good comment !
Should be - it's garbage.
I only throw away about 1% of my food. Statistics demands that there is some guy out there throwing away 99% of his food just to make the stats work in the title of this story. Simple as that
Half wasted, huh? Okay, whatever, dude.
Tyler said throwing away edibles was wrong. Get over it, and trade BITCHEZ
Much food waste happens during the holidays. Especially Thanksgiving. Tons of food disposed of, while there are many people who go without.
Of course they advise better engineering and agricultural techniques. How about advising changing of consumption patterns? It is not the engineering or agricultural techniques that are the problem but the spoiled and fussy consumers. In IT terms, the problem is PEBKAC (Problem Exists Between Keyboard And Chair).
Yes - I have to buy in pre-assigned quantities in plastic packages rather than exactly the quantity I want. I used to have cheese cut to my specification but now the one supermarket built upon being a Bacon and Cheese Stall has moved to pre-packing its cheese in polythene wrapping - Morrisons - so it is buy pre-pack on the shelves or pre-pack at the cheese counter simply because the new CEO is trying to turn it into Loblaws and is making a real mess. I want to buy what I WANT not what I AM forced to Buy. The problem between keyboard and chair is simply that The Customer is being force-fed Purchases rather than being a Sovereign Consumer
There is definitely an 'agenda' behind this report which seems to have been splashed everywhere in UK news outlets. I do not believe for a moment that half of food is wasted. I grew up on a UK farm and have had a lot to do with various stages of food processing and commodity trading and that factoid simply cannot be true. Maybe some food is fed to animals that is deemed unfit for human consumption but it is not 'wasted'.
One of the agendas being pushed behind the scenes in the political world in the UK is easing restrictions on GM foods. There has apparently been a huge lobbying effort put in and discussionms are being had about changing the law to allow GM food production. I just wonder if 'better agricultural techniques' might include GM.
Marketing 101. Creat a solution then find a need.
That is a good thing, we hit the population limit sooner.
The reality is Packaging. So much supermarket food is packaged in plastic so it sweats and rots. The supply chains are long and the ripening in warehouses using gases creates a shorter life for the product. That food travels from Spain to Northern England is bizarre when one considers the cost of diesel and the condition of the food when delivered. Vegetables particularly degenerate. There is something very peculiar about the use of gamma radiation to enhance shelf-life rather than to provide fresh perishable food. The De-Naturing of Food by modern Retailing is the key reason for waste - and much of that waste is in skips behind the retail outlets where food is skipped rather than reduced in price
Even Zero Hedge has a mantra. You clowns talk a lot. Tall hats no cattle. I'm 2/3rds expatriated and you clowns bitch about retirement! Fuck Off you pussy wanabes!
You pussies talk alot. bitches I have skyDived and rockclimbed. Yes you wanabees, I drovr my ZO'6 and my Yukon out to Perris Vally 3 times. I jumped 3 times from 12.500 feet Bitchez. I'll send you the screen shots of the 8"x "11 certificates. Pussies
The first time i jumped I was hung over!
lying faggot
Would be great if my lettuce didn't turn brown on the third fucking day home from the supermarket.
Damn them.
The lettuce and other greens I pick from my raised beds is good in a bag in the fridge for 3 weeks minimum, still crispy. They last even longer in the root cellar (old refrigerators buried under the house with ventillation holes). Growing greens in containers or in raised beds is super easy, basically free, fun, and low-maintennance; give it a shot sometime.
Sometimes I wonder about ZHers. Load up on guns and ammo cause you gotta defend your food when the SHTF. Yet mock the suggestion that the world use its food more efficiently. I guess you want the foodless ShasHTF zombies at your front door ASAP. Maybe you just want an excuse to shoot people. Kinda looks that way.
I posted just to mock you.
Go carry your leftovers to the ghetto and get back to us how fun your trip was.
Half is thrown away, the other half is crapped out your ass. If I were a chunk of food I'd rather be in the first half of that equation.
I won a 20000 to 1 bet
I bet that the Horse without a Head "I post food pics on ZH as well as Facebook" actually DID NOT paste a photo of his evening meal with a glass of milk on here.
TFFT
Sorry, I have to call BS. If you believe all the 'studies' out there, you'd think we were all homeless, child abusing, EBT card carrying, drunkards. Oh, wait....