Giving Compass' Take:

• Researchers say that we need to focus on the big, structural issues that result in food waste, rather than exclusively blaming individual actions if we want to see change. 

• What areas of food waste can policymakers address for change? 

• Here's a roadmap to addressing food waste. 

No one eats nearly one-third of all the food that is produced. By some estimates, we waste 30 million tons of food in the US and 1.3 billion metric tons worldwide every year. All this waste has huge economic, environmental, and social costs.

“When people hear those numbers, they think there’s an easy solution, that we should just stop wasting food,” says study leader Ned Spang, an assistant professor in the department of food science and technology at the University of California, Davis. “It’s not that easy. We’re just starting to scratch the surface in really understanding the dynamics of this complicated problem.”

HARVEST AND STORAGE
The comprehensive review in Annual Reviews of Environment and Resources finds that large systemic factors drive food waste. The study points to the need to look at structural, cultural, and social factors rather than only focusing on actions by individual producers and consumers.

Some drivers of food waste include food left in fields due to weather, pests, and disease. Farmers can’t afford to harvest food if the market price is too low or labor costs too high. A significant portion of food gets wasted if it doesn’t meet market-based quality standards such as a fruit or vegetable’s color, shape, size, and level of ripeness.

Read the full article on fixing food waste by Amy Quinton at Futurity.