From Farm to Landfill

Feeding the planet is nearly always discussed as if it were mainly a matter of growing more food. It is not going to be that simple. In 2012 this planet will produce a record grain yield of 2.4 billion tons. That is a 1 percent increase over last year, a number slightly smaller than expected because of a devastating drought in this country that will result in a harvest 70 million tons short of earlier projections. One percent is a slender margin of growth when it comes to feeding a global human population where at least one in seven people go hungry. One way to provide more food is to waste less food. Using a wide array of official sources, the Natural Resources Defense Council has produced a report that tries to measure the scale of wasted food — and the wasted energy and water associated with it — in the United States. One of the most telling indicators is simply how hard it is to gain accurate data about food waste, unlike numbers for food production, which are tracked in detail. The best estimate is that 40 percent of food in this country is never eaten. The amount of waste that occurs in the world is enormous and there is simply no need for it. 1 out of every 7 people do not have food to eat yet we waste 40% of all the food. Also another thing is that when the wasted food gets thrown away it just sits in the landfill letting out methane and other gases destroying the ozone.