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When I worked at a farm, we threw out an ungodly amount of food. 20% at least. If you could edible parts of food that were not even used for anything it’s probably closer to 40%.
In my own experience, I come from multiple generations of dairy farmers and my cousins still are in biz, none of that “food” is for humans. Only a % of grain grown in the US is for humans. Much of it is for livestock. And there is still like 60% of plant matter from harvesting human grains that is for the animals too. We are not growing all this human food and wasting it. It still happens at the farming level with carrots and vegetables but most of that winds up somewhere it should. We aren’t putting much actual food into landfills from farms. You’d have to be more specific about what the farm was growing snd why it was thrown out. Then the school lunch program…. Believe it or not but we are far more efficient than the third world.
Vegetable farm. Discing down a whole field would happen because the market was saturated that week. Once the new potatoes came in, the old ones would just get dumped in the field. Of course it became compost now, so it’s not a waste. Seconds or worse, those things would never see the light of day. Tomatoes were brutal because people are so god damn picky so if the grader saw a tiny blemish it was basically trash. People are crazy picky, meaning grocery stores are picky. Drives waste and price up.
Now people are complaining how much food costs, what the fuck did you expect!? Eat an ugly tomato once in a while and you could have cheap food!
Tomatoes are ridiculous. They really are. What’s sad is that commercial grown is trash compared to a good heirloom from the garden and nobody grows them anymore. Some of the beat tasting tomatoes are ugly too. Like ten years ago I grew these heirloom tomatoes that looked like hell but had the sweetest most tender flesh almost like a melon. I’d trade tomatoes all year to eat that once a summer instead.
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