!["Various by-products of cattle" [526x820 - 125KB]](https://pic8.co/sh/TZhaqO.jpg){kind=link}
As a former chef I can assure you that most food waste happens at the consumer end of the entire chain’s workflow. The entire process of every step of the entire chains workflow is almost always as efficient as possible and still is always adapting and will continue to improve with automation and big data and mechanical advances in industry. The only entity which outmatches the US food supply chain in logistics is the US military. And the food system is better at cost control because most of the B2B in that biz IS their money.
For how fat America is, you would not believe the amount people throw in the trash at home and dining out.
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!
(post is archived)