It's because produce is particularly prone to spoil, and even if it has one bad brown spot, we simply throw it out. When US No 1 produce hits the store shelves and restaurants, the largest portion of American food waste occurs at this late stage in the supply chain. (The standards are also used for mediating disputes.) Although these standards are called voluntary, produce not meeting those standards gets rejected and wasted, or used in other industries. It is the principal that the grower who delivers high quality produce deserves a premium price because such produce enable the processor to pack a better quality finished product. These standards are essentially market driven - ie: the perfect produce that we see in stores. These grades are an outgrowth of the widely accepted principle that price should be directly proportional to quality, with US No 1 demanding the highest market price. 2, and all others, as lesser quality - although in some states, produce sold at farmers' markets is exempt. It provides the fruit, vegetable and specialty crop growers and buyers with an exacting language for describing the quality and condition of produce to be sold - specifying the exact color, size, and quality of the perfect produce - defining US No. In the United States, we have the long-time Department of Agriculture USDA Grades and Standards for Fruits and Vegetables in place since 1945. But the great American squandering of produce appears to be a cultural dynamic as well, enabled in large part by a national “cult of perfection”, deepening hunger and poverty, and inflicting a heavy toll on the environment. These outcasts are being called "ugly produce" or "imperfect produce" by the media - or produce that is deformed, wonky, crooked, or misshapen. We’re not talking about “rotten produce” or that which is spoiled, moldy, or so inedible as to make someone ill.Ī major reason is that food is cheaper in the United States than nearly anywhere else in the world, aided (controversially) by subsidies to corn, wheat, milk, and soybeans. Or harvested and remain unsold, and then left to rot in landfills because of minor blemishes that do not necessarily affect freshness or quality. These scarred vegetables are regularly abandoned in the field to save the expense and labor involved in harvest. Included in this American food waste problem are some six billion pounds of produce that go largely unharvested or unsold largely for aesthetic reasons, on an annual basis. municipal solid waste where it accounts for a large portion of U.S. ![]() ' This not only means that Americans are throwing out the equivalent of $165 billion each year, but also that the uneaten food ends up rotting in landfills as the single largest component of U.S. Americans waste an unfathomable amount of food, Here, studies have shown that In medium- and high-income countries, such as ours, that even when food reaches our markets, homes, and dinner plates, it is wasted and lost mainly at these later stages in the supply chain: "Some 40 percent of food in the United States today goes uneaten. Food is lost on farms during processing, distribution, and storage in retail stores and food service operations and in households for a variety of reasons at each stage, according to an NRDC report. ![]() Losses in the food system occur throughout the supply chain. ![]() What causes so much food waste? There are several reasons: It's enough to feed the nearly 800 million people worldwide, who suffer from hunger, more than twice over, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. Every year some 2.9 trillion pounds of food-about a third of all that the world produces-never gets consumed.
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