November 26th, 2008 · No Comments

“When should you be shopping? After you get off work on Friday, when you have a good idea about what you’ll use that weekend. It will be very fresh and ready to go.”

Government as Friend or Foe?

To reverse America’s food waste trend and the toll it takes on the economy and environment, we must start acting responsibly. Education and government support, says Jones, are key.

“The next administration needs to set up programs for increasing efficiencies throughout the system. Working in a positive way, we’d get corporations to become more efficient; we’d get farmers to work more efficiently. Since there are farmers who already are super-efficient, why don’t we have a farmer-to-farmer training program? Farmers would listen to other farmers. We’re not talking about a lot of money in terms of program costs, but we’re sure as hell talking a lot of money in terms of decreasing losses.”

The government has stepped in before. In 1999, a study by the USDA’s Economic Research Service on food banks and food recovery organizations found 20 percent of all donated produce was discarded due to infrastructure gaps. The Clinton Administration requested $15 million in grants to help these groups expand their anti-hunger efforts into a nationwide, networked system. It worked.

The Bush Administration has been another story, says Jones, going so far as to suppress results of the UA study. “One of the things we needed to define was where food losses were occurring so they could be recovered. Another goal was to obtain measures to update old modeling systems and get a better handle on the extent of food waste. We actually did that, we have the data, but the Bush Administration has refused to acknowledge the existence of the data, even though the reports were turned over to them.

“Why would they react so negatively to data that’s a win-win all the way around? Nobody loses with this kind of information: Corporations become more efficient and increase their bottom line; you have positive environmental impacts due to new systems. We need to change and implement new programs, but we’ve had an administration that doesn’t do anything. It doesn’t help promote anything. In fact, it makes efforts to make it not happen.”

Greener Pastures Ahead?

With a new administration poised to take office in January, there’s renewed hope that change will come. A faltering economy, with all its ramifications, underscores the necessity for improved efficiencies. Public awareness of the enormity of food waste is mandatory; instilling the value of food in every American essential.

“We have to start a public education program that food is expensive,” says Jones, “it isn’t plentiful. We’ve been very lucky to have a period over the last 40 or 50 years where food was plentiful. It won’t remain that way, because we can’t continue our current system. It’s a combination of everybody being responsible; it’s going to have to be a combined effort. For kids under 8 years, we need to instill the value of food early so they’ll be hard-wired. And until those kids become functional adults in their early 20s, we need to pound the public every three or four years.

“We’re going to have to have a dual program. One in which we teach adults this information, because they’ve lost it. And keep it up, until we can raise a generation that has this as a basic value. It will affect not only the household, but that enlightened generation will end up in corporations.

“They’ll bring those same values to farms and to food processing plants as management in companies. It will spread throughout the whole society, whether you’re talking corporations and business or households and farms. It will spread throughout the entire system and become instilled. And then efficiencies will really come to light.”

Copyright © 2008 | Distributed by Noofangle Media

Related stories:

• How to waste less food
• Food Indulgence in America: How attitudes weigh us down

Pages: 1 2 3