The New Republic

According
to a report issued by the Stockholm International Water Institute last
week, as much as half of all the food produced globally is either wasted or
lost as it makes its way through the food chain—a stunning figure given the 850
million people in the world who are malnourished. The causes vary: In
developing nations, most of the waste occurs because of poor harvesting
techniques or insufficient storage facilities that leave crops susceptible to
infestations or rot. (In Kenya
and Uganda
alone, for instance, a combined $45 million worth of milk is lost to spoilage each
year.)

In rich
countries, by contrast, most food waste amassed is a result of the carelessness
that comes with food being so cheap.  Retailers, cafeterias and restaurants toss out an average of 122 lbs a month per family of four. In American households alone, an estimated
$843 billion worth of food is thrown out each year—that's not counting banquet halls, hospitals,
etc.

Then
there's water—agriculture uses nearly 70
percent of all freshwater withdrawn for human use annually and a great deal
of that is unavailable for reuse, straining resources in areas already
struggling to survive with limited water supply. Meat production is
especially water intensive, as illustrated by California's
beef recall earlier this year: The 65 million kilograms of ruined meat
required some 650 billion liters of water, mostly to grow crops for animal feed, which
would've been enough to supply the entire city of Las Vegas for a year. As poorer countries
like China
get rich and start eating meat, meat demand is expected to rise anywhere from
70 to 160 percent by 2050, boding ill for the world's already-strained water
supplies.

The SIWI
report offers up a number of suggestions to cut down on agricultural waste—from
improving rainfall capture to employing more efficient harvesting and storage
techniques in developing countries. A lot of it will involve better federal coordination
of land and water management agencies—something a number of countries, the U.S.
included, are sorely lacking.

--Marin Cogan 

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