Food waste: Why we should eat ALL the food we grow

When we first came across statistics about food waste, we couldn’t believe them. We’ve recently started working with Oddbox – a fruit and veg delivery service that only uses food that would otherwise go to waste. And they confirmed that food waste is not only a huge issue for farmers in the UK and around the world – it also contributes significantly to the climate emergency.

In fact, if food waste were a country, it would be responsible for the third-highest carbon emissions in the world.

That’s because of the water and energy invested in growing crops that go to waste. Companies like Oddbox are committed to using those crops that might otherwise be thrown away or turned into animal feed. Instead of commissioning farmers to grow certain crops, they take excess fruit and veg off their hands, selling it on to customers who are more interested in reducing food waste than whether their carrots are wonky.

Why is food waste such a problem?

In the UK, around three million tonnes of fresh fruit and vegetables are wasted every year – they never even get off the farm. This is mostly down to two things:

Growing too much – trying to meet forecast demand means that crops are sometimes too big and farmers can’t sell everything they grow.

‘Nice’ fruit and veg – huge amounts of fruit and veg get rejected by large supermarket chains because they don’t fit the ‘nice’ box. They are too small, too wonky, not quite the right colour.

But all these crops have been grown – so are farmers just supposed to throw the results of their hard work away? This has been the norm, sadly, and it’s resulted in a huge amount of wasted resource – from the water used to keep the crop growing, to the emissions from farm equipment used in soil preparation, sowing, maintenance, harvesting and storage.

Multiply this problem across the world, and you can see why one of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals is to reduce global food waste. The specific UN goal is to reduce per-capita food waste by 50% by 2030. According to the World Resources Institute, this is an ambitious, but achievable target that will ‘not only boost food security, but also improve livelihoods, reduce gas emissions and save land and water.’

Part of our work is to help food and drink brands to have a positive impact on the planet. Many of our brands have this at their heart, and it’s only by making a commitment to doing things better, making the best use of resources, using produce that’s already available and raising awareness that we can all influence change.

To find out more about our brands, our support of sustainable food and drink production and how we can help your brand have an impact, contact us today.

(Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash)

(Photo by Arnaldo Aldana on Unsplash)