On a special episode (first released on November 13, 2024) of The Excerpt podcast: While the U.S. is, on the whole, a wealthy country, currently one in eight Americans is food insecure. Meanwhile, more than a third of food produced goes uneaten or unsold. That’s roughly 90 million pounds according to ReFED, a research and advocacy group focused on eliminating food waste. Most of that food ends up in landfills where it becomes a big contributor to climate change because of the huge amounts of methane gas that are released as it decomposes. Is there a way to solve these two problems together by simply using the food surplus to feed more people instead of sending it to landfills? ReFED President Dana Gunders joins The Excerpt to dig into this meaty issue.
Hit play on the player below to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript beneath it. This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text.
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Dana Taylor:
Hello and welcome to The Excerpt. I’m Dana Taylor. Today is Wednesday, November 13th, 2024, and this is a special episode of The Excerpt. Well, the US is on the whole a wealthy country. Currently, one in eight Americans is food insecure. Meanwhile, more than a third of food produce goes uneaten or unsold. That’s roughly 90 million pounds, according to ReFED, a research and advocacy group focused on eliminating food waste. Most of that food ends up in landfills where it becomes a big contributor to climate change because of the huge amounts of methane gas that are released as it decomposes. Here to help me dig into this meaty topic is ReFED President, Dana Gunders. Dana, thanks for being on The Excerpt.
Dana Gunders:
Thanks so much for having me.
Dana Taylor:
The problem of food waste is such a complicated one, and there are so many layers here. It’s truly a farm-to-table problem, but let’s start by clarifying a couple of different terms here. There is food surplus and food waste. What does each one mean and where is it all coming from?
Dana Gunders:
Yeah, well, we like to talk about food surplus because there’s so much extra food out there that could be used and then sometimes does get thrown out, and once it’s thrown out, then we call it food waste. But anything that is donated or fed to animals, it’s good food and it’s staying in the supply chain, so that’s where we make the distinction.
Dana Taylor:
Let’s talk about how we might get quality uneaten or unsold food from where it is into the hands and mouths of people who wanted and need it. Can you please talk about food donation and food recovery networks?
Dana Gunders:
So across the country, we estimate that about 38% of all of our food is surplus, and of that, only about 2% is actually being donated today. So there is a huge opportunity to have more food going into the food donation system, and that’s everything from fruits and vegetables on farm. A huge amount of food gets left on the farm. It’s not harvested because maybe it’s not the right size or the right color or the right shape, and that food is perfectly good to eat and there’s a huge opportunity to rescue that off of farms and have it go straight to the food donation system where it can be really fresh, healthy, nutritious food. And there are organizations that are working directly with farmers to make that possible, and even covering the costs for farmers or paying them a little bit of money for that food, but it’s still at a reduced price.
Then of course there’s all the extra food that happens at grocery stores or restaurants, and each of those situations needs a little bit of a different handling of the food. If you have a big pan of mac and cheese in the back, you need to make sure that if you’re going to donate it is maintained at the right temperature and brought to a place that can serve prepared food, which is different than maybe the back of a grocery store where you’re looking at cartons of milk and other food that is packaged. It varies across the country. Some areas have really robust systems of organizations that can pick this food up and take it to places, and other places have absolutely nothing there, and it really depends on what’s available as to how easy it is for those stores and restaurants to donate their food.
Dana Taylor:
Let’s go through each of these examples you went through, one by one, starting with the farm solutions you mentioned. How successful are these, what’s the infrastructure and what are the obstacles that remain?
Dana Gunders:
We saw a lot of improvement during covid because at that point there were so much extra produce that was really in the news and there was a lot more attention to that. Actually, the whole system through covid was able to get more cold storage. One of the main obstacles is being able to keep food cold so that you can keep it fresh, and we saw a lot more infrastructure built to help keep food cold. That has really helped get more produce off the farms. At the same time, it is still a drop in the bucket of what’s available, and there’s room really to get so much more. I think another obstacle is the availability and cost of labor. If you’re a farmer, you don’t necessarily want to pay for all of that in order to donate the food and really lose money in the end, and so we’ve seen some places and states like for instance, Pennsylvania has a program where they actually cover the costs for the farmers to do that harvest, to do the transport, and that’s been a big help as well.
Dana Taylor:
What are the solutions here? Does government need to step in to help move that produce?
Dana Gunders:
It absolutely helps when government steps in, both to help with covering those costs, like I mentioned, as well as transportation, and then also to help the facilities build out the cold storage so that they can really handle that. But the private sector has played a role too. They donate a lot of trucks, they donate a lot of food, and so I think there’s a role really for both public and private sides of the equation.
Dana Taylor:
Just to be clear, can you please explain why composting is preferable in sending uneaten and unsold food to a landfill or mandatory composting laws? The solution, doesn’t it produce greenhouse gases wherever it goes to break down?
Dana Gunders:
When food goes to a landfill, what happens is there’s no air in that landfill. It gets covered and it creates what’s called an anaerobic condition, and so when that food rots in landfills, that condition makes it produce methane, and methane is a powerful greenhouse gas. When food scraps go to composting, they are turned and a lot of air is involved in that process, and so the decomposition does not produce methane in that situation. It actually decays without the methane, and that’s what makes it a better option. In addition to the fact that when you compost food scraps, all of the nutrients get to be recycled, and that compost when it’s applied to soils, helps not only avoid extra fertilizer from being applied, but it also helps the soils absorb water as well as absorb carbon from the atmosphere.
Dana Taylor:
There are now apps like Too Good To Go, which seem like decent tech-powered solutions. Essentially, users sign up to have access to dozens of restaurants and grocery stores depending on where you live. They give them either a surprise package of prepared food or a bag of groceries. Have apps like this been making a difference?
Dana Gunders:
I think these apps are fantastic because oftentimes that food is truly about to be thrown out, and so it really is a win-win, the restaurant gets a little bit of income, the consumer gets a deal, and we get to avoid that food going straight to a landfill. So I’m a big proponent and I wish they were spreading even faster than they already are.
Dana Taylor:
Are there any downsides? Is it possible restaurants are misusing the apps as free marketing?
Dana Gunders:
I don’t really see any downsides. I think the restaurants are incentivized to sell their product at a higher price point. Really, the concern with both restaurants and grocery stores is that using these apps will cut into their own regular sales. But in fact, that hasn’t really been seen to be the case, and that’s why they make it a mystery bag so that you can’t order anything you want at a discount, but rather you’re taking a little bit of a risk. So that’s helped as well.
Dana Taylor:
Let’s talk more about grocery stores. Some supermarkets have tried some novel solutions here from stocking community fridges with unsold fruits and vegetables, to joining apps like Too Good To Go, but the real problem seems to be how retailers approach making the food appealing by doing things like not letting a product run out and keeping shelves overstocked. Is there any way out of this stubborn mindset?
Dana Gunders:
Well, I would love to see a world where empty shelves were okay because I do think that would help have less overage at grocery stores. In the meantime, it is pretty complicated to run a grocery store. Your average grocery store has about 50,000 different items, and the people who are buying those items are having to predict for any single store, for all of those items, what’s going to sell on any given day, and that’s a pretty hard equation.
So one thing we’ve seen be really useful is the use of machine learning and some of these big data AI tools that can take all of that information on all of those products, how well they sell on any given day when weather is a certain way or local events are happening, or there are promotions in the store. And they can really identify better forecasting, and so they’re helping save somewhere around 15% of that extra food that was previously going to waste by using that AI to help them predict and forecast their sales.
Dana Taylor:
To buy just the right amount of food so that no food is wasted. I try to go for a mix of fresh and frozen produce. How can people better plan for groceries so that everything gets consumed?
Dana Gunders:
Planning is incredibly effective and useful when it comes to reducing waste in your home. If you can plan your meals and make a shopping list and stick to the list and stick to the plan, you will have much less waste in your home. But not everyone is a great planner, and so I think it’s important to have other tools in your toolkit as well. Freezing food is actually really effective and you can freeze all sorts of foods that you may not think of. You can slice bread and put it in the freezer and then just pop it straight in the toaster or you can take cheese and shred it and then use that. You can freeze milk, you can freeze pasta, you can freeze pasta sauce.
So I think just seeing your freezer as that short-term storage can be really effective. Another is making sure to have nights where you just use up everything in your fridge so you don’t have to plan a meal for every night. Make sure to have those fridge nights where you’re either cooking up something, a soup with everything you have in there, or else just eating leftovers and having a little bit of a grab bag for dinner.
Dana Taylor:
Is there one nugget that you want listeners of this program to walk away with, and if so, what would that be?
Dana Gunders:
I would say we all have an opportunity to waste a little bit less food. It’s something we can do now. It’s something that has an impact right now. If you waste a little bit less food and it doesn’t have to be perfect, that food is not going to the landfill tomorrow. It’s not creating those greenhouse gases the next day, and so it’s so within our control in a world where a lot feels out of our control, I think this is something we can all do and we can start right now.
Dana Taylor:
Dana, thank you so much for joining me on The Excerpt.
Dana Gunders:
Thank you so much for having me, Dana.
Dana Taylor:
Thanks to our senior producers Shannon Rae Green and Kaylee Monahan for their production assistance. Our executive producer is Laura Beatty. Let us know what you think of this episode by sending a note to podcasts@usatoday.com. Thanks for listening. I’m Dana Taylor. Taylor Wilson will be back tomorrow morning with another episode of The Excerpt.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Might we solve problems of food insecurity and food waste together?
