Village Raw - ISSUE 4

VILLAGE RAW
SUSTAINABLE VILLAGE
BEYOND THE AISLES
We all have a role to play when it comes to the issue of food
waste – even what occurs outside of the household – but how do
we take action against something we cannot always see?
Words and photos by Chris King.
When we think of food waste, we tend to think about what we
ourselves are throwing away – that half-eaten burger, that bag
of unopened salad leaves forgotten at the back of the fridge.
And for good reason – we can see it, and we feel the sense of
guilt and shame when we throw it in the bin. But we’re also reminded
of food waste through supermarket and government- or
council-funded initiatives – where the spotlight is also firmly
placed on the household.
Current statistics, used to justify the focus on us, seem
to validate this view. In its report on food waste in the UK, the
government-funded non-profit organisation, WRAP, claims that
more than 70% of the waste produced comes from the household
– 70% of which is edible. What isn’t always apparent is that
those statistics only relate to what happens beyond the farm
gate, and so doesn’t provide a complete picture. What happens
on the farm stays on the farm.
There has been some attempt to put a figure on what gets
wasted on the farm – a report by the UN’s Food and Agriculture
Organisation in 2013 claimed that 20% to 40% of fresh produce
was wasted for cosmetic reasons alone. However, even
this is likely to be a conservative estimate, due to the lack of
up-to-date, comprehensive and complete data available. I’ve
witnessed field after field of crops being left unharvested. It’s
shocking to see, but from the farmer’s perspective it must be
incredibly frustrating, disheartening, and economically devastating
– to devote so much time and energy into nurturing the
plants, only to have to let them rot into the ground.
But, apart from farmers’ wellbeing and livelihoods, why should
we be concerned about farm-level food waste? Surely the farmers
can just plough produce back into the ground, or let it fall from the
trees, and fertilise the soil or the tree roots? Well, they can, and
they all too often have to. However, not only does this fail to replace
all the nutrients taken from the soil, but it also wastes all the
resources that were embedded in that food – the fuel, the labour,
the water, the fertilisers, and everything else used to grow it – just
as we are when we throw uneaten food away. Food that moves from
the farm to our fridges has more and more resources embedded
into it, because of the additional transportation, refrigeration,
packaging and everything else required to get it on to our plates.
Why is so much perfectly edible food going to waste? Some
of it is built into the system by default – farmers will often overplant
by a certain percentage to allow for the unforeseen. But a
significant amount of what is wasted comes down to supermarket
practices – from imposing unreasonable cosmetic standards,
to cancelling or reducing their orders at the last minute.
This means some or all of the crop is left in the ground or
hanging on the tree, simply because it is considered too small,
too big, too blemished, inappropriately shaped, or indeed even
because of excessive ‘soil splash’, to name just a few of the justifications
supermarkets give for stopping perfectly edible food
making it on to their shelves. I’ve documented delicious, sweet
red apples, juicy pears, beautiful, dark green cabbages – all rejected
and left to rot. And when you think that it takes roughly
15,400 litres of water to produce 1kg of beef (compared to 237
litres for 1kg of cabbage), wasting meat – anywhere along the
supply chain – is an even bigger waste of resources.
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