Did you know that almost 40 percent of all food in the United States goes to waste? Food that is safe to eat, nutritious, and available goes in our collective trash cans. We throw away 133 billion pounds of food each year. It’s a staggering statistic, especially when you consider that some of our neighbors are food insecure.
I’ve served on the board of directors for an Indiana-based nonprofit called Cultivate Food Rescue for the past three years. The nonprofit’s mission is to collect perishable food, transform it into single-serve freezer meals, and distribute it to the community. Since opening in 2016, Cultivate has saved over 10 million pounds of food from three (small-ish) counties in northern Indiana.
And it’s far from alone. Rescue organizations have popped up in communities around the country (and world) to combat this crisis. Of course, there’s more than enough work to go around.
So when a friend sent me a recent article published on Modern Farmer I was a bit perplexed. The title, The US Doesn’t Grow Enough Food — But We Could, seemed wildly out of touch. Closer inspection revealed that it was written by Angela Huffman, the president of Farm Action, an activist organization that is staunchly against the production of corn and soybeans.
So which is it — do we produce enough food but waste a lot of it, or do we not produce enough food?
The answer at AGDAILY.
Along these same lines I found out recently that most Dollar Gnerals in this area are connected to a food pantry and when they lose electricity and have to empty the coolers and freezers they call their contacts with the food pantry. That is great to know that most of that food is wasted. They also get outdated products. This is in central Illinois.