Food Wastage in America - Assignment Example

Food Wastage in America Food production around the world has been increasing and is going to keep increasing for the next few decades (Dyson, 1999). With this increase in food production, comes increasing wastage, especially in America.The main avenues by which food is wasted can be categorized into 4 parts in the food production process: 1) farm and post-harvest 2) processing and wholesale, 3) in retail and 4) consumer and foodservice (Kantor et al, 1997). At the farm and harvest stage, waste may be due to weather conditions or storage losses.

During processing and wholesale, waste is due to poor handling or transportation losses. In 1995, retail losses were 2% of the total wastage and this was 5.4 billion pounds of food and losses in consumer and foodservice made up 26% and 9.1 billion pounds of food. Wastage at these levels is mainly in fruits, vegetables and dairy (Kantor et al, 1997).  The waste of food contributes to overuse of freshwater and fossil fuels. This, in conjunction with methane and carbon dioxide from food decomposition, can affect global climate change over time (Hall et al, 2009).

There have been attempts to minimize food wastage but it has not been adopted by everyone (Kantor et al, 1999)