In 2015, food and agriculture sustainability advocates succeeded in pressing the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Environmental Protection Agency to commit to a goal of cutting national food waste in half by 2030. This would significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions from methane released by organic waste in landfills and help bridge the gap between food surplus and the national hunger crisis, in which 44 million people in the U.S. face hunger.
Without any specific strategy for how to meet this goal, however, the problem has grown. The amount of surplus food produced in the U.S. in 2021 was 4.8 percent higher than it was in 2016. Now, nearly a decade after the commitment, there is finally a national road map. In June, a coalition of government agencies unveiled the National Strategy for Reducing Food Loss and Waste and Recycling Organics, that aims to concretize and make actionable the goal set in 2015.
Advocates say these centralized, clear objectives for meeting food waste goals are long overdue.
“In 2015 the USDA and EPA committed to that national goal but we hadn’t seen any sort of plan written out as to how the agencies were going to help achieve that goal,” said Nina Sevilla, Program Advocate for Food Waste & Food Systems at Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). “We’ve been asking for a while to have some sort of road map, and this is the result of that.”
This initiative is structured around four main objectives: preventing food loss, preventing food waste, increasing the recycling rate for organic waste and supporting policies that incentivize these practices. This strategy is the first of its kind as far as a federal, systems-level approach to tackling the country’s food waste crisis, in which 30-40 percent of food in the supply chain is wasted.
So how exactly does the Biden Administration’s strategy propose to reach its lofty goal in the next six years? Let’s take a walk through each section of the strategy.
Preventing Food Loss
The first pillar of the strategy focuses on preventing food loss at the production and distribution stages, namely the farm and transit between the farm and the final destination where it will be sold. It aims to enhance economic returns for producers, manufacturers, and distributors while ensuring more food reaches consumers.
Food loss is a type of food waste, which refers to any edible food that goes uneaten at any stage of the process, like in a home, market, or a crop that never leaves the field.
It refers to a decrease in the quantity or quality of food that comes from inefficiencies in the supply chain, and can happen if a crop is damaged during harvest, if food is rejected due to quality standards, or if food is stored improperly.
By fostering more collaboration across the food supply chain, harvest and collection can be optimized, with less food wasted.
The strategy encourages whole crop purchases by retailers, which means including imperfect produce, and accepting partial orders to reduce the volume of rejected crops. It also aims to support biotechnological advances to slow decomposition, like edible coatings for produce, and mechanisms that detect and quantify gases like oxygen, carbon dioxide, nitrogen and ethylene to ensure optimal storage conditions, prevent spoilage and extend the shelf life of perishable foods.
The USDA’s Farm Storage Facility Loan Program and microloan programs will be tasked with improving storage and extending the shelf life of produce. There will also be investment in innovations like genetically engineered crops with longer shelf life.
The strategy seeks to improve demand forecasting technologies, tools used by businesses to predict how much of a product people will want in the future, which allows for more accurate ordering and therefore less waste.
It also emphasizes the importance of improving data collection to measure progress, yet Sevilla spoke to her disappointment in the scope and specificity of this aspect of the strategy. “We had hoped to see a specific food loss and waste report that would happen more periodically so the field can all learn from what the agencies are doing in a more centralized and clear space.”
Preventing Food Waste
Preventing food waste at the retail, food service and household levels is the next key focus. This type of waste is produced once food reaches the consumer, and can come in the form of uneaten leftovers, unsold produce that is still fit for consumption, or food that’s past expiration but still safe to eat.
This approach is based on the idea that a lot of waste happens because people don’t know how to do better or why it is important to do so. Consumer education and behavioral change campaigns will be launched nationally to spur actionable change among businesses and consumers.
“Because households are the number one generator of wasted food, this kind of thing will hopefully have a huge impact,” said Sevilla. “We’re hoping to see it cover things like food date labeling, which is one of the leading causes of food waste in the home.”
Better understanding of food date labeling helps reduce waste by enabling people to distinguish between “best before” and “use by” dates, allowing them to confidently use food that is still safe, make informed shopping decisions, and minimize unnecessary disposal.
This has enormous potential for impact, especially as households account for 40-50% of all food wasted in the US.
Engaging youth through targeted education and leadership programs is also a priority under the broader educational umbrella, and the USDA is investing $10 million in educational grants and initiatives that would go to schools or educational organizations.
Increasing food recycling rate
It’s not only minimizing loss and waste that will help meet food chain sustainability goals – investing in infrastructure and establishing protocols for food to be rescued or recycled will help achieve a more circular system altogether and address the reality that some food loss is unavoidable. Food rescue is considered a form of recycling because it involves diverting surplus food from waste streams and redirecting it to those in need, thereby giving it a new, valuable purpose.
The EPA will improve and gather more detailed data on existing food donation and recovery systems to make food distribution more efficient. Through this, the EPA will be better able to identify areas where current infrastructure is lacking or where inefficiencies exist. For example, they might find regions with surplus food but insufficient donation networks or areas where donated food isn’t reaching those in need efficiently and target these areas with funding for infrastructure improvements
The strategy also highlights the importance of developing markets for non-edible recycled products like compost, which can cut methane emissions compared to landfilled food waste while providing a high-quality soil amendment for sale to farmers and gardeners.
Policy support
Support for local policies related to food waste and loss management both domestically and internationally is the fourth objective , and a critical one for actually getting effective food waste prevention strategies implemented.
The USDA will continue to provide financial and technical assistance for composting facilities, emphasizing community-scale organics recycling infrastructure to reduce pollution, create jobs and support green infrastructure.
The EPA will continue to lead and expand two key networks — the National Compost and Anaerobic Digestion Peer Network and the Food: Too Good to Waste Peer Network — bringing together state and local government staff to share strategies, research, and solutions for organics recycling and reducing household food waste.
Some experts emphasize that these local and state efforts might be key in meeting reduction goals, and have an even greater direct impact than national ones.
“Implementing a national strategy is a tricky strategy for a couple of reasons,” said Dana Gunders, Executive Director of ReFED, a national nonprofit dedicated to ending food loss and waste by advancing data-driven solutions. “One is that a lot of waste jurisdictions are at the state level so there’s only so much that can be codified at a national level.”
Different states may have their own laws regarding food waste, such as New York’s Food Donation and Food Scraps Recycling Law or California’s requirements for organic waste recycling. So while a national strategy might encourage similar laws nationwide, it can’t mandate them in states that choose not to adopt them. Also, waste management infrastructure like recycling facilities or composting programs, is often managed at the local level. So actual implementation would depend on local governments’ resources and priorities.
But what the national strategy can excel in is bringing widespread awareness and priority to the issue, one which has been receiving increased public attention in recent years. In 2021, 25 states introduced food waste legislation. New York enacted a Food Donation and Food Scraps Recycling Law which requires large food generators like supermarkets, universities, and hotels to donate excess edible food and recycle food scraps. Massachusetts expanded its existing ban on commercial food waste disposal to require more businesses and institutions to comply, thereby reducing the quantity of food sent to landfill or incinerator.
Overall, the experts we spoke with are optimistic that this strategy can achieve its goals, even though some details about funding and accountability are still unclear.
The ambiguity in the strategy is mostly as it relates to the funding and accountability for the aforementioned objectives.
“It’s wonderful to have it all there and in one place but there’s so much more need, and having more identifications of specific funds would have been wonderful,” said Neff. “There’s a lot of places [in the strategy] where, if we can get that [initiative] into the farm bill, we’ll be able to fund it.”
