Stuffed and Starved in America: Why are Food Waste and Food Stamps Simultaneously Peaking?
Mon, Nov 30, 2009
NYTimes "Food Stamps Soar" Slideshow
A recent study found that US per capita food waste increased by ~50% since 1974. We now waste over 1400 calories per person per day in America, enough to feed 200 million people. Apparently, our epidemically obese society can no longer stomach half the calories we purchase at the supermarket. Simultaneously, the USDA recently released a bombshell study that one-in-seven Americans was short of food last year. And over Thanksgiving, the New York Times published a major piece on the soaring use of food stamps, which are now feeding one-in-four children in America. What the heck is going on?
The study, The Progressive Increase of Food Waste in America and Its Environmental Impact, finds that current levels of food waste, 1400 cal p/person p/day, now accounts for over a quarter of freshwater consumption and about 300 million barrels of oil per year, or 4% of U.S. fossil fuel consumption. This calculation does not even include processing or transportation and is based on the average of 3 cal of fossil fuels per 1 cal of food production on American farms. In contrast to recent cries over food shortages, the study concludes:
“The calculated progressive increase of food waste suggests that the US obesity epidemic has been the result of a “push effect” of increased food availability and marketing with Americans being unable to match their food intake with the increased supply of cheap, readily available food. Thus, addressing the oversupply of food energy in the US may help curb the obesity epidemic as well as decrease food waste, which has profound environmental consequences.”
Makes sense, right?
So why have food banks been systematically under-stocked for two years, a seventh of Americans are apparently going hungry in certain months, and government welfare programs are propping up an eighth of American adults and a quarter of all children with food stamps?
- NYTimes “Food Stamps Soar” Interactive Map
The dilemma echoes Amartya Sen’s Nobel Prize winning research showing that famines do not result from a lack of food, but rather from distributional problems often tied to bad governance and poorly functioning democracy. From Ethiopia to Guatemala to South Dakota, markets are full of food. The very poor just can’t afford to buy it. And everyone else is hoarding.
This paradox also echoes my critique in “NYTimes Biotech and Food Crisis Debate – Unanswered Questions“, when I asked: “Are we incapable of even discussing solutions that involve belt-tightening, rather than high-science, high-profits, big government, and extreme trade-offs for the poor?”
What’s the obvious solution to a confluence of waste and hunger is. . . Trash-Picking!
If not a perfect resolution, it is at least symbolic, exposing the roots of our social problem. A group named the “Garbage Liberation Front” (GLF) declares its mission as: “to expose the scandal of the disposable logic of consumer capitalism, which stimulates economic growth by encouraging wanton wastefulness.”
This nice little essay entitled “Utopia Gleaners” examines the historical symbolic and literary value of the trash-picker up through today’s GLF. We can end with the authors’ quotation from the lyric poet Baudelaire:
“[The ragpicker] is responsible for gathering up the daily debris of the capital. All that the city has rejected, all it has lost, shunned, disdained, broken, this man catalogs and stores. He sifts through the archives of debauch, the junkyards of scrap. He creates order, makes an intelligent choice; like a miser hoarding treasure, he gathers the refuse that has been spit out by the god of Industry, to make of it objects of delight or utility.”
Backyard pizza madman – a former subject of our Pizza-Oven Lifestyles series – Paul Gianonne (aka Paulie Gee) is opening his own joint in Green Point.
Josh,
Interesting post. Highlights a true discrepancy in our society. An interesting follow-up post might focus on recommendations for the individual on combating this irony.
Here’s an example on combating the distribution problem creatively. My current employer, Resources for Human Development, in Philadelphia, just launched a weekly produce market in partnership with the City of Philadelphia and local food stores. We’ve made a deal with food stores who cannot use all of the produce they’ve purchased (it’s either too much for their inventory, or it’s too ripe to last the requisite amount of days). It’s CHEAPER for these stores to donate the food to nonprofits like ours, rather than pay to dispose of it. Our nonprofit rents a truck each week to pick up the food from the warehouse, and then we set up shop to sell this food at discounted prices to the community in our parking lot every Monday.
Now here’s the part on the cost. Some years ago, we initiated community currency (basically like monopoly money) called “Equal Dollars” (check out how it works here: http://www.rhd.org/equal.html). People who volunteer to package and sell the produce earn $10 Equal Dollars per shift, which can then be used to pay for 50% of their produce. Each BAG of food costs $1US and 1=$ (equal dollar) — and the bags are massive. For example, I purchased 2 bags of spinach, 5lbs of pre-chopped broccoli, 3 beefsteak tomatoes and a 3lb bag of chopped carrots for $4 and 4=$.
But there’s a catch. There is too much food in each bag to be used by one person, so you have to commit to sharing the food with your community. Fair enough, right? So, for example, every Monday I split my 5LB bag of broccoli 4 ways – some for my roommate, some for my parents, some for my boyfriend, and some for me. And we each pay .25c.
Pretty awesome, huh? And the best part is that this is available to ANYONE in the community — and our organization is located just outside of North Philadelphia, one of most devastated areas of this City, and a place where you simply don’t find stores like Whole Foods and Trader Joes, let alone decent farmers markets.
I’d love to hear other stories from your readers out there. I bet between all of us, we can come up with some pretty innovative stuff. If you want to learn more about =$ or the produce market with the city, just let me know! I think it’s a great model for expansion.
Theresa
Hi Josh,
Thanks for sharing. For a different take on garbage picking – from people who are not choosing it, but forced to rely on it for food – check out this short film (an oldie but goodie) – it’s commentary on capitalism in general, but through the lens of food (a tomato, specifically).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3AyWcptRx0&feature=related
Enjoy.
Amita
Thanks for the comments, Theresa and Amita. Amita, the video is entertaining, but it seems more like a humorous explanation of economics rather than a critique. But it’s also funny that the theme of $money$ connects both your video and Theresa’s writing. Theresa, the system you describe sounds great, and you’re right that it’s an example of directly turning would-be food waste into food supply for those with low incomes. But why the =$? Why not real $ if it’s already pegged to the USD?
I would think the program Theresa is referring to hands out “Equal Dollars” to ensure that the volunteers use their earnings to purchase the food at the market. I don’t know who is allowed to particpate in the packaging/selling but I’m guessing that if real USD were earned, the money might be used for other means (especially in an area like North Philadelphia), so by giving out these equal dollars the company can be sure the volunteers are working for the reduced price produce.