On the Measurement of Food Waste

Abstract

According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, one‐quarter to one‐third of all the food produced worldwide is wasted. We develop a simple framework to systematically think about food waste based on the life cycle of a typical food item. Based on our framework, we identify problems with extant measures of food waste and propose a more consistent and practical approach. In so doing, we first show that the widely cited, extant measures of the quantity and value of food waste are inconsistent with one another and overstate the problem of food waste. By misdirecting and misallocating some of the resources that are currently put into food waste reduction efforts, this overstatement of the problem could have severe consequences for public policy. Our framework then allows documenting the points of intervention for policies aimed at reducing the extent of food waste in the life cycle of food and the identification of interdependencies between potential policy levers.

Estimating Food Waste as Household Production Inefficiency

“…In this article, we overcome the data obstacle by conducting a productivity analysis of household production to obtain an input inefficiency measure that is interpreted as excess food inputs used to produce the current level of output in the form of energy expenditure. By construction, our model considers food diverted or recovered for nonfood purposes as food waste, which is consistent with the definitions used by the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Economic Research Service (ERS), the FAO, and the EU FUSIONS program (FAO 2013;Buzby, Wells, and Hyman 2014;FUSIONS 2016), but different from the latest categorization proposed by Bellemare et al (2017). In addition, because we use the edible parts of food as inputs in the estimation, the waste estimates in this article point to avoidable food waste according to the definitions by the Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP) (Quested and Parry 2011).…”

“…For instance, our results show that healthy dietary practices are associated with significantly more waste, suggesting programs aimed at promoting healthy eating should be evaluated for their implications on food waste. Methodologically, an accurate measurement of consumer food waste provides a means of calibrating actual consumption in both the traditional consumer demand models and newer models that treat food waste as a rational choice (Bellemare et al ; Lusk and Ellison ; Hamilton and Richards ).…”

Does on-farm food loss prevent waste? Insights from California produce growers

“…Based on insights from these farmers, we contribute to policy conversations by thinking holistically about the drivers of on-farm losses and the role that such losses play in the overall environmental impact of FLW. We use the term "waste" here to specifically refer to food sent to landfills (Bellemare, Çakir, Hikaru, Novak, & Rudi, 2017), as distinct from the broader category of "loss." This definition distinguishes the highest cost pathway of landfill disposal (which includes such costs as tipping fees, reduced landfill capacity, and emissions of greenhouse gases, GHGs) from other pathways that recover at least some value from food that is not consumed by humans (e.g.…”

Challenges and opportunities to increasing fruit and vegetable distribution through the US charitable feeding network: increasing food systems recovery of edible fresh produce to build healthy food access

“…Estimates suggest that up to 40% of food is wasted in the USA, 10 ranging between 240 and 660 pounds per person per year, [10][11][12] although there is large variation in estimates and many experts think 40% is vastly overestimated. 13 Of the food wasted in the US production stream, much of it is either not edible or is discarded at the level of the consumer 11 and is therefore not available to FBs. There is, however, some food within the production stream that could be reasonably diverted to FBs to support their efforts to increase access to healthy foods for the people they serve.…”