The United States loses or wastes between 30% and 50% of the food it produces annually, and with it a large amount of natural resources. Federal policymakers are just beginning to recognize the opportunity to reduce food loss and waste (FLW), as shown by the U.S. Food Loss and Waste 2030 Champions Initiative aiming to halve FLW by 2030, a recent formal agreement among the USDA, EPA, and FDA, and the 2018 Farm Bill. Two knowledge gaps stand out from previous research: (1) while the FLW problem is well characterized, the effectiveness of proposed solutions in improving environmental metrics is unknown, and (2) biodiversity has been ignored as a part of the environmental footprint of FLW. Here we ask: What are the net environmental benefits of proposed interventions to prevent or divert food loss and waste? We model the US food system with an environmentally-extended input-output (EEIO) model and integrate USDA data on proportions of FLW by food category and supply chain stage to estimate greenhouse gas emissions, energy consumption, water consumption, land use, and biodiversity threats embedded in FLW. Improving upon previous work, our model accounts for regional variability and includes biodiversity loss due to land use change.
Results/Conclusions
We simulated three FLW intervention scenarios within the EEIO model, conducted a sensitivity analysis, and compared the net environmental impact of FLW reductions. Each scenario targets a different stage of the food supply chain: demand-side (e.g., creation of new markets for ugly produce that would not otherwise meet cosmetic standards), supply-side (e.g., improvements to packaging technology), and waste management/disposal (e.g., increased infrastructure to anaerobically digest food waste).
Although many FLW reduction efforts focus on consumers, we found a higher than expected proportion of the environmental footprint of FLW is at the retail and processing stages. Prevention of excess food production may have greater potential for reducing the impact of FLW than improvements to FLW disposal. Due to the large amount of land dedicated to food production and the high overall percentage of wasted food, a surprisingly large proportion of biodiversity threats in the US are embodied in FLW. In addition, the environmental footprint of FLW is highly variable spatially, suggesting that targeting FLW reduction efforts at specific regions should be considered. Policymakers and relevant stakeholders will be able to use our assessment of solutions to identify which interventions are most cost-effective, and which supply chain stages to prioritize targeting.