In April 2018, a study funded by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) found that American consumers wasted nearly a pound of food per person per day from 2007 to 2014. That’s enough to feed 2 billion more people every year.

About 30 million acres of cropland are used to produce this food each year, which means 7 percent of annual cropland acreage is devoted to growing food that gets transported, handled, bought and sold and thrown into the garbage.

We already know that Americans are incredibly wasteful and that food waste is a serious global issue. Considering all the ways our food system, industrial system, consumer habits and environment are interconnected, the USDA study brings an interesting finding to light:

“Higher quality diets contained greater amounts of fruits and vegetables, which require far less land to produce compared to many other foods. Yet a substantially greater proportion of fruits and vegetables were wasted compared to other foods, and fruits and vegetables have higher agricultural input needs (per unit of land area) than most other crops.”

In other words, those of us eating lots of fruits and vegetables might be overlooking something big: We’re throwing away a lot of food!

Fruits and vegetables accounted for 39 percent of food waste determined in this study. As communities rally together to create better—more ethical, sustainable and healthier—food systems, it’s time we bring food waste into the fold.

With the mind of a gardener

As gardeners, we have a unique relationship with food, which also brings to light the connection food has with so many other aspects of life and society. Gardening keeps this relationship we have with food intimate and unadulterated by the pressure of having our livelihoods depend on it.

We see the miracles of life that are infused in growing food, and yet, if we drown our tomatoes or the chickens dig up all the garlic, we’ll be okay.

This relationship gives us power to take global issues into our own hands and to align our values with our lifestyles. It gives us the power to act.

Narrowing the gap

In warmer months, we have the option to compost our food scraps outdoors, where the mess and smells won’t bother us, where we can mix in grass clippings and weeds. But composting becomes difficult in cooler seasons, and throwing out food scraps becomes more tempting.

But waste is non-existent in nature, and as students of nature, it ought to be us who step up and figure out another way.

Even if we didn’t buy more than we could eat, we still have squash skins and apple cores to dispose of. If maintaining a huge compost pile through the winter is not an option for you, what else is there to do?

These are a few options. Separating out fruit and vegetable scraps for a neighbor with chickens is a great way to minimize what goes into the trash.

Consider building a worm bin, or a vermicomposting system. Allowing worms to transform your kitchen scraps into vermicompost (a mixture of worm castings, organic material and bedding in varying stages of decomposition, plus earthworms and other living organisms) can greatly reduce your contribution to landfills. While traditional composting systems can be difficult to manage on a small scale, worm composting is low-maintenance and tidy enough to take place in your kitchen. You can learn a lot more about vermicomposting in “Worms Eat My Garbage,” a wonderfully concise and straight-forward book by Mary Appelhof. The book is available for checkout at the library, or you can buy it online. I bet if our local bookstores don’t have it on the shelf, they can order it in for you.

Finally, we can turn to collective action. Contact a city official to ask about possibilities for composting and encouraging a citywide food scraps diversion.