The new study, from the University of Arizona (UA) in Tucson,
indicates that a shocking 40% to 50% of all food ready for harvest
never gets eaten.

 Timothy Jones, an anthropologist at the UA Bureau of Applied
Research in Anthropology, has spent the last ten years measuring food
loss, including the last eight under a grant from the U.S. Department
of Agriculture (USDA). Jones started examining practices in farms and
orchards, before going onto food production, retail, consumption and
waste disposal.

 What he found was that not only is edible food discarded that
could feed people who need it, but the rate of loss, even partially
corrected, could save U.S. consumers and manufacturers tens of billions
of dollars each year. Jones says these losses also can be framed in
terms of environmental degradation and national security.

 Jones' research evolved from and builds on earlier work done at
the University of Arizona. Archaeologists there began measuring garbage
in the 1970s to see what was being thrown away and discovered that
people were not fully aware of what they were using and discarding.

 Those earlier studies evolved into more sophisticated research
using contemporary archaeology and ethnography to understand not only
the path food travels from farms and orchards to landfills, but also
the culture and psychology behind the process.

 The fact that the U.S. is a wasteful nation is not necessarily
news, of course. The country has long has been chastised for its wilful
consumption of the world's resources, and many aspects of the country's
culture encapsulate what environmentalists disparagingly refer to as
today's “throw-away society.”

 Similarly, researchers have known for years about the volumes of
food Americans toss into the trash. But only recently, though, has that
been quantified as a percentage of what is produced, and the UA
statistics are the first tangible proof that Us food production is
frighteningly wasteful.

 A certain amount of waste in the food stream cannot be helped of
course. Little can be done, for instance, about weather and crop
deterioration. The apple industry, for instance, loses on average about
12% of its crop on the way to market.

 Apples in the U.S. are harvested over a two-month period and then stored and
sold year-round. People in the apple business use aggressive methods to
maintain their crop, with fresh apples hitting the supermarkets on a
regular basis and marginal ones sent to be made into applesauce and
other products.

 The goal of apple growers is to provide a nutritious product, all
year long, at fairly constant prices. Jones says they've adopted a
conservative business plan that forgoes the boom-and-bust cycles that
other fruit and vegetable growers aim for and opts instead for a steady
income stream.

 But Jones argues that fresh fruit and vegetable growers, in
contrast, often behave like riverboat gamblers. They will take a risk
on the commodity markets if they think it will help them make a
financial killing. A bad bet often means an entire crop is left in the
field to be ploughed under.

 Jones' research also shows that by measuring how much food is
actually being brought into households, a clearer picture of that end
of the food stream is beginning to emerge.

 On average, households waste 14% of their food purchases. Fifteen
per cent of that includes products still within their expiration date
but never opened. Jones estimates an average family of four currently
tosses out $590 per year, just in meat, fruits, vegetables and grain
products.

 Jones says that consumers better need to understand that many kinds of food
can be refrigerated or frozen and eaten later. Nationwide, he says,
household food waste alone adds up to $43 billion, making it a serious
economic problem.

 Cutting food waste would also go a long way toward reducing
serious environmental problems. Jones estimates that reducing food
waste by half could reduce adverse environmental impacts by 25% through
reduced landfill use, soil depletion and applications of fertilisers,
pesticides and herbicides.

 Consumers and retailers are also of course responsible for
minimising food waste, but it is manufacturers, who are being squeezed
by high raw material prices and low retail costs, that stand to gain
most by establishing greater operational efficiencies to cut out
unnecessary waste.