To Feed the Masses

Jenny Beth Maynard, Managing Editor|March 31, 2016

[Wholesale Marketing of food] Photo accessed on March 25, 2016 via the Creative Commons License.

I sat in the backseat of my grandparents’ car reading a National Geographic article about food transportation, as any normal 18 year old on spring break would do, and I had a novel thought: There’s got to be a better way to do this. With approximately 2.6 million registered truck tractors carrying food across the country every day, it seems a fairly inefficient, yet drastically necessary process.

[Truck Traffic, 1998] Photo accesses on March 25, 2016 via the Creative Commons License — [Truck Traffic, 1998] Photo accessed on March 25, 2016 via the Creative Commons License.

The statistics speak for themselves. The average food item travels an estimated 5,120 miles according to National Geographic. It is important to keep in mind that many foods do not take just one route before reaching their final destination. Once aboard one truck’s trailer in Watsonville, California, a batch of strawberries might tag along with other produce, such as apples or raspberries, and enjoy the 9.5 hour ride all the way to Lake Havasu City, Arizona. As the apples get unloaded, the strawberries hunker down for a two day trip to Memphis, Tennessee, then on to feed the busy people of Washington D.C. after 3,200 miles for a grand total of 80 hours–three days–coast to coast.

[Walmart food transportation] Photo accessed on March 25, 2016 via the Creative Commons License.

With 70% of the United States’ agricultural products shipped by truck across the country, it’s no surprise that the most populated cities take in the most food. If the residents of New York City–the Big Apple– had only the state of New York as its food supply source, 45% of the city’s population would be left hungry, fighting for crumbs. This fact in itself demonstrates the crucial contribution of the 2.6 million trucks we speed past on the freeway daily.

So we know they’re important. But their deliveries come at a cost. How so? To put it into perspective, consider two forms of transportation. There are conventional highway trucks and cargo airplanes. Realistically, one might see an airplane as bigger, heavier, and more difficult to transport produce and other goods. But in actuality, all U.S. semis put together use more than twice as much fuel as all U.S. airplanes. Why, then, are there 2.6 million semis on the road burning twice as much fossil fuel and contributing much more significant amounts of carbon pollution to our already-threatened air when we could instead have 2.6 million airplanes–possibly fewer due to the considerably larger cargo space– completing the same coast to coast journey in one third of the time? The time truck drivers spend trekking across country with a load of berries or Lays chips, the money spent on fuel and toward paying said drivers, and the traffic congestion on the freeways could be drastically cut, saving time, money, energy, and even the food itself.

At each stage in the supply chain, an astonishing volume of food is lost. Following the National Geographic fruit and vegetable supply chain, statistics show that 20% of the produce is lost during picking and sorting, 3% during storage and shipping, 2% during juice production, canning, or baking, 9% is discarded at wholesalers or supermarkets (most commonly due to bruising, spoiling, or deformation), and finally 19% is uneaten and discarded in homes. In total, 53% of the world’s produce is either lost or wasted.

[Unusually shaped fruit] Photo accessed on March 25 via the Creative Commons License.

As stated in the article I found myself in awe of, “saving trashed food has become a matter of international urgency.” Fortunately, efforts are being made to prevent such disappointing losses. Nat. Geo’s “Eating Ugly” segment in the March 2016 issue sells the idea of reselling visually unappealing foods. Rick Stein, vice president of fresh food at the Food Marketing Institute, comments, “It’s all about quality and appearance. ” If a carrot or a potato doesn’t look natural, a consumer generally won’t buy it.

[Unusually shaped vegetable] Photo accessed on March 25, 2016 via the Creative Commons License.

Because the markets need to make a profit and sell the food they take in from farms, the deformed food won’t even make it onto the shelves. However, a start-up company from Emeryville, California, called Imperfect recently began buying abnormal-looking produce and reselling it to over a thousand markets in the Bay Area that will actually shelve the food and sell it at a discounted price.

If ugly food can save the world from going hungry, perhaps we’re taking steps in the right direction. But we can’t just stop there. With an impending 9 billion people to feed worldwide in 2050, the food production and delivery process needs to speed up. At the same time, we can’t afford to waste 53% of produce. Tying in the current steps taken to decrease the food lost in the supply chain–the 9% thrown out at supermarkets–increasing the efficiency of transporting the food is more crucial than ever. The solutions need more attention.

The U.S. is in dire need of some proposals. Mine consists of several approaches:

Get more food out of the trailers of trucks and into the cargo spaces of airplanes. If a shipment needs to travel from the Pacific coast to the Atlantic coast, putting the produce on a truck to get there decreases efficiency and increases the risk of losing more food along the way simply because of the time it takes to drive cross country at less than 80 mph speeds. Instead, have the trucks travel only as far as they need to, dispensing agricultural, dairy, grain products (etc.) to supermarkets within a reasonable distance, fewer than 500-800 miles.
Encourage more start-up companies to follow Imperfect’s lead and see the value in a seemingly substandard batch of fruits or vegetables. By avoiding such fallible wastes, both the nation’s economy and the citizens’ stomach will benefit.
Educate people on how they can reduce waste in their own homes and in their communities. Click this link and scroll down to “Reducing Waste: How You Can Help” to see a National Geographic chart that offers easy ways to start doing your part to avoid such devastating food loss.

The food transportation process currently misses the mark in efficiency. It’s long past the time to turn the tables and reform the operation to get food from the fields and into our bellies without the high costs, the burned fossil fuels, or the wasted food.

http://www.worldwatch.org/node/6064

http://www.jhsph.edu/research/centers-and-institutes/teaching-the-food-system/curriculum/_pdf/Distribution_and_Transport-Background.pdf

https://www.nrdc.org/food/files/wasted-food-ip.pdf