Imagine a farm that spans 80 million acres. This farm uses all the water produced in California, Texas and Ohio combined; it harvests enough food to fill a 40-ton tractor-trailer every 20 seconds. But instead of being purchased, prepared and eaten, this food — all perfectly good — is taken to a landfill, where it will produce greenhouse gasses until it decomposes.
This hypothetical farm, first theorized by multi-stakeholder nonprofit ReFED, is based upon the fact that 40% of all food in the U.S. is thrown away. That translates to more than 1.7 trillion apples and 1 billion bags of potatoes — or enough food to fill a farm three-quarters the size of California.
An organization called 412 Food Rescue is working to change that.
According to CEO and Co-Founder Leah Lizarondo, 412 Food Rescue got its start in 2015, and its mission is two-fold: preventing food from being wasted and redistributing it to those who need it most.
“In 2012, the National Resource Defense Council released this report called ‘Wasted.’ It was the first major report from a major research organization that brought to life the fact that we’re wasting half of our food supply,” she said. “On the other side of that, we know that there’s so many that don’t know where their next meal is coming from. We talk ... about GMOs — how can we make more food? But why are we making more food if we have enough food to feed everyone three or four times over?”
This hypothetical farm, first theorized by multi-stakeholder nonprofit ReFED, is based upon the fact that 40% of all food in the U.S. is thrown away. That translates to more than 1.7 trillion apples and 1 billion bags of potatoes — or enough food to fill a farm three-quarters the size of California.
An organization called 412 Food Rescue is working to change that.
According to CEO and Co-Founder Leah Lizarondo, 412 Food Rescue got its start in 2015, and its mission is two-fold: preventing food from being wasted and redistributing it to those who need it most.
“In 2012, the National Resource Defense Council released this report called ‘Wasted.’ It was the first major report from a major research organization that brought to life the fact that we’re wasting half of our food supply,” she said. “On the other side of that, we know that there’s so many that don’t know where their next meal is coming from. We talk ... about GMOs — how can we make more food? But why are we making more food if we have enough food to feed everyone three or four times over?”
RSS Feed
