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On the Measurement of Food Waste
Author(s) -
Bellemare Marc F.,
Çakir Metin,
Peterson Hikaru Hanawa,
Novak Lindsey,
Rudi Jeta
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
american journal of agricultural economics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.949
H-Index - 111
eISSN - 1467-8276
pISSN - 0002-9092
DOI - 10.1093/ajae/aax034
Subject(s) - food waste , extant taxon , interdependence , agriculture , food systems , business , intervention (counseling) , environmental economics , environmental planning , natural resource economics , food security , public economics , economics , environmental science , engineering , political science , waste management , geography , psychology , archaeology , evolutionary biology , psychiatry , law , biology
According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, one‐quarter to one‐third of all the food produced worldwide is wasted. We develop a simple framework to systematically think about food waste based on the life cycle of a typical food item. Based on our framework, we identify problems with extant measures of food waste and propose a more consistent and practical approach. In so doing, we first show that the widely cited, extant measures of the quantity and value of food waste are inconsistent with one another and overstate the problem of food waste. By misdirecting and misallocating some of the resources that are currently put into food waste reduction efforts, this overstatement of the problem could have severe consequences for public policy. Our framework then allows documenting the points of intervention for policies aimed at reducing the extent of food waste in the life cycle of food and the identification of interdependencies between potential policy levers.