Americans throw out more food than plastic, paper, metal, and glass

I remember reading in the paper that this would put the cost of food up, in some cases because we would be importing but in other cases becasue of the simple fact that when things are scarce they cost more.

What was really striking to me is that no-one was going to go hungry - we weren't going to run out of food. It would just cost more. Therefore people would naturally waste less food I suppose.

So in order to keep food cheap, we have to throw half of it away.

The same goes for virtually all resources: power, water, petrol etc. what the political debate always dodges here is that in order to reduce consumption the cost has to go up which means discretionary spending power will decrease and the economy will collapse.

The sooner the better.

A better comparison would be buying 3-4 different types of servers because you weren't sure what the final load would be, and then deciding to throw away a few because you bought too many.

California, America's "salad bowl", is facing a drought that threatens to turn it into a dust bowl. So even as a foreigner I'd think America throwing away 35 million tonnes of food every year is a serious cause for concern.

It's my understanding that we can provide for everyone on earth so that their is no starvation. Unfortunately capitalism isn't quite up to the task.

In the US throw in the issue that many companies do not understand the protection afforded by the Bill Emerson Good Samaritan Law or that many facilities needing donations have no way to pick them up. Some cities have processes in place to organize and pick up donations and there are even some charity groups that do it, but its not widespread. A lot of waste in grocery is expired fruits, vegetables, and bakery, that may not be covered under the Emerson bill

Also, the production and distribution of food produces a lot a waste that is considerably more problematic than organic waste.

And here's the problem. Good food getting wasted. That bread would be perfectly fine the next day and 90% of people would be happy with it but the business would rather waste it and have something perfect. The same thing happens in grocery stores. If a multi pack of crisps/chips splits they throw out the entire thing even though every pack inside the large container remains sealed. They could sell those individually or tape up the outer container and offer a discount. When I worked in a grocery store the amount of good food thrown away was unbelievable. I'm sure the amount of wasted food could be reduced significantly by focusing on these areas which don't fall under the 'better to have too much than too little' rule you mentioned.

also can't there be a compost program for mixed food? i mean we compost compostable stuff and mulch make things grow in our garden very well. I think the city was going to even collect organic waste use for citywide processing and composting to be used on city grounds. this could be a boon to replacement of fertilizers and move towards self sustainability.

my 2c

Meanwhile, as you say, the problem with starvation is a lack of purchasing power. Amartya Sen won a Nobel prize for showing this, in fact. Over and over we see regions with famines exporting food, not importing food; Sen initially showed this was the case for the Bengal Famine of 1943, but it has been seen many times. People think the Irish potato famine was all about potato blight, but to quote Wikipedia "Records show Irish lands exported food even during the worst years of the Famine" and "Ireland exported approximately thirty to fifty shiploads per day to Britain, which was more than enough to feed the population." The same pattern has shown up in Africa over, and over, and over, for example in the Somali famine of 1981, or the Somali famine of 2001.

(This is also why food aid to stricken regions so frequently makes things worth. Donate a few hundred tons of food, and the market for food in the region crashes. Good for the urban poor; terrible for the rural farmers and pastoralists who are usually the primary victims of a famine. Worse, "death spirals" have been documented where the price of cows drops so low that farmers can no longer afford to feed them, and end up having to slaughter them all, just as the market price is at the lowest. Then when food prices recover, the herds are dead and the farmers are bankrupt, and can afford neither food nor new cows. And the famine keeps on rolling.)

In short: You're right. Food wastage in America has no impact overseas.

Edit: There's also some political issues. India is currently fighting tooth and nail to protect the millions of small grocers and shopkeepers from the international supermarkets and "big box" retailers. India points out—correctly—that if WalMart or its kin come in, many of those small shopkeepers will lose their jobs. Economists point out—correctly—that the existing system is horrifically inefficient. For the system as a whole, those jobs are a massive cost centre, begging to be rationalised with automated warehouses, containerization, RFID tags, the whole 9 yards, instead of the archaic, expensive, inefficient system now that wastes so much of what passes through it through wastage, overheads, spoilage, etc. The same fight is also brewing over farming; peasant farmers are horrifically expensive and inefficient, but while a few mega farms could produce several times as much food for less total cost, they would do so with a tiny fraction of the manpower. And the urban jobs for the peasant farmers do not exist, and throwing them out of work would be a humanitarian disaster which the Indian government is not equipped to deal with. And so on. Food is cheap and abundant in the West as part of a massive system of technology and infrastructure; as much as we might wish otherwise, it cannot be easily grafted onto a non-Western society without major changes which Africa and India, at least, are not yet able to embrace.

I'd expect global food waste, measured in terms of absolute tonnage, to go up over time as the world gets wealthier and less people, at the margin, have to make the choice between "eat foot which is less than maximally palatable to me" and "go hungry."

[+] "But Americans aren't richer in 2014 compared to 1980." Long story, but I strongly disbelieve this, especially with regards to food.

The separation of livestock fed on subsidised corn from farms growing plants means lakes of "waste" manure that used to be used as fertiliser become an environmental problem instead of a solution.

And for business minded farmers thinking about mixed agriculture they discover that corn feed is cheaper to buy than to grow.

Microwaves, frozen dinners, quick-prep foods from the grocery store, etc.

The focus became a lot less on quality and more on speed and convenience. If something is a blah $3 quick meal (circa 1985), most people probably began to feel indifferent about throwing out the left-overs, as compared to spending an hour preparing something of greater quality.

I also doubt that spike is exact to lifting off in a singular point in 1980. It's likely not very precise data, and is instead a best-guesstimate (note also of course it tracks by decade rather than year, another sign they don't have precise data).