Does on-farm food loss prevent waste? Insights from California produce growers

Abstract

Significant quantities of edible produce are lost at the farm level. Amidst growing concern about the environmental impacts of food loss and waste, advocates have invested in exploring farm-level interventions that might reduce the environmental footprint of food. Farmers are obvious stakeholders in such efforts, yet their voices are often missing from the discussion. Drawing on interviews with 25 fresh produce growers in California, we show how on-farm losses are driven by efforts to mitigate economic risk within food supply chains. Buyers minimize risk by demanding consistent volumes of perfect produce, and growers in turn minimize their financial risks by holding back “imperfect” and surplus food. If food is likely to be rejected further down the chain, growers abandon it on the farm. Using the EPA food recovery hierarchy and the tools of life cycle analysis (LCA), we then compare the environmental impact of farm-level loss to downstream alternatives. While landfill disposal is common at retail and consumer levels, food lost at the farm level is tilled back into the soil or sold as animal feed. We conclude that some on-farm losses may prevent more environmentally harmful “waste,” defined here as landfilled food, further down the supply chain. Our analysis argues for an approach to remedying on-farm food loss that is both ambitious and cautious—one that recognizes the structural causes of loss and that considers how environmental risks can increase as food moves downstream.