More than a third of the food grown on the planet is wasted. There are a number of ways we can intercept this waste, but there seems to be a deeper issue we should be aware of.
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Transcript
Devin O’Leary 0:00
As I’m checking out of the supermarket, I’m happy with my harvest of perfectly shaped peppers and full leafy lettuce. I’m a little frustrated, there were no ripe avocados in there year round, overflowing pile, but they were on sale. So I grabbed five. I’m always looking for a deal. So I was pretty stoked when some of my friends told me that they used to go behind stores and found all kinds of edible food that had been tossed out because of blemishes or kind of subjective expiration dates. But they said if I wanted to get a free meal, I’d have to be willing to go diving.
Ian 0:37
Sounded like I wanted to get free food. It didn’t seem that hard, dude, like little mom and pop grocery stores. closes luck of the draw.
Sometimes you get scanned, and sometimes you get a lot of food. Just really depends on the day.
Mark 0:49
We saw this guy dumping some avocados, we went and poked out hidden they would look flying. They were like slightly soft, but they would go and we took them home and crack them open. I think we missed the block. It feels satisfying to use something that was gonna just like rot not be used for anything. But I think that like at a more immediate level. It’s like oh, yeah, like it feels very thrifty. Right. It’s a similar feeling to like getting like a sick jacket for like $5 at a thrift store.
Devin O’Leary 1:21
That was even more incentive knowing that not only would I be getting a free meal, but I’d be reducing waste, which I guess is good for the environment. So I went searching for a ripe dumpster.
We’re coming on the dumpsters. This one has a lock on it. Garbage on me. This one is locked as well. Yeah. All right. Well no, go
oh, god smells so bad. We got some like perfectly fine cherry tomatoes. What seems large rutabaga. Honestly, some like decent Fridays. I wonder. Cat litters empty? All right. I’m happy to get out of this thing.
Honestly, nothing about that was enjoyable. Most of the dumpsters were locked or smelled really bad. I didn’t even eat the food I found. I didn’t like the feeling of having to sneak around. And I know I felt like I was doing something wrong. Even though ethically it seemed right. To find out what I might be doing wrong. I reached out to my go to food security soap boxer, Ro.
Ro 2:28
I’m Ro Osborne. I’m going to school in Wales, Bangor University studying agroforestry and food security. And my passion is sustainable food systems based on local production and equal access to food and empowering access. So people choosing traditionally and locally appropriate diets and having the right to more food choice and healthy food choice and consistent access to food. That’s my stick.
Devin O’Leary 2:58
Ro lived with this anarchist collective and Svenborg Denmark that sourced all of its food from dumpsters around town.
Ro 3:05
It was definitely something I was pretty nervous about because even though intellectually, totally on board with with the reasons like why we are getting our food that way, and you definitely have this perception that it’s going to be this like grimy, like trash covered food that’s inedible. And there’s a lot of stigma around like being a person reaching into dumpsters and finding that food and the collective own this this like rickety little cargo bike. And so we’d have maybe two or three people go out every couple nights. There’s big, pretty industrial grocery dumpsters. So you’re like getting here like how you have your body, you’re kind of flinging yourself down and I had someone like holding my feet and reaching down to grab stuff. You look at like your diet in a very different way. Because you have to be quite creative with what you’re eating and how you’re cooking. All of this when you’re you don’t have as much autonomy over the food that you’re getting. Really I just learned how everything can be a soup, and almost everything that can’t be a soup can go on and Panini maker.
Devin O’Leary 4:11
I really liked the idea of getting creative with cooking food that’s available rather than expecting to always get the food that you want, like avocados in the Pacific Northwest in
December. But I did wonder why so much food is getting wasted. Online, I found that more than a billion tonnes of food is wasted every year, which is a third of all food produced in while grocery stores only make up 10% of that waste. I wonder why they aren’t just donating it?
Ro 4:37
I don’t know my speculation or from what I’ve talked with other people about is is because all the groceries are worried about liability that if people dumpster dive and eat their food and then get sick, they can sue them.
Devin O’Leary 4:48
But surprisingly, the US and Canada have laws that protect those who donate food from being liable. France even passed a law that prohibits stores from discarding edible food. So should we start encouraging grocery stores to donate their expired food.
Ro 5:02
The big thing that comes to mind for me is that it is giving kind of an easy out to the big grocery stores that have a very unsustainable model, and have a very negative impact environmentally, and they’re not doing any good for small and medium sized farmers. The only people that are really benefiting are these, these large corporations doing like very high input, industrial farming, a lot of that’s also really connected to land grabbing and other countries and a lot of negative things. So it’s tough, because in the short term, people do need food. And it’s hard to critique people that want to push right now for grocery stores to have better, you know, food donation programs and things because there are people that are hungry, and that can use that food tomorrow or right now, I think for me, I maybe wouldn’t critique it, I would just say, what is the underlying issue? You know, even beneath that, and how can we work on that and so why pick a fight with with the grocery store improving their their food donation program when they can do that. But you know, I’ll pick the bigger fight at the same time with how industrial food systems are, you know, giving the short end of the stick to everybody.
Devin O’Leary 6:10
So what can we do? at a large scale, there needs to be better transparency of the true costs of industrial agriculture,
Ro 6:17
There’s a lot of critiques there about like why conventional agriculture, industrial agriculture, really high input agriculture is the quote, only way we can feed everybody at low cost. But when you look at real cost accounting of all of the health care costs and
environmental externalities and all of the other things that’s being subsidized along the way, these hidden costs, then it’s not actually affordable food at all. And it’s not an economically viable system. But they’re very clever. And they’re, you know, there are a lot of accidents involved in that food system and staying the same. Maybe I’ll maybe I’ll get off that soapbox and say that at the smaller scale, supporting small and medium, kind of more family or community level growers and people who are growing near by you, and little co ops and things that are sourcing from local farmers, you shorten the supply chain a lot, which means you’re also in a practical way, taking a lot of costs out from all those middlemen with with transportation and processing and stuff like that. And so if people are eating fresh foods from their local farmers, especially if they’re direct sale through like CSA, CSA, or farmers markets and things, the farmers are getting a much bigger cut of the profit. And typically the consumers getting a lower a lower price point as well. And so it’s beneficial for everybody, I think, creating more avenues for farmers, small local farmers to have access to, to a consumer base through you know, little cooperatives or more farmers markets or things like that, I think is pretty crucial in that. And I think that’s one of the biggest ways that you can also help make really good, fresh, you know, sustainably grown food more accessible cost wise is by shortening the food miles and, and keeping it really close to home. And even creating more informal economic systems, bartering, and trading and things like that as well. Because a lot of those community farms can become a huge asset to the local area beyond growing food, but also for education and for socializing and gathering and, and all of these things. And, you know, people can be involved in making decisions about what the farmers are growing and what food they want to eat, and then they can help grow it and the relationships between people and their food become a lot more complex and a lot more enriching. And yeah, and it leaves a lot more room for accessibility and all sorts of different forms.
Farmer 8:47 How’s your day?
Peggy 8:50
Pretty good. Just woke up a little bit ago. I was curious what’s in this mushroom medley,
Farmer 8:56
The mushroom Medley today, so it’s pretty much anything we have on hand, but right now it’s gonna be our cosmic Queen, oyster or Blue Oyster and are really good.
Peggy 9:05
Well, can I get one of these guys?
Farmer 9:07
Absolutely. It’s gonna be $10.
Peggy 9:09 And that one. .
Farmer 9:12 That makes it 20.
Devin O’Leary 9:24
Food is worth so much more than just the sale price. Like rose said local food systems are really less costly than industrial farming. growers can arrange different payment options, provide education and give their local community agency thing contributing to what food is grown. There’s also just the human contact of not having to check out with some automated voice but actually able to have a conversation with the person who grew the food and being able to see the dirt still on their hands from harvest and learning from the experts about new foods and how to cook them and more about who these people are and community, the value they bring and the cost that they avoid just by being local
Transcribed by https://otter.ai