…and especially here in California’s Central Valley, where food production and hunger exist side-by-side. Unfortunate new factoids:
* Food waste in the US is up 300% from 1960.
* Americans throw out more food than plastic, paper, metal or glass — by a significant margin.
* Roughly one-third of the food produced never gets eaten.*
Our historic drought is already doubling food bank distributions in the Central Valley where unemployment due to the tenacious grip of the drought reaches 40% in some communities. YOU can do something about food waste. Be judicious in your purchases and realistic in your observation of “use by” dates.
At The Gualco Group, Inc., we’ve co-founded and host the California Food Waste Roundtable, a pro bono convening of agricultural trade associations and other interested organizations with the mission of better connecting major food donors with hub food banks. Andy Souza, the CEO of the Community Food Bank, which serves a good portion of the San Joaquin Valley, reports running short of produce (another irony) and infant care supplies. He is praying for rain.
I encourage you to contact the California Association of Food Banks http://www.cafoodbanks.org should you have surplus production that needs a home or a need to avail yourself of the organization’s tremendous reach in communities far and wide. This is an innovative and capable distribution network which already runs the nation’s largest farm-to-family surplus food distribution program.
Feed hungry people. As the Nestle executive quoted in the blog below said, “Food waste is an incredible and absurd issue for the world today.”