--- title: Food Waste: Why World Leaders Are Starting to Eat Garbage description: The world wastes more than 1.3 billion metric tons of edible food each year canonical: https://time.com/4059764/wasted-food/ author: TIME article:opinion: true article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2015-10-02T19:16:48.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T08:02:18.545Z article:section: Ideas og:title: Why World Leaders Are Starting to Eat Garbage og:description: The world wastes more than 1.3 billion metric tons of edible food each year og:url: https://time.com/4059764/wasted-food/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltfe31fb72f7ab906a/698866b3a988caa7d46b4a77/food-waste.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 3543 og:image:height: 1993 og:image:alt: food-waste.jpg og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Why World Leaders Are Starting to Eat Garbage twitter:description: The world wastes more than 1.3 billion metric tons of edible food each year twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltfe31fb72f7ab906a/698866b3a988caa7d46b4a77/food-waste.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Why World Leaders Are Starting to Eat Garbage > Sponsored content. 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It explains how TIME's journalism is made, from the first pitch through the editorial decisions behind a finished story or cover. #### How can I read about how TIME chooses its covers? Inside TIME is the newsletter where TIME's Editor-in-Chief explains cover selection and the editorial reasoning behind major stories. It is free at time.com/newsletters. #### Who is the editor of TIME? Sam Jacobs is TIME's Editor-in-Chief. He writes Inside TIME, a twice-weekly newsletter about the newsroom's reporting and editorial decisions. #### Is Inside TIME free? Yes. Inside TIME is a free newsletter, available at time.com/newsletters. A paid TIME subscription is separate and available at time.com/subscribe-agent. ## Video: Watch How These Researchers Are Ensuring Food Security In America [Watch (HLS stream): Watch How These Researchers Are Ensuring Food Security In America](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/grN5uxCF.m3u8) (3:49)  _Published 2015-09-15. In an effort to provide food security to America, a team of researchers, veterinarians, and farmers at the SVF Foundation are preserving genetic material from rare and important breeds of livestock, like the Holstein._ by [Rep. Raúl Grijalva](https://time.com/author/rep-raul-grijalva/) and [Michael Shank](https://time.com/author/michael-shank/) Oct 2, 2015 7:16 PM UTC  Pile of rotting fruit and vegetables near water Pile of rotting fruit and vegetables near water Getty Images by [Rep. Raúl Grijalva](https://time.com/author/rep-raul-grijalva/) and [Michael Shank](https://time.com/author/michael-shank/) Oct 2, 2015 7:16 PM UTC When it comes to tackling climate change, one of the greatest challenges we face is understanding the myriad factors that influence our warming planet. Addressing some while ignoring others will only allow the mercury to continue to rise. And while threats like carbon pollution and environmental degradation feature prominently into any discussion about solving this crisis—_and rightfully so—_there’s still at least one significant factor that remains noticeably absent from our discourse: food. Wasted food in particular, and there’s a lot of it. Globally, nearly [30%](http://www.fao.org/news/story/en/item/196402/icode/) of all agricultural land produces food that is ultimately lost or wasted. That’s more than [1.3 billion](http://www.fao.org/docrep/018/i3347e/i3347e.pdf) metric tons of edible food—a sizable slab of the roughly 6 billion tons of total global agricultural production for both food and non-food use. Waste appears throughout the supply chain, from produce damaged at farms to retail packages that don’t properly store food, to our very own eating habits that lead us to discard food before it has passed its prime. And when this food goes uneaten, we waste the water and energy needed to produce it, harvest it and bring it to market. We allow for unnecessary nitrous oxide emissions from the fertilizer used to grow crops, and then we dump the wasted food into a landfill where it emits methane gas. The carbon footprint this all leaves is staggering: [3.3 billion](http://www.fao.org/docrep/018/i3347e/i3347e.pdf) tons of greenhouse gas emissions, or about [7%](http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/26/us/food-waste-is-becoming-serious-economic-and-environmental-issue-report-says.html?%5Fr=0) of total global emissions. That’s a lot of carbon. In fact, if “food waste” were a nation, it’d be one of the [largest emitters globally](http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/plugged-in/un-says-that-if-food-waste-was-a-country-ite28099d-be-the-3-global-greenhouse-gas-emitter/), outranked only by China and the U.S. Beyond the obvious environmental impacts, the socio-economic consequences are equally disastrous. Direct economic losses from wasted food total [$750 billion](http://www.fao.org/news/story/en/item/196220/icode/) annually, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the U.N. That hits the pocketbook of every single American, with an average cost per person in this country of [$640 worth of wasted food](http://time.com/3933554/food-waste/) each year. This is a serious problem in how we are using—_or in this case, misusing—_our natural resources. As about [800 million](http://www.wfp.org/hunger/stats) people around the world suffer from chronic hunger, food that could—_and should—_be eaten is going to waste. That’s why food waste was front-and-center on the U.N.’s docket this week during the General Assembly, at a high-level [luncheon](http://news.yahoo.com/menu-world-leaders-trash-message-191042230.html) hosted by Secretary General Ban Ki-moon for heads of state. And it’s why former White House Chef Sam Kass and prominent New York chef Dan Barber joined forces to cook up a [delicious dinner](http://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/at-the-edge/2015/09/28/food-waste-is-an-environmental-problem) presidents and prime ministers of spent grain, vegetable scraps, off-grade produce, cascara and nut press cake. It’s that important. We must employ every effort to retool our food system, from better [refrigeration](http://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2015/09/28/444188475/even-poor-countries-end-up-wasting-tons-of-food) in the developing world to a rethink of arbitrary [expiration](http://www.slate.com/articles/life/food/2010/02/ignore%5Fexpiration%5Fdates.html) dates. Most people don’t realize that these dates are set by companies, not health agencies. The lack of federal standards leads to vast inconsistencies, and often times means food that could still be eaten ends up in the trash instead. As if the benefits to our environment and efforts to feed the hungry aren’t reason enough to pursue these reforms, the economic opportunities they create are significant, too. The World Bank [estimates](http://siteresources.worldbank.org/INTARD/Resources/MissingFoods10%5Fweb.pdf) that just a 1% reduction in food loss could yield gains of $40 million each year, the majority of which would go directly to small farmers growing the food, and seed into local economies across the country. The reforms we need are entirely within reach, provided we have the political stomach, if you will, to make sure all the world’s mouths are fed. The fix is achievable. It starts with the reducing and recycling and requires a keen focus on solving the logistical challenges of getting appropriate food to those communities in need. Now it’s time to serve it up. ## Transcript [ MUSIC ] Unfortunately we're losing breeds at an estimated rate of one per month global scale. And once they're gone, they're gone. It took 5, 000 to 10, 000 years to domesticate these species and breeds and we're losing them in the blink of an eye. Die. [ MUSIC ] SVF Foundation is a unique non profit that was established to protect our food security by establishing a gene bank comprised of genetic samples from the dangered breeds of cattle, sheep, and goats. In collaboration with veterinarians from Coming School of Veterinary. Veterinary medicine at Tufts University. We collect semen, embryos, cells and blood on as many donors as we can, to preserve them for the future, for hundreds of years when these breeds might be extinct, and we need to bring back their genetic material. Many of today's commercially important livestock breeds have a very narrow genetic diversity base. For example, Holstein cattle produce over 95 % of all of our dairy products here in the US. So even though there's millions of Holsteins available, when you shake out all those duplicate genetics, there's only enough to make 34 individuals. So, if some kind of disease were to hit that population, our dairy industry would be in big trouble. The food Agriculture Organization of the United Nations has recommended that every country establish a program where they're identifying their native breeds that are in need of preservation. Unfortunately, it's a very expensive undertaking and so, we are one of the very few repositories that's actually established this type of program in the world. [ MUSIC ] Today the foundation has collected generic material from 28 different breeds. We have over a 100, 000 samples. When we target a population we do quite a bit of health testing before they come on side both to protect the livestock that' already here at SVF. And make sure we're not preserving diseases. Into the future, that may then be eradicated. Once animals are here, they're in a standard quarantine period for about 30 days, where they have an entrance and an exit exam by one of our veterinarians. And then they undergo six to eight months of genetic preservation. So especially September through March, we're focusing on semen and embryo collection. From sheep and goats, and year round we do embryo collection on the cattle. In reality it generally takes two years or more to bring all the animals in that we need and do those collections and freeze and then do the quality control. Make sure that the germ plasm is viable in the freezer. Our goal is always to find as much genetic diversity that's left in the breed, and in many cases, there are only a few hundred animals left in the world that we're looking at. SVF started in 1998, wonderful lady by the name of Dorrance Hamilton, not only restored our campus. And I gifted the property to the foundation, but has made a pledge to fund this project for 20 years, and until we complete this. The goal of SDF is to make at the end of 20 years we have banked as much genetic material and as much diversity as possible to pass that along for the next generation. The collection here is an unbelievable. National treasure. It's an unbelievable library of genetic material of our nation's heritage. Animal health, human health, all the keys to learning Reams of information to help people and animals are in that bank. When that disastrous disease strikes, the monoculture in Leghorn hens or Holstein cows, the answer to saving them is gonna be in that library in those freezers. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"OpinionNewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/4059764/wasted-food/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/4059764/wasted-food/"},"headline":"Why World Leaders Are Starting to Eat Garbage","datePublished":"2015-10-02T19:16:48.000Z","dateModified":"2026-08-04T08:02:18.545Z","description":"The world wastes more than 1.3 billion metric tons of edible food each year","url":"https://time.com/4059764/wasted-food/","keywords":["politics","Question Everything"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltfe31fb72f7ab906a/698866b3a988caa7d46b4a77/food-waste.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Rep. 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