Vast amounts of fresh produce grown in the United States is being thrown away because of unrealistic cosmetic standards for food according to research released by The Guardian. Due to retailers’ and consumers’ demand for perfect fruits and vegetables, still edible high-value and nutritious food is left in the field to rot, fed to livestock or sent directly from the field to landfill. The Guardian interviews with dozens of farmers, packers, truckers, researchers, campaigners and government sources suggest that the actual amount of food waste might be larger than official figures document. A government study found that about 60m tonnes of produce worth about $160bn is wasted by retailers and consumers each year – about one third of all foodstuffs. But the Guardian reports that this refers just to “downstream” food waste while the waste that occurs “upstream” is a major problem: “scarred vegetables regularly abandoned in the field to reduce the expense and labour involved in harvesting. Or left to rot in a warehouse because of minor blemishes that do not necessarily affect freshness or quality.” The researchers estimate that when added to the retail waste, food waste amounts close to half of all produce grown. “It’s all about blemish-free produce,” Jay Johnson, who ships fresh fruit and vegetables from North Carolina and central Florida, told The Guardian. “What happens in our business today is that it is either perfect, or it gets rejected. It is perfect to them, or they turn it down. And then you are stuck.” Wayde Kirschenman, whose family has been growing potatoes and other vegetables near Bakersfield, California, estimates that “at times there is 25% of the crop that is just thrown away or fed to cattle. Sometimes it can be worse.” These large amounts of food waste inflict a heavy toll on the environment and are a direct challenge to fight hunger and poverty. Food waste on the consumer side also causes high costs for households. The average family of four, for instance, wastes about $1,600 worth of food a year. For farmers, the power of the retail chains creates fear along the supply chain because their produce is frequently rejected on the basis of some ideal of perfection. The farmers and truckers interviewed by The Guardian said they had seen their produce rejected on flimsy grounds, but decided against challenging the ruling with the US department of agriculture’s dispute mechanism for fear of being boycotted by powerful supermarket giants. “They are never going to buy from you again. Are you going to jeopardise $5m in sales over an $8,000 load?” said the owner of a mid-size east coast trucking company. (ab)