12 CapitalPress.com
September 11, 2015
Every year, 133 billion pounds of food is wasted
WASTE from Page 1
The gleaners could keep
up to 50 percent of what
they collected; the nonprof-
it donated the other half to
the area food bank, Mari-
on-Polk Food Share, some-
thing Bauman stresses with
the children.
“It’s amazing to see the
difference in kids’ eyes,” she
said. “Suddenly they’re like,
‘Let’s go pick more. I want to
donate all my blueberries.’”
Zane Sparling/Capital Press
Carole Boliou, a program coordinator for the Special Supplemental
Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children, popularly know
by the initials WIC, takes a break from picking blueberries at Beilke
Family Farm in Brooks, Ore., on Aug. 8. Boliou often refers her
clients to participate in Salem Harvest gleaners events.
Billions wasted
Every year, 133 billion
pounds of food at the con-
sumer and retail level is
never consumed, a $161.6
billion write-off at retail
prices, according to a 2014
USDA study. The Natural
Resources Defense Council
estimates that 40 percent
of the food grown in the
U.S. — enough to fill the
Rose Bowl every day — is
never eaten. The waste in-
cludes 20 percent of the na-
tion’s milk production and
52 percent of the fruit and
vegetables grown, accord-
ing to the NRDC.
Despite an abundance
of food, however, many
do without. In 2013, some
49.1 million Americans
lived in food-insecure
households, where a good
meal is inaccessible at least
part of the time, according
to the USDA’s Economic
Research Service. About
33 percent of all emergen-
cy food recipients are chil-
dren. Recovering just 30
percent of wasted U.S. food
could feed all food-inse-
cure Americans, according
to the NRDC.
John Burt, executive
director of the nonprofit
Farmers Ending Hunger in
Salem, Ore., said that after
a family finishes paying
for rent, transportation and
utilities, food is often the
only expense that can be
cut.
“That last thing you
don’t have to spend money
on, incredibly, is food,” he
said. “Nobody’s going to
make you.”
From tractor to table, in-
efficiencies exist all along
the supply chain. Grocery
stores, restaurants and food
service institutions are re-
sponsible for 50 percent of
the food wasted in the U.S.,
said JoAnne Berkenkamp,
a senior advocate with
NRDC’s Food & Agricul-
ture Program.
In a presentation to a
National Press Foundation
Courtesy of Oregon Food Bank
Oregon Food Bank employee Bill Dart ensures that all sorted food is properly labeled before being
distributed to partner agencies.
fellowship group in July,
Berkenkamp said grocery
store waste is the result of
“hyper-stocked” shelves,
too much variety, poor
handling, overly strict pull
dates and too much empha-
sis on cosmetic appearance.
Restaurants provide por-
tions that are too large, and
the “kitchen culture,” with
its emphasis on speed and
appearance, pays little at-
tention to waste, she said.
Berkenkamp said pro-
ducers account for 7 per-
cent of waste and proces-
sors just 1 percent. “That
segment of the food system
is quite efficient,” she said.
Consumers,
on
the
other hand, are responsi-
ble for 42 percent of the
waste, Berkenkamp said.
We buy too much and cook
too much, she said. “Then
we have leftovers, and we
don’t like leftovers.”
Consumers also are hy-
per-aware of date labeling
on food products, often
mistaking them for safety
warnings rather than fresh-
ness advisories. Many peo-
ple throw food away rather
examine it themselves and
give it a sniff test, she said.
Cutting waste
Reducing waste is a com-
plicated matter. Experts say
consumers’ preferences, where
every fruit or vegetable must
be “just so,” ensure selective
harvests that overlook some
edible but aesthetically un-
pleasing food.
Produce with minor bumps
and blemishes is sometimes
left unharvested. Food can
even be disqualified for being
too big, which was the case at
a recent Salem Harvest event.
“All these cucumbers were
left in the field because they
were too long or too fat or
More information
Farmers Ending Hunger
Executive Director John Burt
503-931-9232
John@farmersendinghunger.com
Post Office Box 7361
Salem, OR 97303
Farmersendinghunger.com
Marion Polk Food Share
President Rick Gaupo
503-581-3855
mpfs@marionpolkfoodshare.org
1660 Industrial Drive NE
Salem, OR 97301
marionpolkfoodshare.org
To see a YouTube video
interview with food waste
expert JoAnne BerkenKamp
of the Natural Resources
Defense Council, go to:
https://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=sqPVLimfgr8#t=43
had a little yellow on them,”
Bauman said. “The grocery
store says the consumers are
driving it, and the consumer
says the grocery store isn’t
giving them the option. It’s
just blame, blame, blame and
nothing gets done.”
At the farm level, produc-
ers sometimes plow under
unpicked food, renewing the
soil with nutrients, but the un-
necessary crop has a cost in
energy, labor and water.
Experts say some farmers
are squeezed by rigid con-
tracts with processors that
reward overproduction and
ignore variable yields.
Farmers use 10 percent of
the nation’s energy, 50 percent
of the land and 80 percent of
the available fresh water. Ac-
cording to an NRDC research
paper, about 25 percent of that
water is wasted on food that
never makes it to the plate.
“(Farmers) are victims of
certain situations, whether it’s
the pickiness of the market or
the price of the good not justi-
fying harvest,” said Jonathan
Bloom, an author, journalist
and frequent speaker on food
waste. “Orders get canceled at
the last minute, and (farmers)
eat that product.”
Picking crews, transporta-
tion and storage are expensive.
Most farmers would rather
swallow the cost of an unhar-
vested crop than spend more
harvesting what the market
will not pay for, Bloom says.
This practice, typically called
a “walk-by,” is common for
contracted acres as well.
Farmers often agree to
produce a set volume of crop
for processors, and these con-
tracts can stipulate fines or
other harsh penalties for farm-
ers who fail to fulfill them.
Farmers who work primarily
with one or two large buyers
face additional pressure to
please the market.
But because nature is in-
herently unpredictable, and
drought, pests or labor
shortages can shrink yields,
some farmers plant more
than they can reasonably
hope to sell.
“I feel for them,” said Dana
Gunders, a NRDC scientist
and author of the white paper.
“Having a system where cus-
tomers buy X number of fan-
cy grade apples, rather than a
share of the overall crop …
leads to waste.”
But the problem is also
cultural, according to Gun-
ders.
“Littering is totally unac-
ceptable in our society. If you
throw an empty potato chip
bag on the street, people look
at you like you’re crazy,” she
said. “But if you throw a full
bag of potatoes in the trash, no
one thinks a thing of it.”
Donations
feed needy
Long imagined as the
collectors of dusty tin cans
scrounged from the back of
the pantry, food banks have
evolved in the last two de-
cades, putting a new emphasis
on fresh fruits and vegetables.
As their relationship with pro-
cessors has changed, farmers
themselves have become even
more crucial to the fight to
end hunger.
Farmers Ending Hunger,
which encourages farmers to
“donate an acre” of crops, last
year helped growers give over
2.5 million pounds of wheat,
onions, carrots, potatoes, beef,
sweet corn and green beans to
hungry families across Ore-
gon.
It doesn’t hurt that farmers
in Oregon can apply for a tax
credit worth 15 percent of the
donated food’s value. Similar
credits exist in Colorado, Cal-
ifornia and Arizona.
Burt, the executive director,
said he works with food pro-
cessor NORPAC to find free
time on its processing line. A
mining company will often do-
nate the raw metal for the cans
at a reduced price as well.
“The sad fact of life is that
the can costs more than the
beans that come in it,” he said.
To divert excess crops to
feed the needy, gleaner groups
have sprouted around the
West. In California, the Farm
to Family gleaners recover
more than 120 million pounds
of food a year. Its “concurrent
picking” system directs farm
workers to harvest healthful
but unmarketable produce
alongside the higher-grade
product. The California As-
sociation of Food Banks pays
for the additional labor, pack-
ing and transportation costs.
“Hunger is a problem of
distribution, not supply,”
Bloom, the author, said. “We
have more than enough food
in this country to feed every-
one. It’s really a question of
finding the social and political
will to eliminate hunger.”
Gleaners help
At the blueberry farm,
Bauman stops to chat with
Carole Boliou, a Marion
County, Ore., coordinator
for the Special Supplemen-
tal Nutrition Program for
Women, Infants and Chil-
dren, popularly known by
the initials WIC.
Boliou says Salem Har-
vest can help overcome the
“shame factor” some clients
feel when asking for aid.
“You have people out
here who may not qualify
for any benefits working
alongside people who may
not have any income com-
ing in at all. And there’s no
stigma,” she said. “They’re
working together to give
back to the community.”
That’s Salem Harvest’s
goal, too. The nonprofit
yielded 294,000 pounds of
fresh fruit and vegetables to
the Marion-Polk network of
food banks last year.
The 41 gleaners present
were there because the farm-
ers, who employ an automat-
ed over-the-row harvester on
most of the blueberry crop,
cannot use the machine on
the rows planted between the
poles that support bird-proof
netting.
“It’s sad. From farm to
table — the amount of food
that gets wasted — it’s an
astoundingly high number.
It doesn’t even leave the
farm before getting tossed,”
Bauman said. “So often
we’ll go out there with as
much manpower as we can
muster, and not touch even
half or a quarter of what’s
out there.”
Staff writer Eric Morten-
son contributed to this story.
He reported from St. Louis,
Mo., and Portland.
GMO growers required to notify Josephine County sheriff
GMO from Page 1
“We believe we’ll be vali-
dated,” said DiLorenzo.
Oregonians for Safe Farms
and Families, a group that sup-
ports the GMO ban, is review-
ing whether it has a “legal leg
to stand on” before seeking
to intervene in the case, said
Stephanie Dolan, attorney for
the group.
Normally, county ordinanc-
es are only pre-empted when
they conflict with state laws,
Dolan said.
In this case, Oregon does
not have any meaningful reg-
ulations for biotech crops, she
said. “It’s a pre-emption law
without the state taking any real
action.”
Josephine County Commis-
sioner Keith Heck said the coun-
ty is “caught in this gray area”
until the legal issues are settled.
Heck, the commission chair
and a former pastor, said there
is strong public support for
the ban, considering Josephine
County’s sharply divided polit-
ical scene. He characterized de-
bate in the county “quite opin-
ionated and strongly voiced
opinions.”
“On any kind of issue, 53
percent of the vote is a massive
landslide,” Heck said. “This
(ordinance) received 55 per-
cent.”
County Counsel Wally
Hicks said the county com-
missioners will meet in execu-
tive session that’s closed to the
public to consider the county’s
next step. The board can dis-
cuss the issue privately because
it involves pending litigation,
one of the exceptions allowed
under Oregon’s public records
and meetings law. The commis-
sioners are not allowed to take
action in private, however; any
votes or decisions must be done
in a public session.
When the county announced
the ordinance’s effectiveness,
it said anyone growing genet-
ically engineered plants was
required to notify Sheriff Dave
Daniel by Sept. 4. Growers
were supposed to notify the
sheriff of the type of crop they
were growing, its location
and their proposed “phase-out
plan.”
Commissioner Keith Heck
said he didn’t know if any
growers had supplied informa-
tion to the sheriff’s office, and
said he’s not aware of any tan-
gible enforcement action being
taken.
Wally Hicks, Josephine
County’s attorney, said he
knows of no one who grew
GMO crops in the county this
year.
Dolan, attorney for OSFF,
said she believes farmers in the
county have phased out their
biotech crops since the ordi-
nance was approved more than
a year ago.
WDFW angered livestock producers
by not shooting 3 wolves from pack
PACT from Page 1
Don Jenkins/Capital Press
Washington Cattlemen’s Association Executive Vice President Jack Field, sitting right, talks during a
meeting of the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife’s wolf advisory group Sept. 3 in Tumwater
while Stevens County rancher Dave Dashiell and Wolf Haven International Executive Director Diane
Gallegos listen. The group agreed to consider supporting Dashiell returning his wolf-endangered
sheep flock to northeast Washington.
“That’s pretty gutsy of
them. I don’t know what kind
of blowback they’re going to
get. I don’t know what kind of
blowback I’m going to get,”
he said.
Although other Washing-
ton ranchers have lost live-
stock to wolves, no rancher
has reported more losses or
received more attention than
Dashiell.
While outraging envi-
ronmentalists, WDFW also
angered livestock produc-
ers by not following through
on plans to shoot three more
wolves from the Huckleberry
pack. The same pack this sum-
mer seriously injured a dog
guarding a small flock that
Dashiell kept near his home,
provoking a new round of de-
bate about whether WDFW is
too quick or too slow to shoot
wolves that kill livestock.
The advisory group, led
by conflict-resolution consul-
tant Francine Madden, spent
several hours Sept. 3 talking
in generalities about human
conflicts.
In the late afternoon, group
member Dave Duncan of
Washingtonians for Wildlife
Conservation, a hunters’ or-
ganization, urged the group
to “get its hands dirty, trying
to do something.” He said the
group could start by consider-
ing how it can help Dashiell.
Dashiell said the group
could back his return to north-
east Washington, showing
corporate landowners that
environmental organizations
won’t criticize them for leas-
ing him grazing land. State
grazing land is available, but
it’s more expensive, Dashiell
said.
Some of the group’s envi-
ronmentalists seized on the
idea as a chance to show they
can work with ranchers.
“It’s a great step forward.
It’s a signal of getting over
the divisiveness,” said Paula
Swedeen, a biologist who rep-
resents Conservation North-
west.
The collaboration could
fail to come together. The di-
verse group, which includes
the Humane Society of the
United States and the Wash-
ington Cattlemen’s Associ-
ation, agreed any statement
supporting Dashiell would
have to be unanimous. Some
worried the partnership would
be misinterpreted as a special
favor to a panel member.
WDFW wolf policy co-
ordinator Donny Martorello
said the risks were worth tak-
ing to heal the rift between
environmentalists and ranch-
ers. He said he couldn’t have
imagined talk of a collabora-
tion a year ago. “It felt amaz-
ing,” he said.