One Man’s Trash is Another Man’s Dinner

“Eat your food! There are starving children in Africa!” This is a statement many of us in the U.S. have heard (or at least we have heard something similar to it). It is meant to make it clear that we as Americans are lucky to have food and spell out that wastefulness is harmful. The truth is we are lucky, and even when we have not eaten all day, most Americans do not know what it is to be truly starving. In other nations however, starvation to the point of even death is a very serious and present threat. Even truer is that food waste is a massive problem in the U.S. There may however be something the U.S. can do to alleviate this horrible burden, and it is right under our noses.

In order to understand how global poverty and hunger can be addressed we must first understand the full scope of the issue. In 2018, 8.6% of the world’s population lived in extreme poverty, meaning they live on $1.90 or less per day [1]. Furthermore, approximately 25,000 people starve to death every day, resulting in more than 9 MILLION deaths, each year [2]. This is not some minor issue that is blown up for TV ratings and Instagram likes. Poverty is wide in its reach, powerful in its grip, and devastating in its effect. Poverty is something that must be addressed by any means necessary, and the U.S. holds in its power those means: resources.

Thousands if not millions of pages worth of academic work have been written on poverty, its causes, its implications, and its solutions. It would probably take much more than you are willing to read just to summarize the most important points. As such I would like to focus on just one of many steps the U.S. could take to fight global poverty, specifically the hunger that comes with it. The U.S. should start donating the food that it would otherwise throw away.

America is a well-fed nation, and is the second largest agricultural producer, growing 7.89 million metric tonnes of food in 2019 alone [3]. While this may seem impressive, the U.S. only utilizes 60% of this food in domestic use and export, and the remaining 40% is thrown away. Upon doing the math, that means that the U.S. throws away approximately 3.156 million metric tonnes of food each year. To put that into perspective, that is a loss equalling around $218 billion [4]. In comparison, the International Affairs was $55.8 billion in 2020. This is important to know because the International Affairs Budget is how we pay for things like foreign aid. In other words, the U.S. throws away almost 4 times as much as it gives to developing nations [5]. If the U.S. worked to cut food waste in half and redirected the resources to the State Department, the International Affairs Budget, or at least the State Department’s capacity to help the global poor via direct aid, would essentially triple. What does that mean specifically when you break down the numbers?

The benefit of reducing food waste is huge. If we cut U.S. food waste in half, we would be able to help the global poor at 3 times the level we currently do. At our current rate, the U.S. wastes 1,250 calories per person per day [4]. Let’s do some math. With 322 million people, that means that the U.S. wastes approximately 146.9 TRILLION calories per year. If just half of that, 73.456 trillion calories, were properly utilized, the U.S. would be able to keep over 100 million people fed on a 2000 calorie per day diet. That means that not only could the 9 million people who starve to death each year be saved, but that an additional 91 million people beyond that could be fed as well. So what can we do to make this a reality?

The seemingly impossible goal of ending world hunger really is not all that impossible after all. How can you help? CALL YOUR CONGRESS MEMBERS! Call them and tell them that food waste needs to be regulated and that food donation programs need to be implemented and expanded. The food is already there. It is just a matter of establishing the transportation and distribution network necessary to ensure that this food reaches the right people. Please find your congressional leaders and their contact information at congress.gov. Once you have contacted your congressional leaders, please continue to follow up, and keep an eye on the Borgen Project and the legislation we are focused on [6].

Work Cited

1.) https://www.un.org/development/desa/dpad/publication/world-economic-situation-and-prospects-october-2019-briefing-no-131/

2.) https://www.un.org/development/desa/dpad/publication/world-economic-situation-and-prospects-october-2019-briefing-no-131/

3.) https://www.insidermonkey.com/blog/top-10-agricultural-producing-countries-in-the-world-885643/8/

4.) https://www.nrdc.org/sites/default/files/wasted-2017-report.pdf

5.) https://www.state.gov/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/FY-2021-CBJ-Final-508compliant.pdf

6.) https://borgenproject.org/legislation/