US Systemic Drivers on Food Loss and Waste

Food loss and waste is a global issue with devastating social and environmental impacts. It’s why WRAP is championing a systemic shift to reshape how we produce, share, and consume food to reduce waste around the world.

In the US, 30-40% of food produced never gets consumed. As part of our first major research on food loss and waste in the US, we identified the systemic drivers that are causing pre-consumer food waste across the country. The research collated findings from a literature review and stakeholder interviews to develop a systems map of drivers of food waste from primary production through to retail.

This map (below) provides a visual representation of the systemic drivers of overproduction and food loss and waste generation, and the relationships between these drivers. There are also behaviours in the consumer stages of the food supply chain that cause food loss and waste to be generated upstream. PESTLE analysis was conducted to identify whether drivers were political, economic, sociological, technological, legal or environmental in nature, which can also be seen on the map below.  

In addition to identifying and analysing the drivers of food loss and waste the project also compared the drivers to other high-income countries, mapped solutions and culminated in a series of stakeholder workshops to further develop proposed solutions.

Key insights

Our research, commissioned by the United States Environmental Protection Agency and the United Nations Environment Programme, revealed 28 systemic drivers of pre-consumer food loss and waste in the US. Many of these are interconnected with complex relationships, and range from marketing standards driven by 'perfect' food aesthetics and retailers wanting to create an idea of abundance, to overproduction of food and legislative limits on feeding waste to animals.

This map shows how systemic drivers of food loss and waste are interconnected. The drivers of pre-consumer food waste (grey circles) are connected to overarching driver themes (blue circles), which are connected to the supply chain stage they occur in (large circles in the middle).

The colour coding indicates whether the driver is political, economic, sociological, technological, legal or environmental (PESTLE analysis). You can click on the drivers to read a short description.

We set out to answer two key questions: in what areas is the US unique among high-income countries regarding its food supply, food system, or food policies in ways that may drive food waste? And what are the strategies to reduce food loss and waste in the US considering these findings? Our key findings included:

1. The US is not necessarily unique in its drivers of pre-consumer food loss and waste – similar issues are experienced to varying extents internationally. In some cases, the drivers could be considered ‘stronger’ in the US than other countries due to the lack of industry or regulatory action. In other cases, the drivers appeared to be stronger in the US than some countries but weaker than in others, such as the nature of restrictions on feeding food surplus to animals.  
2. Feasible strategies to overcome drivers of food loss and waste could include:  
   1. Improving supply chain relationships by learning from and developing grocery codes of conduct between retailers and suppliers, and for retailers to trial whole crop purchasing, which have been successfully implemented elsewhere.
   2. Increasing the amount of surplus food that’s used to feed farm animals.
   3. Revisiting crop insurance to minimize incentives to use land which is vulnerable to environmental damage; and moving funding into more general industry support services to deal with the processing, stabilization and upcycling of excess foods, particularly fresh produce.

What needs to happen to reduce pre-consumer food loss and waste in the US

High-level principles were identified that could help reduce pre-consumer food loss and waste:  

1. Implement systems to ensure the efforts, land, labor and inputs into overproduced foods can be harvested, reach consumers or be processed for consumption at a later point.
2. Increase voluntary and regulatory action, with business leaders, such as those signed up to the US Food Pact in the Food Pact Network, demonstrating leadership by providing examples and learnings of what can be done.
3. Approach, evaluate and understand problems with consideration to how it impacts incentives for how much to produce, what to produce, and how this can generate food loss and waste.