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2. Just desserts: the morality of food waste in America
- Collection:
- Agricultural Communications Documentation Center (ACDC)
- Contributers:
- Reno, Joshua (author) and Alexander, Kelly (author)
- Format:
- Journal article
- Publication Date:
- 2023-06-06
- Published:
- USA: American Anthropological Association
- Location:
- Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Box: 206 Document Number: D12931
- Journal Title:
- Culture, Agriculture, Food and Environment
- Journal Title Details:
- V.45
- Notes:
- 11 pages, Food, waste, and food waste are embroiled in a wide array of political and moral debates in the United States today. These debates are staged across a range of scales and sites—from individual decisions made in front of refrigerators and compost bins to public deliberations on the U.S. Senate and House floors. They often manifest as a moral panic inspiring a range of Americans at seemingly opposed ends of the political spectrum. This article contrasts three distinct sites where food waste is moralized, with the aim of deconstructing connections between discarded food and consumer ethics. In doing so, we argue that across the contemporary American social strata, food waste reduction efforts enfold taken-for-granted ideas of moral justice, or theodicy, that foreground individual responsibility and, as a result, obfuscate broader systemic issues of food inequality perpetuated by late stage capitalism.
3. Regulating surplus: charity and the legal geographies of food waste enclosure
- Collection:
- Agricultural Communications Documentation Center (ACDC)
- Contributers:
- Lohnes, D. Joshua (author)
- Format:
- Journal article
- Publication Date:
- 2020-09-12
- Published:
- USA: Springer Link
- Location:
- Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Box: 201 Document Number: D11816
- Journal Title:
- Agriculture and Human Values
- Notes:
- 13 pages, via online journal, Food charity in the United States has grown into a critical appendage of agro-food supply chains. In 2016, 4.5 billion pounds of food waste was diverted through a network of 200 regional food banks, a fivefold increase in just 20 years. Recent global trade disruptions and the COVID-19 pandemic have further reinforced this trend. Economic geographers studying charitable food networks argue that its infrastructure and moral substructure serve to revalue food waste and surplus labor in the capitalist food system. The political–legal framework undergirding this revaluation process however is still poorly understood. Drawing on a 6-year institutional ethnography of the food banking economy in West Virginia, this paper takes a supply-side approach to examine the material and moral values driving the expansion of food waste recovery as hunger relief. Empirically, it focuses on the laws, contracts and fiscal incentives regulating charitable food procurement at the U.S. Department of Agriculture and Feeding America. The assemblage of government agencies, private businesses and non-profit organizations enrolled into this gift economy at different scales I argue, serves to enclose food waste into a public–private governance structure that regulates food surpluses and ensures these will not disrupt the scarcity logics driving profitability along primary food circuits.
4. “We need a better system” Maryland crop growers’ perspectives on reducing food loss through donation
- Collection:
- Agricultural Communications Documentation Center (ACDC)
- Contributers:
- Ceryes, Caitlin A. (author), Heley, Kathryn (author), Edwards, Danielle M. (author), Gao-Rittenberg, Chergai (author), Seifu, Leah (author), Sohail, Saifra Khan (author), and Neff, Roni A. (author)
- Format:
- Journal article
- Publication Date:
- 2023-06-30
- Published:
- USA: Thomas A. Lyson Center for Civic Agriculture and Food Systems
- Location:
- Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Box: 206 Document Number: D12953
- Journal Title:
- Journal of Agriculture, Food Systems, and Community Development
- Journal Title Details:
- V.12, N.4
- Notes:
- 18 pages, The donation of unharvested or unsold crops to rescue organizations has been promoted as a strategy to improve healthy food access for food insecure households while reducing production-level food loss and waste (FLW). In this study, we aimed to assess the motivations, barriers, and facilitators for crop donation as a FLW reduction strategy among Maryland farmers. We interviewed 18 Maryland-based food producers (nine frequent crop donors and nine infrequent, by self-report) in 2016 – 2017, soliciting their perspectives on crop donation motivators, process feasibility, and interventions aimed at increasing crop donation. The interviews were thematically coded. All respondents were aware of crop donation as an option, and most expressed interest in reducing FLW by diverting crop surpluses for human consumption. While financial barriers represented one aspect influencing donation decisions, respondents also cited convenience, process knowledge, and liability as key considerations. In contrast to frequent donors, many of whom considered donation a moral imperative, some infrequent donors questioned the expectation that they would donate crops without compensation. Both frequent and infrequent donors were aware of pro-donation tax incentives, and infrequent donors reported being unlikely to use them. This research demonstrates that crop donation motivations, barriers, and facilitators can be diverse. Given the existence of crop surpluses and their potential benefits as emergency food, our results suggest that multiple interventions and policies may contribute to incentivizing and facilitating crop donation (or enabling the purchase of surplus crops) rather than one-size-fits-all approaches. Our findings also highlight a need to prioritize crop recovery methods that enhance growers’ financial stability.