It is the age of a global pandemic and for many Americans, it is a time of heightened economic vulnerability. The services of food banks are in increasing demand from both old and new customers as food insecurity explodes as unemployment skyrockets amid the COVID-19 crisis. At the same time, experts predict that we will be seeing a stark increase in our already high levels of food waste. In a good year, America would see 40 percent of its food wasted – 63 million tons. 

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This is not a good year. This is a year of panic buying and closed down markets and cafeterias, meaning that we can expect to see more than 40 percent of our food go to waste. The interconnected problems of food insecurity and food waste are certainly not new, but with the rise of COVID-19 they have gained higher visibility and have more far reaching impacts than ever before. 

Food waste management stretches from farm to table. With farmers leaving up to half of their crops unharvested due to cosmetic imperfections and American households representing the largest source of food wasted, food and money are lost at every step of the food system. While it may be tempting to think that our individual choices about how we consume don’t matter within the larger food system, it is this type of thinking that yields high volumes of food rotting in refrigerators and leaves misshapen foods in grocery stores to go to waste.

By changing our individual behaviors, we can dramatically decrease the waste we contribute and thereby improve the food system. And instead of allowing imperfect foods to go to waste on farms, we should be supporting infrastructure that enables these foods to be transported to food banks. If we make change now, we will save lives.