“O beautiful for spacious skies, for amber waves of grain, for purple mountain majesties above the fruited plain! America! America! God shed His grace on thee.”

The song “America the Beautiful” ties the nation’s natural beauty and agricultural output to God’s blessings.

And U.S. agriculture truly has been blessed. America led the world in agricultural exports in 2021, shipping about $177 billion worth of food and farm products to the rest of the world. And this is only a little over 20 percent of the food it produces.

Such abundance has led to a uniquely American problem: More than a third of the food kept for domestic use is never eaten. Much of it ends up in landfills, exacerbating health and environmental issues. These concerns led over 50 local officials to sign a letter in October 2023 calling on the Environmental Protection Agency to help municipal governments cut food waste in their communities.

The EPA recently released two reports on the scope of America’s food waste problem. Tackling food waste is a daunting challenge that the U.S. has attempted to address before. In 2015, the United States Department of Agriculture and the EPA set a goal of cutting food waste in half by 2030, but the country has made little progress, said Claudia Fabiano, who works on food waste management for the EPA.

“We’ve got a long way to go,” Ms. Fabiano stated.

But the land of plenty has a second, unexpected food problem. An estimated 17 million households reported problems getting enough to eat in 2022. A recent Department of Agriculture report paints a sobering picture of post-pandemic hardship with “statistically significant” increases in food insecurity across multiple categories. The report said 12.8 percent (17 million households) reported occasional problems affording enough food in 2022.

The United States has about 130 million households. That means that last year, one out of every eight households had difficulty regularly putting food on the table. Many of the households that experienced these problems include children.

Too much food, yet too little. How can American prosperity allow the nation to produce more food for export than any other country and discard over one-third of the rest—all while so many citizens struggle?

Food Waste by the Numbers

Recycle Track Systems, a company that helps municipalities and businesses with waste management, estimates that America discards nearly 60 million tons of food annually. To put this in perspective, the average U.S. adult eats just under one ton of food each year. Enough food ends up in landfills each year to feed over 30,000 people an average diet or nearly double the minimum daily energy requirement.

Why does so much food get trashed?

RTS says that food spoilage, whether real or perceived, is a major culprit. Americans tend to buy more food than they need, with the excess destined to spoil. Since many citizens were never taught how to store food properly, even some of their necessary food ends up spoiled and thrown away.

In addition, over 80 percent of Americans throw away edible food. Much of this stems from fear of foodborne illnesses and confusion about the “best by,” “use by,” “sell by” and “best before” labels and associated dates.

Even grocery stores throw away food. A recent viral video showed one store with three lines of over eight carts—each one full of T-bone steaks, chicken and other refrigerated items. All of it was destined for the dumpster because the coolers malfunctioned. In such instances, the food could potentially have still been good, but laws state retailers can neither sell nor donate refrigerated food that has gone over a certain temperature.

American advertising has conditioned consumers to expect their food to look “right” and forego imperfect produce. Anything with a scar, blemish, or discoloration gets shunted from the store shelves. Carrots with bends or multiple roots, potatoes with marked skins, yellow cucumbers, green oranges or too-small lemons either get disposed of or shipped to commercial or industrial facilities.

In addition, restaurants, caterers and other commercial food venues often include large portions, leaving much to be discarded. Consumers may take leftovers home only to let them rot before chucking them in the trash.

Industrial food production, such as packaging factories, try to squeeze every penny out of the food they buy. This usually results in less tasty food that consumers are less likely to finish eating.

Food losses come from many other sources beyond supermarkets, beginning with overproduction on the farm. Food that cannot be sold for a profit often remains to decompose in the field.

Most of America’s food is produced domestically. California produces fruits, vegetables, nuts and dairy. Iowa leads the nation in corn, soybeans and eggs. Texas leads the nation in beef, and produces cotton, hay and grains. Nebraska is another large source of beef, corn and soybeans. The Midwestern states contribute to the nation’s corn, soybean and wheat production.

America imports fruits and vegetables, like avocados, tomatoes, berries and peppers from Mexico. Canada provides fruits, vegetables, meat, dairy and grains. Seafood and some fruits and vegetables arrive from China and other Southeast Asian nations. South American countries provide the U.S. with many varieties of fruits, while the EU exports wine, cheese, chocolate and specialty foods.

But all this food must travel from its source to the consumer, which takes incredible logistics. Ships transport food from other nations where it joins domestically produced food on the American rail and roadway systems.

The American Trucking Association estimates that over 70 percent of all freight in the U.S. moves by truck, and a significant portion is food. Inefficiencies and damage during transportation, storage and distribution create further losses before the food even gets to the consumer.

Wasted food that finds its way to a landfill represents more of a loss than just the food itself. Consider the logistics costs, from fuel, the normal wear and tear on man and machine, storage, inventory carrying costs and consumables, such as tires and fuel, not to mention the secondary requirements such as administrative support personnel and information technology.

Just the human hours taken to pick, process, package and transport food across the country and around the world can stagger the mind. All this cost and effort to move tons of food that so often goes from the farm to the landfill.

Hunger Amid Plenty

The term “food security” refers to how available food is in a community and whether the people there can access and afford it. People with food security can focus on improving the quality of their lives and their community, but those without it typically face many other hardships, including poverty, higher crime neighborhoods and poorer education.

Analysts and food security professionals in the United States point to the dual impact of high inflation and the gradual expiration of multiple pandemic-era government assistance measures as leading causes for the rise in food insecurity in 2022.

“This underscores how the unwinding of the pandemic interventions and the rising costs of food has taken hold,” said Geri Henchy, director of nutrition policy for the Food Research and Action Center. “It’s like a horrible storm for families.”

The number of households reporting more serious forms of economic hardship has also increased. A recent report by the USDA’s Economic Research Service tracked families with “very low food security”—a condition it defines as families having to ration food consumption and where “normal eating patterns were disrupted at times during the year because of limited resources.”

Households experiencing this level of hardship in 2022 rose to 5.1 percent (6.8 million households), up from 3.8 percent (5.1 million households) in 2021 and 3.9 percent (5.1 million households) in 2020.

Increased benefits and more relaxed enrollment rules for SNAP—the foundational government assistance program commonly known as food stamps—did not end until early 2023. But a host of other federal and state-level pandemic aid initiatives wound down in 2022. One key national change Ms. Henchy highlighted was the end of universal free school lunches for all students, a policy that ended over the summer of 2022.

“These were healthy, nutritious meals because the schools had good standards,” she said. “It was great for the kids. It was stigma-free, and it was huge for people’s budgets.”

Department of Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack called the reported results “unacceptable.” He highlighted the increased fruit and vegetable benefits for recipients of WIC—an aid program that specifically targets mothers and young children. The increased WIC benefits package is one of the few pandemic policies that is continuing, although there have been proposals in Congress to bring those benefits down to pre-pandemic levels.

“The experience of the pandemic showed us that when government invests in meaningful support for families, we can make a positive impact on food security, even during challenging economic times,” Mr. Vilsack said in a statement. “No child should go hungry in America.”

These findings broadly mirror real-time anecdotes from late last year, when multiple food banks and charitable groups reported being surprised by the higher-than-expected levels of need entering the 2022 holiday season. In several cases, food banks and charities made educated estimates of how much food they would need to distribute, only to find that those predictions were far too low.

Food banks gather food to distribute to smaller, more local pantries and soup kitchens. A soup kitchen gives prepared meals to people, while a food pantry provides food for people to take home and prepare themselves. Different organizations sponsor or run food pantries, including churches, schools and nonprofits. For many people with food insecurity, a food pantry becomes a lifeline.

But food pantries are notoriously difficult to stock and run. All the food these provide must be donated or purchased with donated funds. When times get harder for people in general, food pantry donations decrease. Many food pantries do not have enough space to store good food. When it comes to nutritious fresh foods, refrigeration becomes an issue. Food pantries are nonprofits, which means they face further difficulties finding enough staff and volunteers to ensure their clients get what they need.

Despite this, food pantries provide a vital service to those facing food insecurity. A 2021 study by the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center and the University of Dallas found that a 10 percent increase in visits to food pantries correlated to a 5.7 percent decrease in food insecurity.

But consider the difference in these numbers. An increase in using a food pantry yielded about half as much decrease in the problem. If everyone who needed food went to a food pantry, they could address about half the problem. Ultimately, food pantries can only provide a temporary lifeline to people because they only address one symptom of a much larger problem.

Gleaning: A Patchwork Solution

America has tried many programs to address the twin issues of food waste and insecurity. Some people have pushed food rescue programs where volunteers “rescue” food about to be discarded and take it to soup kitchens or other social service providers. Others have sought policy changes, like the local leaders asking for help from the EPA. Some try to use technology to improve how food is stored or distributed.

One type of program that has both reduced food waste and increased food security is called gleaning. Similar to food rescue programs, gleaning aims to redirect excess food from some of the major sources of food waste and food loss by going to farms, farmers’ markets, restaurants, grocery stores and other sources and move the excess food directly to food pantries.

A program at the University of Kentucky showed that a small group of dedicated people can make an impact on local food security. The USDA even has a gleaning toolkit that explains what gleaning is and how to start a program.

The difficulty with modern gleaning programs lies deeper than simply getting excess food to where it is most needed. First, these organizations must find donors, and then they must find a pantry that will accept fresh food. Second, gleaning only provides food during the harvest season, but people must eat year-round.

In 2020, there were over 160 gleaning organizations in the U.S. Five large volunteer groups had over 14,000 volunteers putting in nearly 50,000 hours to glean, package and distribute food. And yet the reports from the EPA and the USDA show that, even with this massive effort, the problem has not been solved.

The same God credited for U.S. abundance in “America the Beautiful” also set up gleaning as a way to feed the poor. The Bible has many practical instructions that deal with food waste and food insecurity.

Leviticus 19 explains how this worked: “And when you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not wholly reap the corners of your field, neither shall you gather the gleanings of your harvest. And you shall not glean your vineyard, neither shall you gather every grape of your vineyard; you shall leave them for the poor and stranger: I am the Lord your God” (vs. 9-10).

Farmers in ancient Israel sowed these areas just like the rest of the field, but they went unharvested—left for the poor and the stranger in the land.

On top of this, during harvest, any produce not gathered by the farmer on his first pass was commanded to be left behind for the stranger, the fatherless and the widow (Deut. 24:19-21). This included grain, olives, grapes and other produce.

Through these commands, God generously made provision for those who fell on hard times, but He required them to work for it. They had to put in the effort to go into the field and glean what was left for them.

Also, people were permitted to eat food from any field they passed through (Deut. 23:24-25). Travelers did not need to worry about carrying enough food for their journey or being famished next to a field full of delicious fruits and vegetables. They could eat as much as they needed when hungry, but were not allowed to take any with them.

Permanent Food Security

The poor are so important to God, He required each person to, every three years, “bring forth all the tithe of your increase the same year, and…lay it up within your gates, and the Levite, (because he has no part nor inheritance with you,) and the stranger, and the fatherless, and the widow, which are within your gates, shall come, and shall eat and be satisfied; that the Lord your God may bless you in all the work of your hand which you do” (Deut. 14:28-29).

This special tithe—10 percent of a person’s harvest—was given to the Levites to distribute to those in need. (To learn more about tithing, read End All Your Financial Worries.)

These Old Testament laws were simple, yet effective in taking care of the poor in Ancient Israel. Some modern attempts to care for the poor have been noble and sincere, yet ultimately fall short because they were not administered on a national scale or based on godly principles.

All of this lays bare a bedrock truth: On its own, mankind cannot solve its problems. No matter how hard government leaders and individuals try, the world is faced with a Gordian knot of evils and ills.

Food waste and food insecurity is a perfect example. As you dig into the issue, you find that it ties into many other problems society faces. Greed leads to income inequality, pride and hatred leads to conflicts between people and war between nations, lust leads to the breakdown of family, stealing leads to the breakdown of civil order and disobedience to God’s way of life leads to every other evil in society.

Yet this will not continue forever. In the near future, God promises to come and implement His commands, including how food should be provided and distributed to the poor. During this coming Kingdom of God (Mark 1:15), all people will enjoy abundance. No longer will massive amounts of food go to waste, nor will people go hungry without hope.

Food insecurity will be gone because every family will be able to grow all the food they need. Notice Micah 4: “They shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig tree; and none shall make them afraid: for the mouth of the Lord of hosts has spoken it” (vs. 4). The book of Amos adds, “Behold, the days come, says the Lord, that the plowman shall overtake the reaper, and the treader of grapes him that sows seed; and the mountains shall drop sweet wine, and all the hills shall melt…and they shall plant vineyards, and drink the wine thereof; they shall also make gardens, and eat the fruit of them” (9:13-14).

Yet, in the short term, man will continue to pursue his own solutions to food problems. These will continue to fail. Only by obeying God and following His principles can a society truly prosper.

To learn much more about why man and his governments cannot fix societal woes, read our booklet Why Man Cannot Solve His Problems.

This article contains information from The Associated Press.