Food Conservation is something that we deal with daily. 

I know this is a cruel post to publish on Easter Day when families are gathering and feasts are going on.  It is also an appropriate day to reflect on what we as a society deal with concerning our food.  We are one of the richest and well fed nation on earth.  Yet there are many that go without good quality food on their table.  It’s both economic as well as educational.

We Waste a Lot of Good Food !

I am guilty of just cooking too much sometimes and in the end after it sits in the fridge for a week or so…I reluctantly toss it out.  Okay certain things I do put in my compost bin but basically there’s a lot of food that ends up in my dumpster and dumpsters around the country.  Look at the portions that restaurants serve sometime.  I see plates overflowing!  Now the right thing to do is get the old “Doggy Bag” and take it home.

40% Wasted!

A Shocking Statistic!

CNN reports that in the United States 40% of our food gets wasted.  This amounts to billions of dollars in wasted food products, water that was used to grow that food and rotting compost added to our landfills.  Altogether this is an alarming figure and something that we should be concerned about!  Read the full story in the following link…

http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2012/08/22/40-of-u-s-food-wasted-report-says/

What can we do?

Again, we can only do what we can do.  We can however raise this issue with our friends and family.  We can reduce, we can reuse, we can recycle…

At home, there are ways to utilize leftovers wisely.  See how the Sustainability hub blog treats the various areas of utilizing food to its fullest!

http://sustainabilityhub.com/2013/03/05/how-to-minimize-food-waste/

From too much food to too little! 

The Arizona Republic newspapers latest article on Food Banks say that the demand has risen 20% in the last year!

According to the Association of Arizona Food Banks.

“Between 1999 and 2011, according to USDA, the number of children that lived in households that lacked sufficient food rose by 37 percent, from 12.1 million to 16.6 million. A staggering 1 in 5 U.S. children now live in food insecure homes, the highest level of child hunger in any developed Western country. Yet federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits for all families, including for families with children, are set to be reduced on November 1st when a “hunger cliff” kicks in. On top of that, Congressional conservatives are seeking further cuts in federal child nutrition programs.”

Additionally they go on to say…

“No superpower in the history of the world that has failed to feed its own children has remained a superpower. Child hunger in the world’s wealthiest nation is not only morally unacceptable, it costs the U.S. economy at least $28 billion per year because poorly nourished children perform less well in school and require far more long-term health care spending,” said Berg. “Food insufficiency severely hampers children’s emotional, intellectual, and physical development, and it strongly hinders the upward mobility of their parents. Therefore, ending child hunger is a prerequisite for truly fixing the U.S. economy and for significantly reducing poverty.”

For the full article read the link below;

http://www.azfoodbanks.org/index.php/blog/article/proposed_sna..

Support Your Loccal Food Bank!

What can we do to help Food Banks get high quality organic foods for those children?

Transition Town Payson participants in the Community Garden are pledging 50% of what they grow to the local food banks!  That means that fresh produce from these gardens will go to the local area food banks.  I just hope they like beets!

The Payson Community Garden Supplies Food for the Local Food Banks