By Sally Geislar, faculty Environmental Studies
In a now highly cited article on food waste policy, Bellemare et al., (2017) argue that measures of food waste measurement overstates the problem and are consequently “misallocating...resources that are currently being put into food waste” (p. 1148). I argue that in their attempts to place “sound measurement as the basis of sound policy-making” (p. 1149), Bellemare, et al.’s purportedly accurate, precise, and unifying definition of food waste fundamentally fails because the value-laden definitions they critique are both apt and crucial for the study and management of food waste.
I conduct a comparative content analysis of the food waste hierarchies used by government, NGOs, and industry to examine how different values emerge in the prioritization of food waste solutions. While the top-priorities in the hierarchies remain largely unchanged, variation in the lower levels reflect the organizational values and the problem definition of the respective entities. I next interrogate Bellemare et al.'s efforts to create a value-free definition of food waste by equating all non-landfill uses. Importantly, equating all forms of food waste embeds a different set of values, not no values at all.
Finally, I examine whose interests are being best served by Bellemare et al.'s reclassification of food waste as ostensibly both prioritizing efficiency and upholding the value-free ideal. This lens not only serves to make room at the table for inclusion of other values in policy development and analysis (e.g., equity, security), but also to draw attention to the proverbial table itself.
References
Bellemare, M. F., Çakir, M., Peterson, H. H., Novak, L., & Rudi, J. (2017). On the measurement of food waste. American Journal of Agricultural Economics, 99(5), 1148-1158.
