Focus on reducing food waste, carbon emissions in new farm bill

When Congress returns from recess, lawmakers are aiming to craft a new farm bill that reauthorizes billions of dollars in federal spending and sets priorities for national agriculture, nutrition, conservation and forestry policies. Given the vital importance of this once-every-five-years legislation and the urgent need to mitigate climate issues, lawmakers should incorporate two provisions that bolster the nation’s food supply, reduce food waste and slash the nation’s carbon footprint associated with food production.

First, Congress should include a measure singling out the need for shelf-stable packaging for liquid food. Such technology allows these food products to stay on the pantry shelf for up to a year—and longer in some cases—without the need for refrigeration, additives or preservatives.

Food waste is a sweeping problem in the U.S. and around the globe, as is the carbon output from both food waste and spoilage and the additional electricity and trucking miles required for refrigerated warehousing and distribution for liquid food products. The U.S. EPA estimates food loss and waste annually is the equivalent of 170 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions, equal to the annual CO2 emissions of 42 coal-fired power plants. For just school milk alone, a study in the American Journal of Public Health found that, compared to conventional dairy milk, shelf-stable dairy milk would reduce net greenhouse gas emissions by 28.5 percent per student per meal.

Shelf-stable technology, of which my company is an industry leader, can reduce pervasive food waste in school programs, which are a big focus of the farm bill. The World Wildlife Fund estimates that U.S. schools accrue total food waste losses of $9.7 million each day, or $1.7 billion for every school year. Food waste in schools is only a slice of a greater problem, with the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine concluding that approximately 30 percent of the edible food produced in the U.S. currently goes to waste.

Second, lawmakers should encourage food producers to adopt modern equipment that reduces carbon output by including incentives such as tax credits and accelerated depreciation. As an option, lawmakers should preserve historic provisions in the Inflation Reduction Act that created incentives for adoption of cleaner, climate-friendly food manufacturing facilities. In one example of how to lower emissions in the dairy industry through better food processing, swapping out outdated processing equipment, combining certain milk production stages and limiting intermediate storage steps can slash processing time, thereby reducing the electricity needed to process and store milk.

The reasons to extend into the farm bill the range of balance sheet incentives are clear when considering the breadth of the problem. A major assessment of food production globally in the journal Nature Food determined that a third of all man-made greenhouse gas emissions are generated by food production systems.

When it comes to carbon emissions and their impact on the climate, “the energy sector and coal-fired power — they always get the attention, and rightly so,” said Craig Hanson, managing director of the World Resources Institute. “But the food system is a major player and is a major source of emissions, but also a potential major solution,” he said at a recent conference in Washington, D.C., on decarbonizing food production.

The right inducements in place in this year’s farm bill can spur innovation and the adoption of carbon-cutting technologies with food producers leading the way.

Teply is president and CEO of Tetra Pak U.S. and Canada, a  food processing and packaging solutions company based in Denton, Texas.