Food Lost on the Farm: Empirical Data and Good Ideas

July 3, 2018

July 3, 2018



Today’s Guest Blog is by Christine Grillo. It was originally posted on the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future Blog on May 25, 2018.

Let’s imagine we’re at a vegetable farm in rural Vermont. The weather has been so perfect this year for growing carrots, spinach and squash that our farmer can’t harvest everything she’s grown. She won’t want to risk the expense of harvesting and transporting the veggies that retailers won’t buy because they look a little funny; she won’t be able to sell them if the markets are saturated; and she may not be able to find affordable farm labor to help her pick the crops and get them to their destinations. Some of those veggies bursting with nutrients and fiber will go uneaten, becoming part of what we call “on-farm food loss.”


Now let’s visit the home of a family suffering from food insecurity. Perhaps an elderly couple isn’t getting quite enough to eat. Or maybe an older teen is skipping meals so his younger sister can have more. In Vermont there are about 80,000 people in these circumstances, and the state provides more than 19 million institutional meals every year. These meals are made from food grown outside of the state and purchased with Vermont dollars, flown or trucked in from thousands of miles away.


Getting those nutrient-dense veggies onto the plates of the food insecure—as well as onto the cafeteria trays at public schools, nursing homes, hospitals and detention facilities—seems like it would be a win-win. The surplus crops grown in Vermont could replace some of the food grown outside the state and shipped in. In Vermont, top crops include not only carrots, spinach and squash but also potatoes, blueberries, strawberries and raspberries. What if some of that food lost on the farm could be recovered and re-directed onto people’s plates? What if farmers could be compensated for that food, instead of turning it into (expensive) compost?


Vermont is not the only state with this conundrum. Re-thinking on-farm food loss in Vermont could provide valuable clues for other states with similar situations.


In the quest for the win-win, Salvation Farms in Morrisville has produced the first empirical data on farm-level food loss in New England. Using a survey to collect data, it quantifies on-farm losses and investigates reasons for the losses. One finding shows that in Vermont 16 percent of vegetables and 15 percent of berries were considered lost but salvageable in 2015.


Theresa Snow, executive director of Salvation Farms, conducted the study with input from 58 farmers representing all counties in Vermont. “Farmers are busy!” said Snow. “But they’re happy to provide perspective if it shows there could be an ultimate benefit to their business by providing input.”


In a research paper published this week in The Journal of Agriculture, Food Systems and Community Development, “Salvageable Food Losses from Vermont Farms,” lead author Roni Neff, PhD, and program director at the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future, suggests that this quantification can help identify strategies and motivate action. “There is a remarkable gap in data on waste and loss of food on farms in the US,” she said. “This study provides the first such data for Vermont and shares a relatively easy to use 4-question tool Salvation Farms created for estimating waste and loss from farms.”


Neff notes that this study’s findings may be especially applicable to other areas with many small- to midscale farms, although the tremendous variety of crops, environments, farm types and markets in Vermont may make generalization challenging.

In addition to gathering data, several stakeholders in Vermont—Salvation Farms, Vermont Farm to Plate, the Vermont Agency for Agriculture and others—are working toward creating a Vermont Surplus Crop Management Plan. The goal of the plan is to get the excess food to humans who will eat it.


According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), on-farm food loss comprises about 16 percent of all the wasted food in the United States, although this estimate is based on minimal data. And according to the team’s paper, which used data from the Salvation Farms report, the biggest reasons for on-farm food loss are aesthetics (for example, the berries are blemished and retailers think people won’t buy them), demand fluctuations and market saturation (more berries than people can eat!), and labor availability and costs (can’t find farmworkers or can’t afford them). The paper acknowledges that there will always be some on-farm food loss. But it can be reduced, which, as the paper suggests, is the first priority.


Both Snow and Neff note that compensation for farmers is essential to reducing on-farm losses. If food is to be donated to food banks or similar programs, the farmer may be expected to harvest, package and transport it, which is expensive. Federal tax deductions for donated food are a small incentive for donating surplus crops, especially if the expenses associated with donating are not matched by tax savings. Snow believes farmers would be more incentivized by payments from the state or an opening up of new markets. Gleaning and food rescue programs, in which volunteers come onto the farm and do their own harvesting and transporting, offer farmers a way to have their excess crops eaten without incurring a lot of extra expense; unfortunately, the amounts gathered are often small in comparison to the loss. Experienced farmworkers can be even more effective at preventing on-farm food loss.


In farming, there will always be some degree of loss and waste (or some degree of deficit). But, as Neff suggests, if more entities across the US do as Salvation Farms has done—gathering empirical data—more food-system and supply-chain interventions become possible.

Christine Grillo is a Contributing Writer at Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future (CLF). She joined CLF in 2011 and writes about food system thinking—the intersection of food systems and public health. The work of the Center for a Livable Future is driven by the concept that public health, diet, food production and the environment are deeply interrelated and that understanding these relationships is crucial in pursuing a livable future. The article is reposted under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license.

NERC welcomes Guest Blog submissions. To inquire about submitting articles contact Athena Lee Bradley, Projects Manager at athena(at)nerc.org. Disclaimer: Guest blogs represent the opinion of the writers and may not reflect the policy or position of the Northeast Recycling Council, Inc.


For more information on Salvation Farms, see NERC’s Blog Fresh Produce Recovery Models and the Building Resiliency in Food Recovery webinar presentation by Theresa Snow and webinar recording.

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Maine, Maryland pursue PFAS biosolids remedies amid landfill capacity concerns

By Megan Quinn | Waste Dive • March 26, 2026
Northeastern states concerned with contamination from per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances in sewage sludge are moving forward with new projects and proposed legislation meant to better manage the material in 2026 and beyond. During a Northeast Recycling Council webinar on Wednesday, officials from the Maine Department of Environmental Protection and the Maryland Department of the Environment offered updates on how their states are managing PFAS in sludge. They also offered perspectives on how looming landfill capacity issues, proposed infrastructure projects and state legislation could influence how these states — and neighboring states — handle this material in the immediate term. Disposal capacity concerns prompt infrastructure plans in Maine Maine has been in the spotlight for several years for how it handles PFAS in sludge and in landfill leachate in the state. It was the first state to ban the land application of sewage sludge in 2022, and several projects are moving forward in 2026 that are meant to manage regional disposal capacity for the material as landfill space dwindles. That pressure on disposal capacity is expected to build as more Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic states consider similar sludge fertilizer prohibitions due to PFAS concerns, said Susanne Miller, Maine DEP’s director of the bureau of remediation and waste management. “Right now, everything’s going to a landfill because there’s nowhere else to put it in Maine, and this is a big problem,” she said. Casella Waste, which operates the state’s Juniper Ridge Landfill, has been seeking a landfill expansion for several years, but that matter has been tied up in court. “Without an expansion, it’s going to be running out of capacity in about 2028 which is just around the corner.” One project to address capacity issues is the state’s first biosolids dryer , which is being built at WM’s Crossroads Landfill to reduce liquid volume of the material. That project, originally expected to come online sometime in 2025, is now expected to open in the second quarter of 2026, Miller said. It has a capacity of up to 200 tons a day and up to 73,000 tons a year. That project could handle up to 83% of Maine’s municipally generated biosolids, she said. The dryer is meant to help create a closed-loop system, she said. Sludge from wastewater plants will be treated in the dryer, and landfill leachate and dryer liquids will be treated onsite via a foam fractionation system that is already in operation at the landfill, she said. Treated water goes to a nearby wastewater plant, and sludge from that wastewater plant then returns to the dryer. Another proposed PFAS management project, a sludge processing plant by Aries Clean Technologies, could also be in the works in coming months. It aims to use a gasification and oxidization process to remove PFAS from sewage material and significantly reduce biosolids volumes in the process. The company built a similar facility in New Jersey in 2024. The project is currently under permit review, which Miller said will likely include a DEP review, public comment period and public hearing. The proposal has faced some public pushback over potential traffic, odor and pollution concerns, Maine Public reported . “With any kind of new technology relating to waste or that takes in a waste stream, there’s controversy and concern about it, and so we need to go through the entire permitting process to get to the point where the department is able to determine if an application can be granted,” Miller said. Meanwhile, the Portland Water District, which Miller says is Maine’s largest wastewater treatment facility, is also exploring its own treatment system for sludge. It’s an effort to reduce reliance on limited landfill capacity and unpredictable disposal costs, she said. The water district is considering a few different technologies like anaerobic digestion, drying and thermal treatments such as pyrolysis to reduce the amount of biosolids for disposal. “With the prices going up to go to landfill and the space at landfills shrinking, they want to take destiny into their own hands,” she said. According to DEP, several other sewer districts are working on similar projects. York Sewer District is planning a 2028 pilot project meant to use supercritical water oxidation technology to help destroy PFAS and reduce wastewater sludge volume. Meanwhile, landfill operators in the state have been subject to new PFAS leachate testing rules since September. A new law requires operators to test for PFAS in landfill leachate and report results annually to DEP. Wastewater dischargers that accept leachate must also maintain leachate records to report to DEP each year. Though these projects hold promise, Miller emphasized that source control efforts are just as important to reduce the amount of PFAS-containing materials entering landfills and being treated at wastewater treatment plants. The state has already passed laws that phase out intentionally added PFAS in certain products, with the list of applicable products expanding through the next few years to include artificial turf and outdoor gear by 2029 and most types of products by 2032. Maryland moves forward with biosolids ban bill Maryland is focusing on its own efforts related to PFAS in biosolids through new regulations and state legislation, said Thomas Yoo, chief of MDE’s biosolids division. The state generates about 600,000 wet tons of sewage sludge a year, and about 56% of that is hauled out of state for either land application or landfilling, mainly to Virginia and Pennsylvania, he said. Maryland has about 250 agricultural sites that are permitted to take sewage sludge, but in 2023 the state put a hold on issuing any new land application permits. It also began requesting PFAS data from out-of-state permittees bringing biosolids into the state and terminated permits for those that did not provide that data, he said. Maryland also requires all wastewater treatment plants where land applied biosolids originate to sample for PFOS and PFOA . About 50 biosolids generators are submitting this data, he said. The state already has recommended limits for PFAS in land applications , but a bill moving through the state legislature, SB 719 , would set enforceable limits starting in 2027. The bill calls for prohibiting land application for sludge that has a total concentration of PFOA and PFOS above 50 parts per billion and calls for other source tracking and mitigation plan measures. The neighboring state of Virginia passed a set of bills on March 11 with a similar intent. If signed by the governor, the bills would regulate the levels of PFAS in biosolids and would prevent the use of biosolids as fertilizer beginning in 2027 if levels of PFOA and PFOS are too high. Yoo says Maryland will continue to focus on state-level options for managing PFAS in biosolids as it awaits U.S. EPA guidance on the matter. The EPA released a draft risk assessment in January 2025 that found farmers who used the sludge may be at risk of exposure, but consumers who eat food from those sources may face less risk. The draft report says certain PFAS may leach from sludge when it’s land applied, disposed of in a landfill, or incinerated. The agency has not yet finalized the assessment. Read the article of Waste Dive

WRAP

By Sophie Leone • March 25, 2026
WRAP is a global environmental action NGO with a mission to "embed Circular Living in every boardroom and every home". Established in the UK in 2000, it has since expanded to offices in Europe and the USA, with live projects in over 30 countries. There are four main priorities driving their work: future-proofing food, preventing problematic plastics and packaging, accelerating the circular economy, and transforming textiles. Textiles, food, and manufactured products account for nearly half of the climate problem, and WRAP has acknowledged that a new approach is needed to mitigate the climate crisis. Their new approach, "Circular Living" — detailed as "design-make-reuse" — targets the root causes of this crisis across the entire product lifecycle. Their website offers diverse resources, including successful case studies on housing, farming, food waste, waste collection, and much more. Along with these case studies, WRAP offers webinars, resources guides, campaign tools, reports, and more. Their dedicated work has allowed them to expand their reach globally, impact the industry on all levels, and produce critical information materials. "Everyone I meet in this field is someone who looks at an object and says, "I can make something with that" - and they built a career on solution-seeking. In a time of supply chain disruptions and market volatility, the recycling industry's can-do (pun intended) mindset is critical for recovering value and reducing demand for resource extraction. WRAP is excited to join NERC and connect with members supporting this vital component of the circular economy." Sarah Morley – Strategic Engagement Manager at WRAP Americas NERC is excited to welcome WRAP to our impactful team of NGO’s. We look forward to supporting their mission and the incredible work they do around the world. For more information on WRAP visit.

University of Vermont Casella Center for Circular Economy and Sustainability

By Sophie Leone • March 24, 2026
The University of Vermont (UVM) launched the Casella Center for Circular Economy and Sustainability in 2025, with support from a large gift by Casella Waste Systems, Inc. The Center is a “research hub developing sustainable solutions for waste and materials management that reduce pollution and create economic opportunities.” The work done in the UVM Casella Center builds on three decades of collaboration between Casella Waste Systems and UVM. The Casella Center is a part of the Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources. The Rubenstein School has “prepared environmentally and socially responsible leaders, scientists, practitioners, and advocates” for 50 years. While based in the Rubenstein School, the Casella Center includes UVM faculty affiliates and students spanning multiple disciplines and Colleges, including engineering, agriculture, life sciences, and policy. “At the UVM Casella Center, we are focused on the intersection of rigorous scholarship and practical solutions. This requires us to work collaboratively with many stakeholders, including those in the public and private sectors working hard daily to improve our materials management systems. Joining NERC will help us stay connected to the Northeast sustainable materials management community.” – Dr. Eric Roy, Director, UVM Casella Center for Circular Economy and Sustainability NERC is excited to welcome The University of Vermont Casella Center for Circular Economy and Sustainability to our growing group of academic institutions. We look forward to supporting their students and ongoing efforts to make lasting environmental impacts. For more information on UVM Casella Center for Circular Economy and Sustainability visit .