People throw out more organic potatoes than regular ones, according to a food waste study conducted in Switzerland. About 660 pounds of perfectly good food ends up in the trash per Swiss person each year, report researchers. And on the way from field to fork, more than half of the potato harvest goes to waste. The study breaks down the losses of this staple food along the entire supply chain. “With this study, we aim to deepen the discussion relating to food waste by looking at a single product,” says lead author Christian Willersinn, a doctoral student at ETH Zurich. The study appears in the journal Waste Management. From the field to the home, 53 percent of conventionally produced table potatoes go to waste, and this figure rises to 55 percent for those produced organically. For processing potatoes, the figures are lower: 41 percent of organic potatoes are discarded, compared to 46 percent of those from conventional production. More
