Have you eaten your Christmas leftovers?

In America, we waste 40 percent of our entire food supply or 1,400 calories per person per day, according to a new study.

That number is just shocking, and I think it needs to make us re-evaluate our conversation about hunger, farming, and our policies around food.

The argument often is that we need the efficient methods of big ag, dependent as it is on oil, fertilizers, and monocrops, to keep food cheap and feed the world. But if we're just throwing out all that food anyway, perhaps we need a better system of distributing the food. We have more than enough food; we just need to get it in the hands of those without.

How about changing our policies to encourage more local food production and distribution so that we can eliminate waste? 

Something to think about as you finish that leftover turkey and cookies from your holiday meals. (For more, read Greener Pastures on Catholic farmers.)

60 Minutes had a story on water scarcity in California. Despite the governor's optimism that we can have it all, we're going to need to change the way we live–especially the way we grow our food and consume it.



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