Restaurants, farms, stores and schools aren't the only culprits. Perfectly edible food represents a quarter of all waste tossed away by California households.

"A certain amount of waste is inevitable in all forms of business," write the piece's authors Tina Mather, Kim Daniels and Shannon Pence. "It’s built into the economics of every production and manufacturing cycle -- whether it is clothes-making, home-building or newspaper printing. But the commodity of food takes on added significance...Health officials, researchers, economists, farmers and corporate leaders interviewed for this project say that more efficient production and distribution of our food could help feed millions of families."

On a large-scale, organized level, non-profits are trying to stem the tide of edible refuse.

According to Hunger in the Golden State, "numerous volunteer organizations work to 're-harvest' California's vast produce landscape and divert edible food that would be wasted from grocery stores and restaurants into California's food banks and soup kitchens." On a local and personal level, individuals and fledgling groups engage in a broad spectrum of holistic efforts to ensure less food ends up in the garbage.

As outlined in Twilight Greenaway's Free Falling blog, dumpster diving less frequently evokes unpopular punk bands from meth-y Pacific Northwest enclaves scrounging half-eaten pizzas at rest stops, instead feeling more and more like a responsible practice on the part of people who are simultaneously thrifty and serious about what they eat. A Monday article in the Chronicle tipped a hat to Food Runners, a 23-year-old San Francisco organization redistributing food that "would be otherwise discarded." Websites like Neighborhood Fruit connect San Franciscans weighed down with bounty from backyard trees to fellow citizens happy to take some off their hands. On Sundays, from one to three p.m., Free Farm Stand holds court at Treat and 23rd, giving away produce grown in urban farms and gardens -- according to the website, over 6,700 pounds so far.

The free food movement is gaining momentum for a lot of reasons. For one, it's cheaper to pick up a bag of free apples than go to a farmer's market. While no one has ever liked the idea of wasting good food, taking direct steps to actually cut back on and use existing food waste have required a heightened state of consciousness and crummy economic circumstances compelling even financially secure folks to trim costs. I explored urban gardens last week, but I've been thinking about it more. Along with foraging, it's the sort of noble and attractive pursuit that easily comes off as elitist. Home and community gardens can make produce cheaper and encourage self-sufficiency independent from food-ferrying corporate systems, but most home gardeners sowing heirloom lettuce seeds aren't in it to save a buck. Time is a luxury, and gardens often necessitate commitments poor, hard-working people with families can't muster. Nonetheless, the organized mopping up of waste, the gardens and the webs of community activity materializing amongst these efforts -- they coincide with a cultural shift -- certainly in the Bay Area, and, to some extent, nation-wide, in large cities -- pushing back to a time when food production was not industrialized, when pathways from farms to tables were clearer, more straightforward and less harmful to the environment.

The push carries with it a whiff of fear. Making use of all the food we do produce is important certainly, not just because the less fortunate need to eat and we must put systems in place to feed them, ideally with food that's already being grown and raised, but because the less fortunate are growing in numbers. Unemployment woes and public service cuts impact everyone one way or another. From collapse, to war, to terrorism, to disease and earthquakes, our giant food supply system is vulnerable. The other day, I read about a new book by Brett L. Markham called Mini Farming: Self-Sufficiency on 1/4 Acre. I haven't read the book itself, but the promotional website casts the mission in a somewhat somber tone:

"Let's be honest. The economy is a mess and likely to remain so for some time. The GAO has reported that Peak Oil is a real and proximate phenomenon that will make things even worse. Wages, even in high tech industries, have been stagnant for several years. We have no idea what challenges the future might bring. The time to start raising your own food is not when people are already starving."

Maybe there's a grim survivalist tint to all this. Last week, Oakland Local peddled a pretty fine April Fool's joke about street pigeon becoming the signature dish at a new Oakland restaurant. Free-range domesticated squab is one thing; a mangy pigeon raised on bottle caps and cigarette butts is another. It's not so far-fetched though. A 2008 Wired article only half-jokingly suggested we start eating these "waste-scavenging, protein-generating biomachines" that so hardily populate our urban landscape. Someday, maybe la cucina povera will be a necessity, and it will be truly poor. We stay alive on bugs and vermin -- things we can't kill off, things that often scrape by -- fittingly -- feasting on our garbage. In the Twitter-free food-verse of our Mad Maxian future, perhaps we'll all push grocery carts through alleys filled with shredded feathery pigeon carcasses, stopping to harvest whatever sprouts up through cracks in the concrete.

Related Links:

Hunger in the Golden State
Twitter: @hunger_in_CA
Facebook: Hunger in the Golden State

Waste on The California Report
Part One: Hunger in the Land of Plenty
Part Two: The Food Stamp Quandary
Part Three: Waste

California Watch
Twitter: @CaliforniaWatch
Facebook: California Watch
Flickr: California Watch Photo Pool

Free FoodFree Food

A Pigeon in Every Cart: Wading Through Food Waste in California

Free, Whole, Foods