Saving Sweet Potatoes: Reducing Food Waste Through Data Collection

🌍 So how about some math! If there are this many marketable #sweetpotatoes in one 10' x 20' sample area, how many are there per acre?

Easy question! I'll just give you the answer because nobody likes to do math while scrolling social media. There were an estimated 205,751 pounds of USDA # 1 grade sweetpotatoes in this 113 acre field, that were unharvested.

In North Carolina, I've estimated that on average, 4,000 pounds of usable (processing grade or better) #NCsweetpotatoes are left unharvested on every acre. We have about 100,000 acres. That's really easy math. What we have here is an underutilized resource. An opportunity. It's tough to know how big that opportunity is, without sampling and estimation in lots and lots of fields, with different conditions and management styles. I'm a huge fan of data collection, because it describes the opportunity that exists. Now that we know, we can do something about it!


#freshproduce #postharvest #foodloss #foodwaste #sdg12