Arrangements & Program Committees

Macy Award Brochure | Macy Award Presentation by Dr. Dennis Heldman

Macy Award Night

MINNESOTA SECTION IFT MEETING EVENT!
Also held with this event is a special pre event for new professionals with Dr. Heldman

Topic: “Sustainability of the Food Supply Chain”
Presented by the 2017 Macy Awardee
Dr. Dennis R. Heldman

Meeting the food supply needs of a world population of 11 billion people by 2050 creates a range of challenges, including increased production and distribution of food while controlling the impacts on the environment. The food supply chain from the farm-gate to the consumer must play a significant role in meeting this challenge by reducing energy, water and waste at every possible step. Many operations during preservation, packaging, storage and distribution are energy intensive. Significant amounts of water are used during cleaning and processing operations. Finally, wastes between the farm gate and the consumer are significant and even more significant after the products are delivered to the consumer. The overall goal of these comments is to focus on identifying the operations where even small changes in technologies may result in reductions in energy, water and wastes.

Significant energy and water resources are invested in the production, processing, storage, distribution and preparation of foods. It should be evident that food wastes include the loss (or waste) of the energy and water used to deliver the product to the consumer. Although these wastes of energy and water have not been adequately quantified, the magnitudes reach a maximum when food is wasted after the product is in possession of the consumer. One conclusion is that the food waste reduction research should focus on technologies needed so that food wastes do not occur near the end of the food supply chain.

An additional dimension of waste reduction to consider is the waste streams throughout the food supply chain. Many of these waste streams contain valuable components of the original raw food materials. A more thorough analysis of waste streams could identify components with potential as value-added by-products as well as other economic incentives for waste reduction technologies. Many of the waste streams include significant amounts of water, and the technologies to be considered would include reclamation of water to be used in production and manufacturing operations throughout the food supply chain.

To learn more about Dr. Heldman, please go to: https://u.osu.edu/heldmanlab/dr-dennis-r-heldman/