Harvest season is the culmination of a year’s worth of care in the orchard. While our trees rest in winter, we prune branches, build healthy soil, and prepare for spring. Buds bloom, fruit sets, and by summer, the trees are heavy with the result of many hands and seasons of labor. That abundance brings responsibility - to use everything we grow wisely.
At Frog Hollow, we’re committed to ensuring that no fruit is forgotten. Whether it’s eaten fresh, turned into conserves, dried, or transformed into compost, every piece has a purpose. Reducing food waste is central to our regenerative approach - and part of our everyday work to care for the land, feed our community, and address climate change. Here’s how we turn our seasonal bounty into something bigger—and why it matters for the planet.
The Hidden Cost of Wasted Food
In the U.S., 30-40% of the U.S. food supply is wasted annually¹. That’s about a third of our nation’s food, left to rot in fields, tossed in landfills, or sent to incinerators. In 2019, 13.9 million tons of produce went unharvested, and California was responsible for more than half of that waste².
What happens when food is wasted? It’s not just the loss of a juicy apricot or peach—it’s also the waste of all the resources that went into growing that food: water, energy, and human labor. And when food decomposes in landfills, it releases methane, a greenhouse gas that’s over 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide in the short term. With food waste responsible for 14% of U.S. methane emissions, cutting waste is a critical way to slow climate change³.
How We Turn Waste into Opportunity
At Frog Hollow Farm, we believe that waste is an opportunity. As a regenerative farm, we take a full-circle approach to food, ensuring that every fruit we grow finds its highest purpose. Here’s how:
- Optimizing our Harvest: When we have excess fruit, we dry it or turn it into fruit conserves. This time-honored tradition of food preservation ensures that the taste of summer lasts all year long while reducing waste. Last year alone, these efforts helped prevent 0.08 metric tons of methane emissions and saved 3.51 million gallons of water ⁴.
- Maximizing Human Consumption: Unlike grocery stores, which often demand “perfect” fruit (only about 40% of a crop meets their strict standards), we embrace the full spectrum of our harvest. Our CSA members and farmers' market customers enjoy fruit that might be deemed too small, too large, or too ripe for traditional retail but is still delicious and nutritious.
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Composting for Healthy Soil: When food scraps break down naturally in a well-aerated composting system (instead of an anaerobic landfill), they create rich organic matter that nourishes our trees and sequesters carbon. In 2024 alone, we transformed waste into 5,000 tons of compost, feeding our soil instead of landfills.
Why It Matters
Reducing food waste isn’t just about helping the environment—it’s about making our food system smarter, more resilient, and more ethical. Cutting waste means conserving water, protecting biodiversity, reducing food insecurity, and improving air quality. With the food system responsible for up to one-third of global greenhouse gas emissions, we must rethink how we grow, distribute, and consume food ⁵.
At Frog Hollow Farm, we’re proud to be part of the solution. Through regenerative practices, we’re proving that sustainability and delicious food go hand in hand. Every time we compost, upcycle, or share our harvest with someone who appreciates it, we take one more step toward a healthier planet!
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Sources:
- https://www.usda.gov/about-food/food-safety/food-loss-and-waste/food-waste-faqs
- https://refed.org/downloads/refed_roadmap2030-FINAL.pdf
- https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#search/Lael/FMfcgzQZTpzDMvmsRCVSwJJVBrNVZjnM?projector=1&messagePartId=0.1
- Sustainability figures sourced from the ReFED Impact Calculator, based on our harvest data.
- https://news.un.org/en/story/2021/03/1086822