One way to tackle food waste? Eat more of what we grow.

While most loss or waste of food takes place in restaurants, hotels, grocery stores, or our own kitchens, crops that go unharvested on farms are a piece of the puzzle too: It’s estimated that 10–19 million tons of produce never make it past the farm gate each year.

On the upside, nearly all of that is composted, fed to farm animals, or tilled back into the ground. But it still means a lot of water, land, and other resources were used to grow food that won’t be eaten by people.

Some loss of crops is nearly impossible to avoid. It can happen because of unpredictable weather events, pests, market price changes, labor shortages or costs, rigid cosmetic standards, or simply because we choose to eat only part of certain plants.

A recent WWF report, No Food Left Behind, dug into why some of these losses occur and examined solutions that might increase the availability of fruits and vegetables in the US without expanding farmland. The report also looked at how to more fully utilize the surplus left in-field. These potential solutions can only come to fruition if we make it profitable for growers to harvest more surplus crops, if standards are revised, and if markets demand them.