"FOR every apple, parsnip or cauliflower that ends up on a supermarket shelf and is eventually eaten, there will be many that never make it off the farm."

This quote from Jessica Sinclair Taylor, head of comms for food waste charity Feedback, featured in a recent article on the Grocer magazine.

It followed reports that a UK cauliflower farmer was having to plough up £60,000 worth of cauliflowers while retailers import varieties from Europe.

This is just one of many stories I’ve seen that highlight our broken food system.

From farm to fork there are countless factors contributing to our national food waste problem, but when all we hear about is farmers dumping truckloads of parsnips because the supermarkets aren’t interested it’s easier to focus on the top of the chain than take responsibility for the food waste going on in our own homes.

This is something Sainsbury's has just discovered after having to abandon a one-year, £1m food waste reduction program in Derbyshire after it was clear they weren’t going to reach their goal of getting consumers to halve their household food waste.

It appears we need to instigate a pretty big behavioural change to help cut food waste in the home and this something that will need to happen gradually, not overnight.

We need to start with small steps and there are plenty we can all easily take, whether it's donating to community fridges (there are now four in Oxford) or finding creative ways to use up your leftovers.

Thanks to our Friday grocer Ali, Cultivate are just about to take another step to reducing waste in the form of our new seasonal veg cake: Ali has developed an amazingly tasty cake recipe that incorporates the produce we have left at the end of the week that may otherwise have to be wasted.

Making use of the vegetables' natural sugars and textures it creates a deliciously sweet moist cake which changes slightly in flavour depending on what veg goes into it.

It’s a simple step but a great example of how we can all start approaching our food waste in a different way.