I left the ASABE meeting today to head back west. I decided to test my luck along the way by assuming I could jump on an earlier flight back to SMF in time to make a Southwest connection to SoCal. No such luck. Ultimately, I had to pay a change fee and my arrival airport in order to make an early morning meeting tomorrow. Fortunately, I was able to cancel a Southwest flight and get a refund so it's almost a wash. So was this bad luck? Maybe not – my original flights were delayed to the extent that, at best, I was only going to make it to SFO tonight. Either way, I need to take a different approach to travel planning, perhaps planning ahead a bit more.

 While at the meeting, I decided to sit in on a food engineering session and discover what that sector of expertise is discussing these days. I heard some numbers that caught me by surprise. I need to fact check them but here they are:

• In North America, 21% of income is spent on food. Last I heard, that figure was 11% in the U.S. Perhaps the difference is due to inclusion of Mexico and Canada, or has it increased in the U.S. as well?
• 50% of food grown is wasted, with as much loss in the field as post-sale. Processing and distribution losses are much less than either field or consumer losses. I would have expected consumer waste to exceed field losses.
• Approximately 20 to 22% of meat and milk produced is wasted, while produce and seafood losses exceed 50%. Much of this is attributable to confusing food labels
• Real time shelf life surface indicators that change colors as function of time and temp are a developing tool that will someday replace those confusing labels.
• I learned about forced air precooling, vacuum precooling, hydrocooling, and icing technologies. Not surprising, CA leads precooling implementation from field to shipping.

 What I really enjoyed about the session was that the speakers were challenging the status quo, despite processing not being a primary driver in water or energy use nor food waste. The conversations focused on the fact that science hasn't challenged the long-standing practice of storing frozen food at -18C through out the cold supply chain, despite the fact that a tremendous amount of energy could be saved if key points in the chain could deploy -15C. The science behind current used best info available at the time, but that science is now outdated. Another discussion centered around energy use to prepare food in the home. Home prep the is biggest user of energy in life cycle for food, begging the question of whether or not we should prepare food at home? That's some creative thinking I could really get behind! And one speaker proposed the food processing water use could be drastically reduced, by as much as 75% for clean in place (CIP) processes. Who knows, we may have new recommendations forthcoming in our nutrition and food preservation programs.

 Dr. Ali Pourreza, a relatively new CE Specialist at UC Davis, @alipourreza received the 2018 Sunkist Young Designer Award at today's luncheon awards banquet. pic.twitter.com/2K7ixbXpMR. Previously, Ali was a CE Advisor located at the Kearney REC. Congratulations Ali!

Overall, an interesting week that gave me a few things to think about. Hopefully all of the other UC attendees found it to be time well spent.