Every day, Tianna Kennedy walks through the crops that blanket the 70-acre expanse of idyllic farmland she helms in New Yorks Northern Catskill region.

Kennedy grows hundreds of varieties of organic vegetables and herbs. As she walks, she closely examines her collards. She used to grow more of them, but her customers just werent buying them in the realm of greens, it seems kale is still king. So shes down to a quarter-bed of collards.

She continues on to her fava beans. Kennedys indifferent to them, but many of the 15 different chefs she counts among her customers just cant get enough, even as she doubles her production of them again and again.

Thus is the daily push and pull of business for Star Route Farm , which Kennedy and her farm partner, Walter Riesen, established two years ago.

In addition to supplying restaurants with produce, Kennedy operates a 150-member community-supported agriculture group and takes an unusual harvest-to-order approach to her business. Plantings are carefully planned based on chef and CSA customer feedback and observations from previous growing seasons, in an effort to more accurately predict what customers will want, and thus reduce waste.

While food waste has suddenly become a popular topic in the food and farming worlds, for Kennedy its simply about survival amid alarmingly tight margins.

Theres this myth that farms will always exist and farmers will always exist, she said. A lot of peoples lives are on the line, a lot of rural economies are on the line. Shopping from your local farmers and local farmers markets is not just cute. Its keeping that economy alive.

Kennedy is part of a new breed of farmers working hard to avoid food waste in an industry with a reputation for a whole lot of it.

According to the best available estimates, about 20 percent of the fruits and vegetables the agricultural industry grows dont even make it off the farm. And that number doesnt include food loss that occurs due to handling, storage, processing or packaging issues.

All that waste adds up. According to Feeding America estimates, at least 6 billion pounds of fresh produce goes either unharvested or unsold each year in the U.S.

Of course, producing just the right amount of food has been a challenge for farmers for as long as there have been farms. And there will always be factors beyond any one persons control that contribute to food waste at the individual farm level: weather, pests, disease, labor shortages, changes in market price.

Still, there is a growing movement committed to getting creative and doing something about it. And a lot of farmers, large and small, are on board.

Ugly Food

For larger farming operations in particular, pressure from retailers to deliver produce that looks a certain way often leads directly to surpluses.

Most retailers adhere to strict cosmetic standards put in place by the U.S. Department of Agriculture to determine the acceptable size, shape and color of the produce they sell. The USDA describes these standards as a common language that makes it easier to do business.