For all I know it is just made up. Maybe if media companies got in a better habit of providing citations they'd be more trustworthy.
> If farmers don't use composting, then they have to buy some other source of organic material and fertilizer to grow the next year's crops.
Which, from what I've seen first-hand growing up in the rural Central Valley (and what I continue to see first-hand in other rural areas) is exactly what's happening. Those crops ain't being composted with any sort of regularity (I'm sure some of it might be, since store-bought compost has to come from somewhere, but I'm highly skeptical of the idea that the farms themselves are doing it).
The nugget of truth in the article is that they ain't getting "thrown away", either. Rather, they're typically getting sold to companies using them for raw ingredients on a more industrial scale (think canneries and baked-goods factories and TV dinner makers and such) and/or (more recently) companies that specifically market "ugly produce", and whatever's left over from that often ends up being animal food (whether through manufacture - e.g. dog/cat food - or fed directly to e.g. livestock).
You realize that crops have to have organic material to grow, right? Using leftovers, spoilage, and damaged produce from the previous crop is how agriculture is traditionally done. If farmers don't use composting, then they have to buy some other source of organic material and fertilizer to grow the next year's crops. You say "feeding people is better", but there's more than enough food for everyone. The answer to hunger is not to force farmers to give the leftover produce to poor folks. Rather, it's to give the poor folks the means with which to buy the food they need. There's plenty to be bought! So much that lots of it gets thrown out! It'd be much healthier for the entire system if we addressed the problem at the source and made use of the systems that are in place rather than trying to short-circuit things, resulting in a lot of unintended side-effects.