January 10, 2013 by jokhinmaung
This blog was published on Reuters Alertnet first here
Half of all the food produced globally is wasted and never makes it onto the plate.
Half of the food bought in Europe and the US is thrown away.
That’s like throwing cash in the bin. The latest report from the Institute of Mechanical Engineers Global Food: Waste not, Want not addresses one of today’s biggest challenges: how to produce more food and eat sustainably in world of finite resources.
I buy peaches in my local shop in the UK fully intending to eat them, but then discover them a week later all rotten.
So why do I do it? Do I really need to buy a whole punnet of peaches, when I have other food to eat?
It doesn’t always cross my mind that I’m throwing away a harvest which farmers in developing countries worked hard to produce. But that’s what it means for farmers like Haringa Ram in India who are often limited to growing one crop a year, cut down meals, and have to take loans to feed their family and to buy animal fodder for his cattle. It’s scandalous that we throw away food, while one person in eight – the equivalent of the combined populations of Europe, Canada, Australia and the US – goes hungry every night.
Largely, we waste food because we get used to buying more than we need and we have the choice. But farmers like Haringa Ram don’t have that choice. And they struggle with poor storage facilities, roads, transport and markets. China, for example, loses 45% of all rice produced.
Women farming in India. Pic: Layton Thompson/Tearfund
On my travels with Tearfund, farmers have woefully described food rotting in poor storage facilities in India, rats eating harvests in Myanmar, locusts in the Sahel (West Africa) and elephants trampling all over crops in Chad.
It’s not just the food that is wasted, but also all the resources used to produce food: land, energy, water and fertilizers. That’s an unnecessary waste of valuable resources that are gone forever, once used.
This is crazy, as we face an increasing pressure on resources needed to produce food – water, land and energy – for a growing population.
Meat eating will almost double by 2050, according to the report. Already a third of all cereal produced globally is fed to animals. Beef requires 50 times more water than vegetables in the processing stage.
It worries me when my friend in Nigeria tells me that he sees a trend in people wanting the ‘good life’ that they see in the West, and modelling their lifestyle in a similar way. Clearly, that is not sustainable all over the world.
We have lost our connection with food producers. We cannot continue with unsustainable eating patterns that mean there is less food available globally, especially for people in developing countries, and that degrade land, soil, and water. We must change our attitudes and behaviour: farmers, food producers, supermarkets and consumers alike.
The UK’s Prime Minister has promised to tackle hunger at the G8 summit this year, which could be a key step forward in ending hunger. He must stick to his promises to increase both aid and funding for farmers to adapt to changes in the climate through the UN Green Climate Fund. Farmers and herders, especially women, need seeds, livestock, land, tools and technologies that can equip them to feed their families, to produce more nutritious food, store it, get it to market, earn money and stop their children being hungry.
We must tackle the deep inequalities in the global food system which allow a few to make billions while leaving hardworking smallscale farmers and ordinary people to struggle to eat enough.
Consumers in developed countries could change the world by shopping more simply. Everyone has different eating habits, but we can buy little and often, not more than we need, plan meals before shopping, be creative with leftovers, buy fair-trade, shop locally and buy food in season. We all have a key role to play, from farm to plate.