Stop Food Wastage
Stop Food Wastage
Within as little as 30 years, the world will need to produce 70 percent more food to feed the expected 9 billion people on the planet.
Or will we?
A new study by the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization found that limiting food waste globally could reduce the need to raise more food by 60 percent. In other words, the need to produce more and more food could be dramatically offset by reducing the amount that is wasted.
Topping the list for most wasted foods are vegetables and cereals in Industrialized Asia (China, Republic of Korea and Japan) and cereals and starchy roots in South & South East Asia. Most of the waste in these regions occurs during agricultural production and in postharvest storage.
The impacts of this waste are enormous.
Not only does food waste increase the need for higher yields and pushes nations to encourage ever larger farms, rotted food also means wasted valuable resources. And the higher up the food system the waste occurs from field to consumer, the more detrimental the waste is to the environment.
Wastage of cereals in Asia emerges as a significant problem for the environment, with major impacts on carbon, blue water and arable land. Rice represents a significant share of these impacts, given the high carbon-intensity of rice production methods (e.g. paddies are major emitters of methane), combined with high quantities of rice wastage.
Therefore, any solutions to world hunger must start with a massive reduction of food waste. The World Vegetable Center, the Global Postharvest Forum, and UC Davis’ Postharvest Technology Center are all working on just that.
Feel free to call us for any queries, or just drop in a mail [email protected]
