One-third of food produced globally wasted annually
(http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2013-09-12/uk/42007176_1_food-wastage-jose-graziano-food-losses) (07.10.2013)
LONDON:
One-third of food produced worldwide is wasted annually while 870 million
people go hungry daily, a Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) report said
on Wednesday.
The
wastage costs global economy around $750 billion and does not include fish and
seafood wasted.
“We
simply cannot allow one-third of all the food we produce go waste or be lost
because of inappropriate practices, when 870 million people go hungry every
day,” said the report released in Rome. It estimated that 1.3 billion
tonne food was wasted annually.
“It
is expected that in less than 37 years, another two billion people will be
added to the global population. How on earth will we feed ourselves in the
future?” the report said Food produced but not eaten annually added 3.3
billion tonne greenhouse gases to the atmosphere.
“Produced
but uneaten food occupies 30% of the world’s farmland,” said the report, the
first to analyze impact of global food wastage from an environmental
perspective. It has looked specifically at its consequences for the climate, water,
land use and biodiversity.
Other
key findings include that annually food produced, but not eaten guzzles up a
volume of water equivalent to the annual flow of Russia’s Volga River or three
times the volume of Lake Geneva. Similarly, 1.4 billion hectares of land – 28%
of the world’s agricultural area – is used annually to produce food lost or
wasted.
“All
of us – farmers and fishers, food processors and supermarkets, local and
national governments, individual consumers — must make changes at every link
of the human food chain to prevent food wastage from happening in the first
place, and re-use or recycle it when we can’t,” said FAO director-general
Jose Graziano da Silva.
Around
54% of the world’s food wastage occurs upstream during production, post-harvest
handling and storage, said the study.
Forty-six
percent of it happens downstream, at the processing, distribution and
consumption stages. As a general trend, developing countries suffer more food
losses during agricultural production. Several world food wastage
“hot-spots” stand out in the study. Wastage of cereals in Asia is a
significant problem, with major impacts on carbon emissions and water and land
use. Rice wastage is particularly noticeable, given its high methane emissions
combined with a large level of wastage.
Fruit
loss contributes significantly to water waste in Asia, where mainly China has
been responsible for staggering amount of food wastage.
Similarly,
large volumes of vegetable wastage in industrialized Asia, Europe and South and
South East Asia translate into a large carbon footprint.
A
British parliamentary panel recently described food wastage monumental globally
and said 30-50% of it was being wasted.