Since very young age we have been taught by our parents not to waste food and always respect it value, but as we, along with the world grows older we tend to forget the value of food and start taking it for granted. Fast forwarding from the industrial revolution of developed countries to 21st century, the world is a mess in our practice yet knowing the destruction of lands and immense food waste, we still haven’t figured out how to solve Food waste, Green house gas, Human hunger and waiting for the catastrophe to happen. The world population in 2018 holds to 7.7 billion people and it is expected to grow to 9.6 billion by 2050( worldometers, FAO, 2015 ), but 1 billion people go hungry every year, even thou enough food is wasted ( which are perfectly edible ) that a quarter of that would be enough to feed the population. As I believe it is time to bring the ugly food to the market and solve environmental issues related to it one by one.
In different cultures food waste goes against the moral grain but in others its accepted as a way of life. As the worlds population grows in gastronomical rate so the wealthier people who will demand more food and its by products, with it does arise two very important problems, 1) population growth by 2050 will contribute to higher emissions by land grabbed for enhancing food production (Lambin and Meyfroidt, 2011) , 2) as the worlds population grows, so will the waste production rise and double by 2050 (Hoornweg et al. 2013). In United States alone 50% of all food food is wasted through out the process from the fields to the households, in Britain 30 million tonnes of food is wastes annually, in Japan the country which strives on innovation, manages to waste US$ 101.6 billion yearly, this figures do provide us with perspective in developed world, were food is treated more like disposable commodity, and is disconnected from social and environmental impact it has related with its production. According to the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), food waste currently represents the single largest type of waste entering landfills (Nishida, 2014) and with the depletion of natural resources used in production. There is also acceptance of two problems ( food waste and natural resource depletion ) can be minimized altogether by using the waste as a resource and new consumption model is needed to minimize the amount of food wasted at the end of supply chain ( issues related to higher income countries ). I shall argue and discuss the reasons why foods should not be presented based only on their cosmetic standards and the impacts it has in relation to it, how such problems can be used to our advantage by designing new model and being more acceptance towards food rather than industrial standards.
Behind the Waste?
Theres a huge difference between what we can state as food loss and food waste, Loss occurs at the very beginning of the food chain, during production, growth, post harvest, and processing, such losses can be associated with the developing country, which general tends to lack or is in the process of modernization the infrastructure to distribute all of its food, and its prevalent in developed country. Waste, on the other hand, mostly occurs towards the end of the food chain, most notably by retailers and households, in general the waste is contributed by the richer nations, the higher the household income, higher rate the waste. In continent such as Africa and Asia, due to lack of storage and transportation infrastructure, 20 to 35 percent of the food are lost to fungus, insects, costly nearly US$ 120 billion each year (FOA).
As per the western nations, with proper infrastructure, communication makes it easy for the foods to be delivered to retail level, but there on everything goes wrong, according to FAO, western nations waste 1.72 trillion pounds of food a year, equal to net production of South Asia. Huge quantity of such waste can be associated with Food Retailers, due to routinely over ordering, fearing of running out, resulting in in store lose of 50 billion pounds of food annually, such can also be pointed at the consumers, as we overbuy beyond our need because relatively cheap and being available at every corner.
Waste of Resource and Environmental impact
To put all the waste in perspective each year, Global food would be 1.7 billion tons of food, estimated value at $870 billion, almost 37% of all food produced for human consumption. The environmental impact from food production on greenhouse gas emission is 3.5 billion tons of CO2, water consumption is 70 billion gallons, land required is 3.89 billion acres ( 31% of worlds agriculture land and to put it to comparison, area significantly larger than Canada) was used to grow food and everything related, that no one would eat. In US Food Waste Costs quarter of all fresh water used, 7% of total oil consumption, US$ 180 billion per year (more than $60 billion from households), $800 million per year just to dispose of the food. To add insult to the environment, the by product of food waste is methane, a greenhouse gas far more dangerous than carbon dioxide, put it in imaginable way, if global food waste was a country, it would be the third largest emitter of greenhouse gas after USA and China. The shear volume of waste in terms of energy, humans, resource is beyond ones imagination until its experienced first hand, thats when we start to realize the ignorance we humans have grown and cultivated towards food, while millions lack the basic necessity on the other side of the world and we take it for granted just for the mere reason its cheap.
The victim of cosmetic standards created by government and supermarkets.
Before the start of 20th century gleaning was the practice followed by much of the farmers, after the harvest of the field they would allow the poor to collect rest of the leftovers, as nothing was considered waste. With the rise of supermarketer giants, and their slogan of “we supply fresh high quality produce for less” and the governments backing due to this companies supporting their political agendas, as one farmer in California put it “if there is a willing buyer and a willing seller, why would the governments want to prevent the sale of safe and edible products?”. Each year about 40% goes to uneaten, tossed out or left to rot just because of cult of perfection, “it all has to be perfect” quotes a producer from central Florida.
Wastage of food is often described as “farm to fork” problem, when produce is lost on the fields due to shape it is left on the field to save expense and labour investment, left to degrade in the warehouse because of blemishes which does not necessarily hamper the freshness or the quality. According to many independent research institution there is yet no clear statistic of how much food is lost in USA, world resources institute are working on towards scaling the waste and its devastation followed. According to experts governments are addressing the concerns and know they cannot effectively fight climate change and hunger without reducing food waste, in contrast 49 million Americans struggle to put food on the table, thats almost 1 in 6 Americans face hunger (USDA), as the director general of international food policy research institute in wWashington put it “ that is why food waste, food loss matters a great deal. People are still hungry”.
The main problem being the retail giants who argue on the best interest of the consumers according to food experts. Roni Neff, the director of food system environmental sustainableility and public health program at the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future in Baltimore states “ fruit and vegetables are often called out because retail giants think nobody would buy them”. Problem being retail chains have too much power and no over sight over them, due to which it creates fear along the supply chain, as producer don’t want to piss them off. It is bizarre that the size, shape and taste of food should have been dictated to us by what is most profitable for supermarkets.
Fixing the Food Problem.
If theres anything to be proud of Immense food waste is, we humans have the capability to feed everyone of the current population and the coming generation, also the huge gap for improvement. In developing country different agencies are helping small scale farmers with building low budget warehouse, low cost techniques for refrigeration and tools for preserving food products, helping them maintain their produce and reducing losses, for example onions in Indian from 42% to 7%, tomatoes in Afghanistan, from 47% to 6%. The farmers are learning different way to maintain their harvest for longer shelf life, they are able to sell at the market for longer period of time, such can be said for Afghanistan when FAO gave 18000 small metal silos to farmers, there was a dramatic shift of loss in cereal grain and grains from 19% to less than 5%.
Meanwhile in US, due to recent spotlight from media and environmental group, growing number of restaurants have started to take measures of what they 89(toss away), a step towards reducing loss. Also with modern innovation in technology, its saving diary products, eggs etc. Walmart would usually dump the entire cartoon if one egg was cracked rather than just replacing the egg with equally fresh new one. Now the company has adopted new automation program that use laser system to pull out individual eggs with its product information, letting the workers to easily replace with new egg of the same specs. According to Walmart if adopted nationwide, the system can save roughly five billion eggs a year from premature waste. Than theres the “sell by” and “use by” dates which does cause a lot of uanessacry confusion and leads to purging them all before the end date, the natural resources defense council is urging the US government to standardize the confusing date labels with proper description. On the other hand food tech companies and scholars are lobbying schools to introduce home economics classes, which teachers our new generation to accept different shaped produce, how to store food properly, eat leftovers, share food what they can’t eat and use what remains to make compost.