Wasting food

[airiefairie.livejournal.com]

Nearly 1/3 of the food which is produced on a global scale every year, or about 1.3 billion tons, gets thrown away or is wasted, according to a report by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.

Given the limited natural resources, it would make much more sense to try to make the use of foods more effective and limit the waste of food, rather than endlessly trying to expand its production in order to feed the ever growing population of the planet.

Just put that into perspective. The wasted amounts of food every year are equal to slightly above half of the world's grain production. Meanwhile, 925 million people suffer of starvation worldwide.

The conclusion of the report is that the main problem in the developing countries is the waste of food through destruction or various factors causing deteriorating production, bad infrastructure, etc. Meanwhile, in the developed countries the main problem is the fact that both food vendors and consumers throw away foods that are completely usable. The research shows that in Europe and North America, consumers waste between 95 and 119 kg of food per capita, every year.

The authors also point out that the food industry puts too much emphasis on the looks of the package of the final product. But in the meantime, researches show that consumers are prone to buying products which do not necessarily match the high standards of package and vision, as long as the foods inside are of good quality and healthy.

As a whole, people in the developed industrial countries are encouraged to buy more food than they need, which is particularly evident from the semi-manufactured foods, the smörgåsborden in the restaurants, etc.

In conclusion, many of these problems could be addressed in a much more efficient way by focusing on the optimisation of food use rather than trying to intensify food production, although this does not mean that the latter should be entirely scrapped either.

References:
http://www.fao.org/fileadmin/user_upload/ags/publications/GFL_web.pdf
http://www.siwi.org/sa/node.asp?node=343
http://www.metafilter.com/103395/New-UN-FAO-Report-Indicates-30-of-Food-Lost-or-Wasted

Comments

[gonzo21.livejournal.com]

I have a sneaking suspicion this is the thinking behind rising food costs here in the UK, to drive food prices up, with the intent of reducing waste.

Which pretty much sucks for people like me who are very careful and don't waste anything.

[airiefairie.livejournal.com]

Or it could be food-vending speculators who are pumping up the prices with no proper oversight, which is another possible explanation.

[a-new-machine.livejournal.com]

A huge portion of food cost is oil cost, given the distances it travels and the energy it needs to stay fresh, and oil has been shooting up again recently. I'd wager that's more likely than a conspiracy to improve efficiency.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

I think that rising oil prices might have more to do with it than waste itself, particularly if a society needs to import food.

[eracerhead.livejournal.com]

If Europe wants less expensive food, they're going to have to allow GM crops.

[ddstory.livejournal.com]

I wonder how we could boil this down to a few catchy slogans about the government stomping on my right to waste food as I please. ;)

Oh, and have you heard from Herr Nietzsche lately? Would be interesting to learn what he thinks about food.

[htpcl.livejournal.com]

I suspect Herr Nietzsche was an incorrigible glutton.

[pastorlenny.livejournal.com]

Why should I care about feeding the hungry? My purpose is to propagate my own genetic material. Feeding the weak just dilutes the gene pool.

[airiefairie.livejournal.com]

Cool story bro! =)

[anfalicious.livejournal.com]

Only feeding the weak males, you want there to be excess females.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

No, actually it does not. Not to judge by the USA where 1/5 the population here goes hungry despite this surplus.

That excess food would indeed get grown and made if we didn't waste it, we could do things like trading it with starving areas and make money. But that's probably Leftist Socialist barbarism to the good libertarians of the community, helping the starving via the free market is such a bad thing.

Developing countries' problems with food have a lot more needed to solve them than simple self-sufficiency, to say that's the solution is a drastic oversimplification.

[airiefairie.livejournal.com]

For developing countries, the answer is likely self-sufficiency. Hunger is usually a problem of economics and politics. We've seen a lot of cases where rote aid helps very little and is sometimes counter-intuitive

You make an interesting point. I recommend this post (http://talk-politics.livejournal.com/172752.html) which in my opinion is one of the greatest posts this community has ever seen.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

A perfectly sensible and logical idea. What would the logistics of it look like?

Logistics of Food Optimization

[russj.livejournal.com]

Currently there are voluntary programs called "Second Harvest" which accept food that would otherwise get thrown away and use it to feed the poor.

If you want something bigger, my tongue-in-cheek proposal for "Universal Food Service" might be able to increase the efficiency of food distribution.

http://community.livejournal.com/talk_politics/965022.html?thread=74682270#t74682270

Unfortunately, large bureaucracies come with their own kind of inefficiency and waste. To me, the biggest downside is that the people would have to give up the luxury of choice under this kind of plan.

[airiefairie.livejournal.com]

Hard to tell in a nutshell. We could start with a change in consumer culture, the first step to which of course is raising awareness. Which I am trying to do my small contribution to, right now.

[blue-mangos.livejournal.com]

This is not an uncommon phenomenon, and it applies to hoarding objects too. I'm glad you've moved past it though :)

[sealwhiskers.livejournal.com]

My grandma did that most of her life, after suffering WWII at a young age.

[rasilio.livejournal.com]

"In conclusion, many of these problems could be addressed in a much more efficient way by focusing on the optimisation of food use rather than trying to intensify food production, although this does not mean that the latter should be entirely scrapped either."

No they couldn't.

How short of literally instituting a food police to track and measure the consumption and waste of every individual can you focus on "food optimization"?

Sure you could put together some public service announcements urging people to consume and waste less and that might help a little, however as Brucenestein already noted there is little to no guarantee that this more efficient use of food product in the first world would not lead to less production and not more food being available for the poor.

The fact is however the health movement is already doing this for you on the consumption end and I suspect that within the next 20 years over consumption will dwindle to become a fraction of what it is today (unless there is another sociological shift away from health consciousness).

In the 3rd world the problem is similar but different in scope. It basically boils down to how do you make a country fix problems that lead to the waste.

You can't just walk into Liberia and say "Hey, stop this stupid civil war, you're wasting food" any more than you can force a country to build an efficient rail or highway network or improve their electricity infrastructure so that all of the remote villages can have refrigerators.

No, focusing on the food waste is a very expensive prospect of dubious benefit, focusing on the production side is a straightforward craft. subsidize the production of food and most importantly guarantee that the producers will no face any losses and you will get more food production.

This does not necessarily make it "right" but it is at least effective as well as being reasonably cost effective.

[the-rukh.livejournal.com]

Funding science that focuses on food reuse developing methods to cheaply reuse food waste, giving grants and/or subsidies to companies that reprocess/collect food waste, etc.

There's a million things that government can do to create bumps of valleys in the playing field of the market to encourage certain behaviors, and none of them require jackboots and swastikas.

[a-new-machine.livejournal.com]

A related article (http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/04/25/the_new_geopolitics_of_food) that's worth reading. New resource wars, perhaps?

[airiefairie.livejournal.com]

Thanks, this is interesting.

[htpcl.livejournal.com]

I like how you spelled smorgasbord in its original form.

[raichu100.livejournal.com]

Interesting post, and a topic I like. Also interesting to me that there is no discussion on shifting away from eating meats to eating grains, which is far more efficient.

[anfalicious.livejournal.com]

Not necessarily; the ideal diet in terms of ecological footprint involves about 200g of meat a week. Vegetarian is much better than meat-at-ever-meal, but if you're actually looking at getting what your body needs in the most efficient package then it's meat for dinner twice a week :)

[terminator44.livejournal.com]

I'm surprised that agricultural subsidies in developed countries haven't been brought up. They are one of the reasons the U.S. produces more food than it needs while poorer nations don't have enough (through undercutting farmers in those nations).

[anfalicious.livejournal.com]

I've mentioned it above :) Just seeing your post now.

It seriously distorts the global market too. See how the massive corn subsidies in the US have collapsed the Mexican corn market; farmers can't afford to grow corn anymore. But the US are using theirs for fuel, so food prices have actually gone up.

[root-fu.livejournal.com]

Agree, totally. Not only is it wasteful, it is something that could possibly be addressed without too much difficulty.