The article below is a recent one that has looked at food waste globally. There are studies for Australia and the USA that I am aware of [ the US one was the subject of a post a while back], but different regions tend to have food waste in different parts of the food chain, with production and other early areas more common in less developed areas.
But the big one is that the further along the chain the loss is, the greater the energy and other embedded costs are that are lost, or wasted. Westernised societies thus do not do well in this regard.
We all need to lower our food wastage and losses - this is another timely reminder. It is not a new issue - see the old poster from WW1.!!
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| Not a new issue - but a bigger one! |
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Around the world some 1.3 billion tonnes of food waste is
produced annually, at a direct economic cost of some $750 billion, according to
a new report by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations
(FAO).
The report claimed that the huge volume of food going to
waste annually is not only causing major economic losses but also wreaking
significant harm on the natural resources that mankind relies upon.
The study, Food Wastage Footprint: Impacts on Natural Resources
is said to be the first to analyse the impacts of global food waste from an
environmental perspective, looking specifically at its consequences for the
climate, water and land use, and biodiversity.
Who wastes what?
According to the FAO, 54% of the world's food waste occurs
'upstream' - during production, post-harvest handling and storage, while 46%
happens 'downstream,' at the processing, distribution and consumption stages.
As a general trend, developing countries were found to
suffer greater losses during agricultural production, while food waste at the
retail and consumer level tends to be higher in middle- and high-income regions
- where it accounts for 31% to 39% of total wastage - than in low-income
regions (4% to 16%).
The report also found that the later a food product is lost
along the chain, the greater the environmental consequences - as the
environmental costs incurred during processing, transport, storage and cooking
must be added to the initial production costs.
Hot spots
Several world food waste hot-spots' were identified by the
study:
The waste of cereals in Asia was found to be a significant
problem, with major impacts on carbon emissions and water and land use. Rice's
profile is particularly noticeable, given its high methane emissions combined
with a large level of wastage.
The volume of meat waste across the globe was found to be
comparatively low. However, the meat sector generates a substantial impact on
the environment in terms of land occupation and carbon footprint, especially in
high-income countries and Latin America, which in combination account for 80%
of all meat wastage. Excluding Latin America, high-income regions are
responsible for about 67% of all meat waste
Meanwhile fruit waste was said to contribute significantly
to water waste in Asia, Latin America, and Europe - mainly as a result of
extremely high wastage levels.
Similarly, large volumes of vegetable wastage in industrialised Asia, Europe,
and South and South East Asia was shown to translate into a large carbon
footprint for that sector.
Causes and solutions
A combination of consumer behaviour and lack of
communication in the supply chain were found to underlie the higher levels of
food waste in affluent societies.
According to the FAO consumers fail to plan their shopping,
over purchase, or over react to 'best before dates’, while quality and
aesthetic standards lead retailers to reject large amounts of perfectly edible
food.
In developing countries, significant post-harvest losses in
the early part of the supply chain were reported to be a key problem, occurring
as a result of financial and structural limitations in harvesting techniques
and storage and transport infrastructure, combined with climatic conditions
favourable to food spoilage.
To tackle the problem, FAO has launched a 'tool-kit'
that contains recommendations on how food loss and waste can be reduced at
every stage of the food chain and details three general levels where action is
needed:
High priority should be given to reducing food wastage in the first place.
Beyond improving losses of crops on farms due to poor practices, doing more to
better balance production with demand would mean not using natural resources to
produce unneeded food in the first place.
In the event of a food surplus, reuse within the human food chain -
finding secondary markets or donating extra food to feed vulnerable
members of society - represents the best option. If the food is not fit for
human consumption, the next best option is to divert it for livestock feed,
conserving resources that would otherwise be used to produce commercial
feedstuff.
Where reuse is not possible, recycling and recovery should be pursued:
by-product recycling, anaerobic digestion, composting, and incineration with energy
recovery allow energy and nutrients to be recovered from food waste were
all said to represent a significant advantage over dumping it in landfills.
“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,” urged
FAO director general, José Graziano da Silva.
Read More
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