Did you know that roughly one third of the food produced in the world for human consumption every year, which is about 1.3 billion tonnes, gets lost or wasted?
Food losses and waste amounts to roughly US$ 680 billion in industrialised countries and $310bn in developing countries.
Industrialised and developing countries dissipate roughly the same quantities of food respectively 670 and 630 million tonnes.
That is huge!
Fruits and vegetables, plus roots and tubers have the highest wastage rates of any food.
Global quantitative food losses and waste per year are roughly 30 per cent for cereals, 40-50pc for root crops, fruits and vegetables, 20pc for oil seeds, meat and dairy plus 35pc for fish.
Every year, consumers in rich countries waste almost as much food (222 m tonnes) as the entire net food production of sub-Saharan Africa (230 m tonnes).
The amount of food lost or wasted every year is equivalent to more than half of the world’s annual cereals crop (2.3 bn tonnes in 2009/2010).
Per capita waste by consumers is between 95-115 kg a year in Europe and North America, while consumers in sub-Saharan Africa, south and south-eastern Asia, each throw away only 6-11 kg a year.
Tuesday marked World Food Day, a day of action dedicated to tackling world hunger, where people from around the world come together to declare their commitment to eradicate worldwide hunger.
And after a period of decline, world hunger is on the rise again. Today, it is estimated that 820m people suffer from chronic undernourishment.
According to the latest Food and Agriculture Orgnisation (FAO) reports it seems conflict, extreme weather events linked to climate change, economic slowdown and rapidly increasing overweight and obesity levels are reversing progress made in the fight against hunger and malnutrition.
Food loss and waste also amount to a major squandering of resources, including water, land, energy, labour and capital and needlessly produce greenhouse gas emissions, contributing to global warming and climate change.
So surely it stands to reason that the less we waste, the easier it will be to meet the food needs of the global population in coming years.
World hunger is sadly on the rise: an FAO report shows that in 2016 there were 38m more people suffering from hunger than in 2015.
Every day, more than 800m people struggle to get any food at all, and risk starvation.
That’s more than the inhabitants of Indonesia, the US and Pakistan put together!
I don’t know about you, but it seems that we really should do whatever it takes to combat the problem of hunger. And I guess we re passed the point of talking about, we rally should take action and make a difference!
- Reem Antoon is a former GDN news editor. She can be reached on: clanmun4@gmail.com