CLIMATE CHANGE RAE ARGENTINA TO THE WORLD

Environment: Reducing food waste helps to combat hunger and global warming

Reducing food loss helps "environmental sustainability, while reducing waste benefits food security," as said by the report on the State of Food and Agriculture 2019, "Progress in Combating Food Loss and Waste," which was presented days ago in Geneva.

The study by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) recalled that the Sustainable Development Goals call for reducing by half the world's per capita food wastage at the retail and consumer levels by 2030, and reducing food losses in production and supply chains, including post-harvest losses.

According to FAO, for strategies aimed at "reducing food loss and waste to be effective, they must be based on a clear and multidimensional understanding of the problem”.

Therefore, "we need to define what is loss and what is waste. In general terms, losses are those that occur along the chain from harvest, slaughter or capture to the retail level, but do not include losses. Waste, on the other hand, occurs at the retail level and at the consumption level," they said.

And in this context, the very high levels of food consumption and waste that occur in cities are questioned, in contrast to the millions who do not have access to food or even live on waste as something naturalized at the social level.

AUDIO 1- The reduction and loss of food - (report La Nación de Paraguay) - 0:36

/// Emissions from agriculture could be reduced by 14 percent with better distribution of food production and consumption. With this data, governments could implement policies and laws that combat food waste and thus collaborate with the advance of climate change. It is estimated that around 40 percent of the world's food is discarded and these percentages could increase in the coming years due to changes in consumption habits in China and India.

((CURTAIN))

Currently, global food losses are estimated at 14 percent, equivalent to about $400 million. The report recognizes that reducing food loss and waste requires "investments of money or time that some actors in the supply chain might consider superior to profits.

According to FAO, smaller lost or wasted food would mean greater food security.

Economist and Assistant Director-General of FAO's Economic Development Department, Máximo Torero, explained that at this moment "the world has enough food to meet the demand, but the population will grow, so any reduction in losses and wastage will mean more food available on the world market.

However, "it must be understood that this does not guarantee that all people will have access to that food or that hunger will end," while "producers with limited resources cannot be forced to make investments if these investments are not going to benefit them, which implies analyzing how these reductions can be achieved.

"That they will be positive for food security, of course they will be positive. But, aware that it is good, we must be careful to have the right incentives so that this can and does happen in real life.

AUDIO 2- How to reduce the amount of waste (FAO report in Spanish) - 2:53

/// This (food waste) not only means an economic loss but all the natural resources used for cultivation, but the whole process of processing, packaging and transport is also lost.

Twenty-eight percent of the world's agricultural land produces crops that are wasted. This percentage is equivalent to the territories of China, Mongolia and the Republic of Kazakhstan.

In addition, the water wasted in this process is equivalent to the flow of the Volga or Zambeza (Africa) rivers. A quantity of water that could satisfy the water needs of millions of households in the world. In addition, the expansion of agricultural and fishing frontiers is affecting biodiversity.

Food producers can invest in better food production technologies. The sellers, in lowering the prices of food "flaws", those unfit for human consumption be reused.

Consumers can consume intelligently, without wasting, ask for smaller rations, make awareness campaigns, reduce landfills to transform them into biogas or compost (of crops). We have to work to ensure that food ends up as food and not as garbage in the dumps. ///

All these statements will explain the relationship between low food losses and waste with the environment is explained by reduced carbon emissions and the best one of the natural resources. Reducing losses means better use of land and water, because less water would be consumed and less land would be exploited.

And by making production more efficient, you need to produce less and reduce emissions from agricultural products.

"If we look at the value chain from the farm to the consumer, we find that on the consumer side we will have greater gains in terms of cutting emissions by reducing waste, while on the producer side the gains will be greater in terms of land and water use," said Torero.

 

PlayPlay