The paradox of food waste and hunger

The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP)’s Food Waste Index Report, released on Wednesday, revealed staggering facts. There are 780 million people who go hungry every day, and households threw away one billion meals worth one trillion dollars in 2022. This is a global study where the 780 million hungry people are spread across low income countries in different places in the world, while the food that is thrown away is mostly in high-income countries. It would require much planning if the excess food is to reach the hungry. And it cannot be done easily. First, the food that is wasted should not be cooked. If households, restaurants and other places show a sense of economy, they would not cook the food more than it can be consumed. This would mean that a million decisions have to be made at the individual level to see that food is not wasted. The food grains thus saved could be used to feed the hungry at least a meal a day. Inger Andersen, executive director, UNEP, said, “Food waste is a global tragedy. Millions will go hungry today as food is wasted across the world.” Experts point out that food waste is not to be confused with food loss. Food loss is what occurs between the farm and the retail store, food waste is what happens between the retail store and the kitchens. The report says that the billion means figure is a conservative estimate, and that the food waste that occurs is much more than that.

The report has been co-authored with the non-profit Waste & Resources Action Programme (WRAP). Richard Swannell from WRAP says, “You could actually feed all the people that are currently hungry in the world – about 800 million people – over a meal a day just from the food that is wasted every year.” Swannell explained that much of the food waste occurred because people throw away leftovers instead of eating them the next day, and the other major reason is the expiry date that is marked on food packets. Food that is perfectly edible is thrown away because of the misguiding expiry date. According to the report, restaurants, canteens and hotels were responsible for 28 per cent of wasted food, while greengrocers and butchers dumped 12 per cent. The largest contribution is that of households, which stands at 60 per cent, that is, 631 million tonnes of the billion tonnes of food that was wasted in 2022.

There is another important dimension to the issue of food wastage. Kalyani Raghunathan, a research fellow at the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), says that global production of food exceeds global requirement. This would mean that the land used to grow the excess food can be allowed to lie fallow because food production involves emission of methane, which is part of the greenhouse gases that contribute to the increase in global temperature. Food waste takes up 30 per cent of farm land. Swannell says, “If we can reduce food waste across the entire of the supply chain…we can…minimize the land to have set aside that’s growing stuff that’s never used.” And this means a lot in reduction of emission of greenhouse gases. “If food waste was a country it would be the third biggest emitter of greenhouse gas emissions on the planet behind the US and China.” So, it is possible to feed all the people in the world if there is no food wastage, and the greenhouse gas emissions could be reduced vastly if the food that is wasted is not grown in the first place. The solution is both radical and simple. But it requires that a global effort has to be made in the right direction.