AP
A vegetable vendor sells onions and potatoes at market in Mumbai, India. At least this type of market is not lumbered with unrealistic sell-by dates on the produce. Picture: AP
We produce sufficient food to provide a healthy balanced diet for everyone on Earth. Yet we squander vast amounts of this fare through a wasteful supply chain that fails to efficiently shift our food from farm to plate. It is time to fix this dysfunctional global supply system.
Interestingly – and contrary to common belief – end consumers are often the least wasteful link in the food chain. Yet in some countries, like the United Kingdom, nearly half of consumer-ready food is thrown away before it is eaten. The reasons for these enormous levels of wastage vary and are generally related to levels of national development and wealth.
A recent analysis undertaken by the UK-based Institution of Mechanical Engineers (IME) (more on why engineers are advising us about food waste later) exposes some staggering numbers. They estimate that we collectively waste between a third and half of all of the food produced globally – between 1.2 billion and 2 billion tons every year.
Obscene
This amount of waste is obscene in a world where an estimated 20 percent of humanity suffers from food insecurity.
The study highlights some major gaps and shortcomings in our global food supply chain and illustrates how our broken system fails us on unprecedented scales.
This inefficiency is worrying from a humanitarian perspective, but perhaps more importantly, from an environmental sustainability perspective. We are not simply wasting food; we are wasting fuel, fertiliser, water and precious arable land. We are not feeding hungry bellies but entities within a greedy, dystopian food production model.
A profitable system clearly does not equate to efficiency. While most farmers extract sufficient profit to remain in business – or are subsidised to provide inefficient services – around a quarter of wasted food occurs at farm level.
This is not always the fault of farmers. For instance, in developed nations it is unprofitable to harvest misshapen fruit or vegetables no matter how tasty or nutritious they may be. While such products could be sent to less selective markets, distance renders this option unprofitable. In the UK nearly half of all potatoes grown do not even reach the market.
Another quarter of wastage occurs after harvest, during handling and storage. Different factors impact different farming models and regions. For instance it is just acceptable to waste 0.75 percent of the crop in storage in Australia. Yet recently in Ghana 50 percent of a million-ton maize crop was lost through poor storage. India wastes around 18 million tons of wheat annually through bad storage, an amount equal to Australia’s total average harvest.
Economists and food companies constantly remind us how miraculous our food production system is. We are told how food reaches market efficiently and on time. Clearly this is a lie of gargantuan proportions. While the system may be economically efficient (from a limited perspective), it is extremely inefficient from a realistic, practical angle.
The trade in major commodity crops is controlled by a handful of large distribution companies (the ABCD companies) who cynically place profit above efficiency. Food is not even called food but “softs” in this nether world of speculation.
Water use is another major concern. Agriculture is the biggest water user of any industry, utilising around 70 percent of the total, or about 2.7 trillion cubic metres per year. On face value alone we lose up to 35 percent of our total annual water supply through wasteful supply chain practices, let alone inefficient irrigation methods.
Worse, around one third of readily available fresh water is already exploited. If we follow the existing food production model, the Institution of Mechanical Engineers estimates we would require between 10 trillion and 13.5 trillion cubic metres a year by 2050. Even allowing for some increase in efficiency, we would have very little reserve capacity. This will have devastating impacts on already water-stressed ecological regions.
The final quarter of food wastage occurs at the distribution level – between the producers, supermarkets and consumers. Obviously this amount changes significantly between first and third world models – however, a mid-developed nation like South Africa wastes around 20 percent at this level, while in more developed nations like the UK and the US this waste approaches half of all consumer-ready food.
Causes include unrealistic use-by dates, fussy consumers and cheap food. Consumers in developed countries pay historically low proportions of income for food. These low costs promote a culture of waste.
So why are engineers examining these shortcomings in our food supply system?
Simply because they feel that they are able to significantly improve efficiencies within the existing system. Engineers are able to design and produce more efficient water delivery systems and are capable of improving food storage methods, both dry and refrigerated.
They can improve how we handle, transport and even manufacture our food.
But possibly one of the most important issues raised by the Institution of Mechanical Engineers study – and echoed by numerous other studies around the world which reach similar conclusions – is that our main problems are not in a failure to produce sufficient food to feed an increasing population.
Our production systems are highly, possibly even excessively, efficient from an economic perspective. However, in an ecological and sustainability context they are massively inefficient and wasteful. What we need to manage is how we are able to practically and affordably feed a growing population with what we have.
Do we really need industrial scale agriculture to feed the world when we are diverting vast amounts of food crops into “biofuels” (a misnomer if ever there was), made from maize, sugar cane or palm oil? There are far more efficient ways to provide energy than through agricultural production techniques that require up to 25 calories of fossil fuel energy to produce a single calorie of food energy.
Do we really need to pursue commodity-driven agriculture based on a profoundly inefficient meat production system? Can we waste our energy, water, land and ecological resources when studies clearly show we should be shifting towards locally based, diverse, robust food production systems in order to conserve these in order to deal with climatic instability and global population growth?
How can we justify continuing to fish out our oceans while wasting up to 60 percent of the fish species we catch as by-catch, while wasting more when the fish is landed?
We can support our growing global population. But in order to do so we must significantly improve how we produce, store, manufacture and manage our food supplies. Allied to this, we need to stabilise global population and accelerate the shift toward a negative global growth rate.
Even if we only examine global carrying capacity from the simple perspective of food production and the consequent human impacts on our fragile ecological support systems, it is blatantly clear we must change how we manage our affairs. We simply cannot continue to waste half of our land, water, fuel and agricultural resources through market and system inefficiencies.
The Earth will certainly survive humans. The real and rather more immediately relevant question is whether humans will survive what they are doing to the Earth. Our shift to a more equitable and sustainable world must begin by fixing our broken agricultural model.
l Ashton is a writer and researcher working in civil society.
