When your mother asked you to clean your plate so that no child goes hungry, she was right. It is still the easiest way to increase the world’s food supply by a third in these expensive times. In theory, that is. In reality, some kinds of wastage are harder to stop than others. ET helps you join the dots. One kind of loss is familiar. It happens on millions of small farms in the world’s poorer nations. Farm produce is lost after the harvest during storage and transportation.
Rats and insects eat into crops while heat and humidity make them rot. For farmers, each kilo lost is also income loss. But they watch helplessly as lack of scale and lack of funds put preventive measures beyond their reach. In India, such loss takes away 3% of cereal supply. Ministry of Food Processing says fruits and vegetables worth . 55,000 crore are wasted annually due to heat and poor handling. On the flipside, our small budgets make us thrifty food consumers. A family only buy enough for a week or sometimes even for that day. There are recipes for each part of a vegetable.
We eat leftovers, re-use , recycle and give away extra to the maid. Conspicuous waste is mostly at wedding and festival feasts. Entire distribution chains have developed for handling waste. Cooking oil is a classic example. India’s better hotels change their frying oil frequently. The used oil is systematically collected, cleaned and sold to smaller restaurants, cafeterias and canteens. Secondhand oil from these kitchens is bought by the neighbourhood halwa . Their residue is sold to roadside dhabas and vendors. Not a drop is wasted. In China, 3 million tonnes 'ditch oil' collected from restaurants and even trash heaps is consumed annually , according to one investigative report.
This extreme food recycling is illegal and hazardous for health. But you get the picture. A different kind of waste occurs in developed countries. Rich countries produce 900 kg food for each person, two times more than the poorest regions. Little is lost postharvest . But 40% of this food is wasted in the kitchen and supermarket . Retailers reject any fresh produce that doesn’t look just so. Consumers over-stock their fridge, tempted by "Buy three, pay two" type promotions . Oversized ready-to-eat meals make it tough to finish a portion .
A UK government agency survey says British households throw away 8 million tonnes of food and drink every year, 60% of which could have been eaten. The sheer size of the problem is startling. FAO this month estimated consumers in rich countries waste almost as much food (222 million tonnes) as the entire net food production of sub-Saharan Africa. Each consumer in Europe and North America throws away 95-115 kg a year. Consumers in sub-Saharan Africa and South and Southeast Asia each throw away only 6-11 kg a year. Herein lies the challenge. Postharvest loss is easier to tackle because both farmers and governments are keen on a solution. The necessary technology, management and financing are all available .
Waste in rich nations is cultural and goes deeper. Until consumers realize the enormity of their actions , food will continue to get trashed. Few governments have the political will to take on such a touchy subject. Awareness about recycling, composting, portion size and the carbon footprint of wasted food is spreading. As the battle with obesity shows, food habits are tough to dislodge. Compared to consumers in developed nations, we may feel smug for now. But with rising incomes, Indian consumers could well acquire equally wasteful habits.
Modern retailers, for instance, know we first eat with our eyes. Fruits and vegetables on supermarket shelves are much better looking than those sold by the roadside hawker. Great care is taken to reject “off spec” produce that is wholesome otherwise . If retailers don’t adopt a zero waste policy, over time urban fruit and vegetable shortages could worsen. Food loss and waste are a major squandering of precious resources , including water, land, energy , labour and capital.
Experts say we need 70% more food in the next 40 years. But food in dustbins shows consumer demand in developed countries may be exaggerated . By saving the one billion tonnes that is lost each year, producers and consumers can take some pressure off agriculture. And perhaps also feed the world's one billion hungry people. Cleaning up your plate is sound economic sense. Mother did know best.
