المنتدى العالمي المعني بالأمن الغذائي والتغذية

Re: Food losses and waste in the context of sustainable food systems - E-consultation to set the track of the study

Subhash Mehta

DST
India

Dear Colleagues,

 
The focus of this consultation, as I understand is meeting the AR4D needs of the rural poor smallholder producers to minimise waste and losses in transit.
 
By enabling the smallholder communities to access nutritious food produced by them at farm gate price and the growing nutritious food needs of markets in the vicinity, value adding locally to the surplus would minimise waste and transit losses in the future.
 
I am trailing a Russian AR4D output which could be widely replicated after it is locally adapted in each of the soils and agro climatic conditions of all developing countries. This could ensure our ability to feed the growing world populations of the future, reduce hunger, malnutrition, poverty, effects of climate change and suicides whilst improving livelihoods, net income and purchasing power.
 
If Russian families can manage such production in their region's very short growing season (approx. 110 days), imagine the output most parts of the developing world could manage by comparison. 
 
Warm regards
Subhash


http://reclaimgrowsustain.com/content/russians-proving-small-scale-organic-gardening-can-feed-world

Russians Proving That Small-Scale, Organic Gardening Can Feed the World

When it's suggested that our food system be comprised of millions of small, organic gardens, there's almost always someone who says that it isn't realistic. And they'll quip something along the lines of, "There's no way you could feed the world's growing population with just gardens, let alone organically." Really? Has anybody told Russia this?

On a total of approximately 8 million hectares (20 million acres) of land, 16.5 million Russian families grow food in small-scale, organic gardens on their Dachas (a secondary home, often in the extra urban areas). Because growing your own food happens to be a long-lived tradition in Russia, even among the wealthy.

Based on the 1999 "Private Household Farming in Russia" Gosmkostat (State Committee for Statistics) statistics, these Dacha families produced:

  • 38% of Russia's total agricultural output
  • 41% of the livestock
  • 82% of the honey
  • 79% of the sold cattle
  • 65% of the sold sheep and goats
  • 59% of the milk
  • 31% of the sold poultry
  • 28% of the eggs
  • 91% of the potatoes
  • 76% of the vegetables
  • 79% of the fruits
In contrast, the US lawns take up more than twice the amount of land Russia's gardens do (est. 40-45 million acres).