SAVE FOOD Newsletter
February 2016
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NewsOn the occasion of the Fourth Summit of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC), the region’s leaders reaffirmed their commitment to prioritize the consolidation and implementation of the CELAC Plan for Food Security, Nutrition and Hunger Eradication and reiterated their request that FAO support the process. This include also the creation of the Regional Alliance for Reducing Food Waste and Losses and the establishment of national committees seeking to halve waste in the region by 2030. Read more...
The SAVE FOOD Asia-Pacific Campaign seeks to raise awareness of the high levels of food losses – particularly postharvest losses – and the growing problem of food waste in the region. This advocacy initiative will encourage consumers to have more respect for food and to stop wasting this precious commodity. According to statistics from the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific, an estimated 653 million people across the region were living below the national poverty line in 2010. Read more...
An overhaul of food systems – production, distribution and consumption – to make them more sustainable, will be needed to meet the food needs of a growing and ever more urban world population. That will mean attacking food waste, which is especially high in urban areas. Read more...
Edward Perchard, Resource
On 3 February the French parliament has adopted a series of measures against food waste after the senate unanimously voted a bill addressing the opportunities for supermarkets to take action. The bill includes actions that prevent throwing safe and nutritious food away or making unsold food unfit for consumption through the addition of chemicals. Read more...
United States Department of Agriculture (USDA)
Where is food being lost? It is difficult to measure exactly how much food people, retailers, and restaurants are throwing away without going through everyone’s garbage, so USDA’s Economic Research Service (ERS) developed the Loss-Adjusted Food Availability Data (LAFA) Series, which gives a proxy for consumption and loss for over 200 types of food at the retail and consumer levels.
Read more... United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP)
A coalition of 30 international leaders launched the Champions 12.3 initiative at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland to inspire ambitious action on reducing global food losses and waste. The Think.Eat.Save Campaign led by UNEP in partnership with FAO raises awareness and promotes practices and policies for reducing food losses and waste. To meet this target, there is need for baseline data on current production and consumption patterns.
Read more... Morgan McKay, MTN New
Students are throwing away less food at Montana State University (MSU) in the United States of America after a study was carried out with the aim of cutting food waste by half. “Results showed that small changes in the food environment can lead to drastic changes in food waste and so this semester we continue to educate consumers in the dining hall about food waste,” said Dr Selena Ahmed, Professor of Sustainable Food and Bioenergy Systems at MSU. Read more...
Jonathan Bloom, The Plate
More than half of Kenya’s mango crop – 64 percent – never makes it to market, and 300 000 tonnes of mangoes are squandered every year in a country where many face hunger. Now, thanks to SAVE FOOD and its partners, the Kenyan company Azuri Health is building a mango drying and packaging facility so that this nutritious and tasty fruit can be exported to other countries. Read more...
Financial Times
Some food waste is inevitable: potato peels, woody broccoli stalks, bones, gristle, egg shells and tea leaves. Other waste is avoidable but excusable: stale bread, milk or yoghurt that has past its best-before date, pieces of fatty meat, or exotic fruit rejected by a child. However, most food waste is both unnecessary and avoidable. In recent years, studies by FAO and others have been raising awareness of this issue and countries are beginning to record reductions in food waste. Read more...
ADM Institute for the Prevention of Postharvest Loss, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
Paddy drying is often a problem in Bangladesh because of rain and cloudy weather in summer, and fog and short days in winter. High moisture promotes the development of insects and moulds that are harmful to the paddy. In addition, farmers cannot store paddy for long periods because they lack effective on-farm drying technologies at affordable cost. An estimated 14 percent of the paddy crop is lost between the cutting and storage stages. A research project is identifying ways of reducing these losses. Read more...
Sustainable Brands
Energy, water, waste, chemical consumption and support for local communities are issues that hotels are now more likely to take into consideration as they seek to increase the sustainability of their operations, for ethical, financial or branding reasons. However, despite its staggering environmental impact, food waste is not included in the criteria for the most advanced green hotel certification schemes. Read more...
The Consumer Goods Forum (CGF)
CGF has published an updated version of its booklet Climate change, which includes more than 20 examples of how CGF members are making business changes to bring positive impacts for the climate through various activities on food loss and waste, recycling, sustainable sourcing and energy efficiency.
Read more... World Bank
Food systems are on the climate change map and embedded in the language of the Paris Climate Agreement. This is a major change from past perceptions of agriculture as a contentious area leading to fractious debates on climate change-related food loss and damage. Read more...
Mamadou Biteye, Managing Director, Africa, The Rockefeller Foundation
In Africa, 50 percent of fruits and vegetables, 40 percent of roots and tubers, and 20 percent of cereals, all of which are staple foods, are lost postharvest. In January, at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, The Rockefeller Foundation announced a US$130 million initiative on reducing food waste around the world. The wide-ranging initiative will cover topics from thrown-out crops to excess food at the dinner table. Read more...
The Guardian
A YouGov study for the United Kingdom food retailer Sainsbury’s reveals the high cost of food waste in the country, with an average family of four throwing away the equivalent of 11 meals – or nearly £60 (US$88) – a month. This is almost twice as much as the £30-worth of food a month that 81 percent of families believe they throw away. Read more...
Feed the Future
In many developing countries, more than half of all the fruits and vegetables grown are never eaten. Instead, they are lost to damage or spoilage after harvest. The risk of incurring losses leads farmers to sell their fresh produce immediately, at whatever price they can get, before they lose the crops that represent investments of labour, water and agricultural inputs. Ron Khosla, a farmer in New York State, United States of America, has invented a small electrical device that turns a well-insulated room into a cold room for storage. Improving postharvest handling of fruits and vegetables can significantly prolong their freshness – and cooling is key.
Read more... Food Tank
A new book by John Mandyck, Chief Sustainability Officer for the United Technologies Corporation in the United States, explains the connections between climate change, food waste and hunger, and the role of the cold chain. Read more...
The Economic Times
According to current estimates, India’s total population will reach 1.45 billion by 2028, and 1.7 billion by 2050. As India is already struggling to feed its population, its current food crisis could worsen significantly in the coming decades. This makes food loss and waste a critical action item for India. Read more...
Guardian NewsPapers
Postharvest losses are a great concern in Nigeria: although the country is rich in agricultural produce, food insecurity remains a huge problem. Most losses of farm produce are the result of pest infestations, rodents, and deterioration because of improper handling, postharvest processing, packaging and storage. Postharvest losses are as high as 40 percent in some cases, according to statistics from the Nigerian Stored Products Research Institute (NSPRI).
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