Are we kidding ourselves on… food waste?

Urgent action is needed to stop half of all food ending up as waste, warns a report – so it can help feed a world population set to reach nine billion people by 2050.

The study – by the Institution of Mechanical Engineers – found that up to 50% of all food produced around the world never reaches a human stomach. Instead, much of it is dumped due to overly strict sell-by dates, buy-one-get-one free offers and unrealistic consumer demands.

With UN predictions that there could be an extra three billion people to feed by the end of the century and increasing pressure on the resources needed to produce food, including land, water and energy, the institution is calling for urgent action to tackle this waste.

“The amount of food wasted and lost around the world is staggering,” says Tim Fox, the institution’s head of energy and environment. “This is food that could be used to feed the world’s growing population – as well as those in hunger today.”

Key facts

The Global Food Waste Not Want Not report found that:

• 30-50% (or 1.2-2bn tonnes) of food produced each year never reaches a human stomach
• Up to 30% of UK vegetables are left unharvested because of their appearance
• Up to half of the food bought in Europe and the USA is thrown away by the consumer
• Some 550bn cu m of water is wasted globally growing crops that never reach the consumer
• It takes 20-50 times as much water to produce 1kg of meat as it does for 1kg of vegetables
• Demand for water in food production could reach 10-13tr cu m a year by 2050
• Eliminating losses and waste could provide 60-100% more food

Source: Institution of Mechanical Engineers

Much food is dumped because we don’t store or transport it properly, says Dr Fox, describing it as an unnecessary waste of the land, water and energy resources that are used in food production, processing and distribution.

“The reasons for this situation range from poor engineering and agricultural practices, inadequate transport and storage infrastructure through to supermarkets demanding cosmetically perfect foodstuffs and encouraging consumers to overbuy through buy-one-get-one free offers.”

As the world population rises, reducing food waste can play a key role in feeding an extra three billion mouths, believes Dr Fox – particularly given the added stresses caused by global warming and the popularity of meat, which requires 10 times as much land to produce as rice or potatoes.

The world produces about 4bn tonnes of food per year, but up to half is wasted. By improving processes and infrastructure as well as changing consumer mindsets, Dr Fox claims we would have the ability to provide 60-100% more food to feed the world’s growing population.

“As water, land and energy resources come under increasing pressure from competing human demands, engineers have a crucial role to play in preventing food loss and waste by developing more efficient ways of growing, transporting and storing foods.

“But in order for this to happen governments, development agencies and organisation such as the UN must work together to help change people’s mindsets on waste and discourage wasteful practices by farmers, food producers, supermarkets and consumers.”

Policies that lead to consumers rejecting food because it doesn’t look right should be discouraged, says the report. Retailers should also be discouraged from wasteful practices such as buy-one-get-one-free promotions that encourage shoppers to buy more food than they need, it adds.

On a global level, the report calls on countries such as the UK to transfer engineering knowledge and suitable technology to newly developing countries. This will help improve produce handling in the harvest, and immediate post-harvest stages of food production, it argues.

Can eliminiating food waste feed the world?
Yes	No
People do not go hungry because rich countries do not produce enough. Solutions include ensuring hungry people have the means to buy food, greater ability to produce their own and techniques to ensure less post-harvest waste, especially in developing countries. Just last week, Oxfam said: “Meeting the calorie needs of every person living with hunger would take less than 3% of today’s global food supply.” One way of overcoming some of these issues is to make greater use of agroecology. The global International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology Development report, produced by 400 scientists, recommends agroecology to increase the productivity of global agriculture. The largest study of agroecology in less economically developed nations analysed projects covering 37m ha in 57 countries and found on average crop yields increased by 79%. One of the reasons why converting from “traditional” agriculture (with no inputs or rotations) to agroecological systems such as organic farming has been so effective is farmers have been able to raise yields without relying on costly inputs such as fertiliser and pesticides. Techniques such as good crop rotation and basic care of the soil don’t hold all the answers but are helping ensure resilience and independence of food supply for the farmers who need it most. In short, eliminating food losses, combined with increasing environmentally sustainable farming such as organic and other agroecological systems, can help the world feed itself. Emma Hockridge, head of policy, Soil Association	While there is clearly scope to reduce food waste, we should not overestimate the gains that can be made. Claiming that merely eliminating food waste will allow us to feed nine billion people by 2050 is irresponsible. It may be that a substantial component of food waste is unavoidable. The ultimate aim of the food system is to ensure everyone has a nutritious, safe and healthy diet. All food has a long production cycle with an imprecise end so meeting the population’s nutritional needs may need bigger tolerance margins than other, more precise, production systems. If your brussels sprouts mature two weeks before Christmas instead of the hoped-for two days, there may be no alternative than to waste them. Reducing food waste in more economically developed nations may allow a greater proportion of our food production to be used to feed the hungry in less developed countries. However, there is a danger we replace unsustainable food waste with unsustainable international transport. The final caveat is the often overlooked feature of the statistics, which include food that could be fed to humans that is used for livestock. If waste is to be eliminated, we would need to find other ways of meeting the feed needs of the expanding livestock sector, which will be required to meet the inevitable growth in demand for meat products in middle-income countries. So while the report is valuable, it should not distract the engineering community from other areas where they can make contributions to food security. Agricultural engineering has been neglected for too long. Technologies from novel tillage methods designed to preserve soil structure and ecology, through to precision agriculture, are as important as reducing food waste. Professor Richard Tiffin, director of the food security centre, Reading University