05 Jul Food Waste and All the Symptoms of Unsustainable Food System

Food waste is a multifaceted phenomenon that bares the complexity of our food system. It mimics the linearity of food production (we produce more, buy more and waste more) the paradox of food consumption (the more we have the more we demand). It is a sign of our times.

Since Foood and Agriculture Organisation ( United Nations FAO) in 2011 published the first report that attempted to quantify Food waste worldwide, we now know that an estimate of 1/3 of what is produced is lost or wasted from farm to fork. But why? Bottom line is our linear way to produce, distribute and consume that makes up for the 1.3 billion tonnes of food waste worldwide.

But while the quantity of food wasted along the food chain is now taking the public agenda and gaining more and more visibility, its roots and links related on how we act around our food are still, probably, not known to the public.

We are trapped in a vicious circle of overproduction on an industrial agricultural base, environmental degradation, which create a food system that simply does not have a future as it is. Food, climate, nutrition are so interrelated that we cannot solve any of those issues without a system change on a large scale.

The current rhetoric calls for an increase in food production to meet the increasing demand for a staidly growing world population. The reality is; we produce already one time and half the quantity of food we need. But the system does not allow the plus 821 million undernourished people to access this food in developing countries. Is not a matter of availability, but of access, a question that bares social justice and democracy in it. Uncertain land rights and access to local food for the underprivileged being the major roadblocks. These imbalances exist primarily because our dominant economic system operates through a crops and global markets paradigm.

In developed countries, the same system is, constantly increasing public health costs due to the escalate of food-related epidemiological diseases.

Food is the single strongest lever to optimize human health and environmental sustainability on Earth, but it constitutes the single largest driver of environmental degradation and transgression of planetary boundaries

Food is so interwoven with our lives, with the economy and with our natural system that by fixing our broken system if we can achieve a healthy, sustainable and fair world. If we really want to achieve the SDG´s food is probably the best place to start.

The task is, of course, not an easy one.

Hard work, political wiliness, sufficient resources and unprecedented collaboration among all economic actors is needed.