According to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), a staggering one third of the food produced globally goes to waste. This amounts to 1.3 billion tonnes of food, costing the world economy $750 billion a year.
These figures are made all the more appalling by the fact that world hunger persists while this wastage goes on. Today, while 30% of the world’s arable land is producing food that goes to waste, some 870 million people are going hungry.
This is the most atrocious case of misallocation of resources, and brings to light the vast inequality that persists as the world economy roars forward.
If resources are organised more efficiently, there is great potential of drastically reducing or even eliminating the problem of hunger. As things stand now, rampant population growth coupled with bad food policies puts the world at great risk in the foreseeable future.
Food production technology has seen remarkable developments in the last century, enabling many first world nations to have more food than they can consume, thus posing the enviable “problem” of too much food.
However, technological advancements have not been matched by sustainable practices. Some developed nations place great emphasis on recycling and “green” policies to stop from overloading their landfills, but industralised Asian countries like China have a long way to go in this regard.
The problem of wastage must be given greater importance on the world agenda, before our future generations face a food situation that is highly unsustainable.
