Food waste

Mailstrom has previously reported on food waste here and now it is reported that food distribution charity is calling on the industry to make better use of millions of pounds worth of food earmarked as waste.
It argues that excess or nearly out-of-date produce that might be regarded as rubbish to supermarkets or food producers can be a lifeline to others.

FareShare Leicester has come to an arrangement allowing groups to collect fresh produce from local supermarkets on a daily basis.
"When you have the choice that either surplus food is put to good use like this or goes to landfill, then it's a bit of a no-brainer really," said Mr Willetts. "It's just about putting the mechanisms in place to make it happen."

Naturally , the only long term mechanism is Socialism but it will take a while for all those charities to reach that conclusion .

Wasting food

Mailstrom has previously reported on food waste and once more the BBC reports this problem .

More than a million unopened pots of yogurt and yogurt drinks are thrown away in the UK every day - that's 484 million a year, according to recent research , that is about 9.4% of yogurt pots bought which are thrown away unopened . There is no consideration of unused pots thrown away by shops, restaurants and cafes , so the actual figure for wasted yogurt is probably much higher.

Also found was that 4.4 million whole apples and 1.2 million sausages are thrown away each day.

feeding the world

President Bush in an interactive business session had argued that while prosperity in countries like India is good, it triggers increased demand for better nutrition, which in turn leads to higher food prices.The comments came close on the heels of US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's controversial statement that 'apparent improvement' in the diets of people in India and China is among the causes of the current global food crisis.

The Truth

Biofuels have forced global food prices up by 75% - far more than previously estimated - according to a confidential World Bank report

The figure emphatically contradicts the US government's claims that plant-derived fuels contribute less than 3% to food-price rises. It will add to pressure on governments in Washington and across Europe, which have turned to plant-derived fuels to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases and reduce their dependence on imported oil. Senior development sources believe the report, completed in April, has not been published to avoid embarrassing President George Bush. The report confirms a British finding that t the rush to develop biofuels has played a "significant" role in the dramatic rise in global food prices. And an estimates their impact as 20-30% rise .

"Political leaders seem intent on suppressing and ignoring the strong evidence that biofuels are a major factor in recent food price rises," said Robert Bailey, policy adviser at Oxfam.

Production of biofuels has distorted food markets in three main ways. First, it has diverted grain away from food for fuel, with over a third of US corn now used to produce ethanol and about half of vegetable oils in the EU going towards the production of biodiesel. Second, farmers have been encouraged to set land aside for biofuel production. Third, it has sparked financial speculation in grains, driving prices up higher.

"It is clear that some biofuels have huge impacts on food prices," said Dr David King, the government's former chief scientific adviser.

However , the Indian apologists for capitalism should not feel too smug .

More than 1,300,000 tonnes of food grain rotted in storage stock-piles over the last decade in India according to a recent report .

"This amount of food grain could have fed over 10 million people in a year," said activist Dev Ashish Bhattacharya.

A waste of good food

The Independent on Sunday reported that Britain is throwing away half of all the food produced on farms.

About 20 million tons of food is thrown out each year: equivalent to half of the food import needs for the whole of Africa. Some 16 million tons of this is wasted in homes, shops, restaurants, hotels and food manufacturing. Much of the rest is thought to be destroyed between the farm field and the shop shelf.

Japan pledged more than 300 million yen in food aid for Burundi, in Africa, where malnutrition runs at 44 per cent. The food thrown away in the UK last year would meet the equivalent of Burundi's shortages more than 40 times over.
The United Nation's World Food Programme has admitted it might have to ration food aid in response to rocketing global food prices that have soared by more than 75 per cent since their lows of 2000, jumping by more than a fifth last year alone, prompting riots in some countries.

The chief executive of FareShare, the national food charity, said:

"Unfortunately, we live in a world where many people do not have access to food in general, and good-quality food specifically, while at the same time millions of tons of perfectly fine food are being disposed of. In the UK alone, the extent of food poverty is staggering, as millions of people with low or no income find it harder to access affordable, nutritious food."

Estimates that the world's population will rise by 30 per cent over the next 50 years to around 8.5 billion have raised the spectre of a global food shortage too big for farmers to meet, Lord Haskins , a former government adviser on rural affairs and chairman of Northern Foods , said:

"If consumers ate a bit less and wasted a bit less you'd help to solve the problem. If the world was vegetarian then you'd solve the problem completely."

One-third of wheat grown globally is fed to livestock reared to end up on the dinner table.

More importantly though was the comment from a food policy professor at City University , Tim Lang , who said:

"Waste is a fundamental part of the food economy and it will be hard to get rid of. I do not see how simply appealing to morals will do it."

It is the economics of capitalism that places the need for profit before the needs of people .