For the last couple of decades, the world has been raising the issue of global food waste, which has seen a phenomenal increase in the recent past, in a more vociferous manner. This problem demands immediate attention and timely action as it is eating into the health and well-being of the humanity, depriving millions of people of food and nutrition leading to malformation, physical and mental disabilities.
It is estimated that some 800 million people go to bed hungry every night, which means one in nine people on the planet are starving or malnourished. Each one of these people could be sufficiently fed on less than a quarter of the portion that is wasted in some of the Western countries.
Qatar, even though not a major food producer, has been paying great attention to wastage of food. Recently the Ministry of Municipality has launched a survey, the first phase of which is already over, to develop a national food waste baseline. The survey, being conducted by the Food Security Department at the Ministry in cooperation with the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), aims at formulating appropriate policies and raising awareness about the issue. The country has adopted a waste management programme, under which a highly efficient supply chain is being developed to transport food items from ports to warehouses and then to the consumers in a way to reduce the chances of food waste.
When it comes to the issue in global perspective, roughly one-third of the food produced in the world for human consumption, some 1.3 billion tonnes, gets lost or wasted annually, according to a UNEP study. Among them, fruits, vegetables and tubers have the highest wastage rates of any food. In developing countries, 40 percent of losses happen at post-harvest and processing levels, while in industrialised countries more than 40 percent of losses at retail and consumer levels, the study says.
Food wastage is dealing a death blow on the environment also, which is already fatally threatened. It is squandering our resources such as water, land, energy, labour, capital and unnecessarily produces greenhouse gas emissions. Every one of us should realise the fact that each one of us is also contributing to this damaging phenomenon, hence we cannot escape by dismissing it as some one else’s problem. It is a reality that more than 50 percent of the food waste happen in our homes, while only two percent wastage take place at the retail level. It is our collective responsibility to ensure no food is wasted, we buy only what we can consume fully. In this way, we can also play our bit in feeding the millions going hungry every day globally. Let us embrace the slogan, “It is my duty to save the precious waste”
