La consommation de nourriture (document en anglais)

1. Introduction

“Food is a part of our contract with life.” (Bryant McGill, 2013). This quote shows what we lost during the last 50 years. The new generation has lost the contact with food, with life. We are wasting our planet by throw out food.

We have to think that below each piece of meal, each vegetable tons of energy are used to produce it. For example we need 6 kg of corn and 19.000 L of water for 1 kg of beef! Food waste is a main problem with so many implications that we must resolve it to ensure a future to our children. Each year, food waste sums up to a waste of water equivalent to the annual flow rate of the Mississippi river. Furthermore not only energy is used, but a lot of land too. Do you know that produced but uneaten food uselessly takes up an area one-and-a-half times the size of the USA?

Feeding the growing population (9 billion in 2050) is a main question of this decade In this assignment I will talk about where the food waste comes from in general with a focus on the hot spots, what are the implications on earth, economy and human, and finally what government, company and we must do to avoid this monstrous waste!

2. Global food waste

One third of the production is wasted, which represents 13 billion of tons! But food waste is not only in our house or in supermarket but during the all supply chain from the producer to our trash.

European countries have more than three times (and the USA four times) more food than required to feed their population by taking the nutritional needs (with crops feeding the cattle unnecessarily).

2.1. Upstream

54% of the food waste is during production and post-harvest handling and storage. Two reason of this 54%.

In developing countries, they have difficulties with logistics. There is a lack of transport, storage, refrigeration and commercialization infrastructures and also a problem of pasteurization.

In industrialized countries, food became only for our eyes. There is a problem of criteria which aren’t decided by the governments but by the private sector. For example the potatoes: little and big ones are throw out, it’s the same for the deformed and with a small notch. At the end, between 40% and 50% of the harvest are throwing out. And it’s the same everywhere! Another fact: 40 to 60% of the European fishes are discarded (wrong size, ill-governed European quota system…) which represent 2.3 million tons.

Nevertheless, criteria are changing but practice still the same. For instance, in Europe you can sell twisted cucumber, but the supermarkets don’t want it, these imposed a standard to follow. And of course overproduction is everywhere!

2.2. Downstream

Downstream is concerned by 46% of the global food waste, which mean between transformation, distribution and consumption of the product. The main problem is wasting food is easier!

About supermarket, if one good as an egg is broken or nearly outdated, the entire bag is thrown away. It’s also difficult to forecast the number of customer. The important problem of aesthetic issues, if it’s not exactly the same color, the same size… And finally marketing strategies (example: 2 for 1), these strategies are better for consumption but results is a lot of waste too. Strategies to consume more are extended: “Best before date are shortened year after year” (Thomas Pocher, Leclerc Lille manager).

The consumer has a lack of awareness and respect. The new generation (below 30 years old) don’t know where food come from, the work required to produce it and more basically that we kill a living organism to eat! We also have a lack of knowledge on how to storage the food in house. For instance a cucumber is degraded below 7°C but lot of people put it in the fridge.

There is confusion about “best before” and “use by” date labels. Most people think that the “best before date” has a direct impact on health, but it’s just to indicate up to when the product retains its original characteristics. To illustrate, for a yogurt some milk rises to the top and you just have to mix it. Exceed this date is dangerous only on meat, fishes and eggs.

It’s also a question of habits, for instance: we waste more meat because we don’t eat offal like our grandparents did!

2.3. “Hot spots”

• The USA is the theatre of a food waste disaster. Every year we throw away 43 million of tons of food, it represents 1364 kg a second! USA has the bigger food surplus in the world.

• A lot of cereal and fruit loss in Asia

• Meat wasting in rich countries and South America (80%)

• Fruit wasting is responsible of water wasting in Asia, South America and Europe

At the end food waste has the same weight upstream than downstream. The main reason is lack of infrastructure in developing countries and a problem of food criteria and consumer awareness in industrialized countries.

3. A human, economic and environmental crisis

3.1. Human crisis: hunger

In 2013 nearly 900 million people are hungry in the world, what about 2050 where we’ll be 9 billion. This problem is not enough important for us, we think that we are not concerned or we just don’t think about hunger.

By Importing too much food, land are dispossessed from small farmers to bigger exporter. For example in Cameroun the land is owned by the government so small farmers have to lend over the long term or give their land. With this change, the food which initially goes to the local people

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