Guy Brandon Posted: 24 September 2009
Keywords: Lifestyle Issues, The Environment,
England’s topsoil is at risk. Environment Secretary Hilary Benn – no doubt soon to be dubbed the government’s ‘mud tsar’ – today warned that population growth, housing and transport are all threatening the health of our soil. Intensive farming, pollution and erosion have further endangered the quality of the country’s earth which, as well as being vital to food production, is an important store of carbon dioxide.
Recent reports suggest that world food production will need to increase by 70-100 percent[1] by 2050 to meet the demands of a population of 9 billion. However, the same increase in population is likely to reduce the amount of arable land available, as well as further damaging what is left through pollution, greater scarcity of water, and other environmental damage. Given that our current farming habits appear to be unsustainable, doubling food production doesn’t seem likely without major changes.
Technical fixes such as improved efficiency, and perhaps GM crops, may hold part of the answer, but another side of the problem is plainly behavioural. Food in the West is just another form of consumer goods, and waste is an affordable luxury. Around a third of the food we buy is thrown away, without even considering the waste that occurs between the farm and the supermarkets and other shops[2]. The total food discarded in the UK is enough to satisfy half of Africa’s import requirements.[3] Add the 40-50 percent of food that America (a country with a population five times the UK’s) bins, and an alternative solution to world hunger begins to emerge. It’s not efficiencies of production that are required: it’s efficiencies of consumption.
The answer isn’t exactly handed to us on a plate – problems of distribution still exist, for one – but it’s not bad as a starter.
[1] UN Food and Agriculture Organisation: 2050: A third more mouths to feed
[2] 6.7 million tonnes of the food bought for home consumption in the UK is wasted each year. Excluding agricultural food wastes, for which few reliable data exist, the UK annually generates an estimated 15.7 million tonnes of waste food from domestic, commercial and industry sources. Cabinet Office Strategy Unit: Food Matters: Towards a Strategy for the 21st Century (2008) p.90
[3] The Independent: The £20bn food mountain: Britons throw away half of the food produced each year
This figure 'a third of the food we buy is thrown away' keeps getting bandied about. But as the post you link to clearly states 'most of this is unavoidable – bones, cores and peelings'.
This kind of rhetoric is surely self-defeating. A lot of people seeing this figure will think (correctly) that they don't waste anything like a third of the food they buy, and conclude (perhaps incorrectly) that they are 'doing their bit' for the environment (which for most of us translates as doing at least as much as the next man).
Stuart McGill 25 September 2009
Stuart, I don't know why the linked post reads 'most of this is unavoidable' (it should read 'much' - I will amend it accordingly) as most of the food waste (more than 60%) could in fact be avoided: more than a quarter of this is left uneaten from our plates and a further quarter doesn't even make it to our plates, being thrown away whole, untouched or unopened!
Of course, even the 'unavoidable' waste could be better used, either for composting or generating electricity.
John Hayward 25 September 2009
Nigel Hawkes' has an interesting blog post (http://www.straightstatistics.org/blog/2009/06/12/does-britain-really-waste-third-food-it-buys) about the Waste Resources and Action Programme 'dodgy dossier' referred to by your earlier post.
Clearly it's better not to waste things, but government-funded bodies should not be spinning statistics to this extent.
Stuart McGill 25 September 2009
All this wasted food should be fed to hamsters on hamster wheels generating electricity. All hail our hamster-electric future!
Jason Davies 29 September 2009
It‘s a nice blog.
Thanks.
shopping baskets 9 October 2009