FOOD FOR THOUGHT
We have to be conscious of our choices to reduce food wastage
The world is running out of food. By 2050, the world population may cross 10 billion people and they may not have enough food for themselves. It is a prediction by an American socio-biologist that goes viral on social media now and then. Some websites have count-down clocks ticking towards the big, bad hunger day. Scientists believe the earth cannot feed more than 10 billion people. We are already 7.7 billion and counting. There are nutritionists, socio-biologists, economists, agricultural and climate scientists trying to figure out how to stave off global hunger. This is not to sound alarmist, but it doespoint to the inevitabilitythat future generationswill face one day.So, finally, everything boils down to food, not sovereignty, stature, or superiority. One day the person who has two square meals a day will be king or queen. But how? When 10 billion of us inhabit the world, there will be little space left – what with all the sea erosions and glacier melts – to raise animals or crops. The animals would be the first to go as meat requires more energy to produce than any other food. If all the people were to become vegetarians, the food produced would be sufficient for not more than 10 billion people. And if you have the appetite and diet of the average American, it would not feed more than 2.5 billion people.
The problem is upon us already as we are told the world is fast losing the earth’s topsoil that has the highest amount of organic matter and micro-organisms to help in germination. A third of the globe’s topsoil is already gone. Along with a shortage of water, energy and land and growing demand from the population, all this adds up to a global food crisis. Over 80 million people in Africa and Asia, meanwhile, face famine and depend on food doles to survive. We cannot look to the forests to forage for food because only 30-odd per cent of the wild forest cover is still left on earth. And in 25 years, much seafood will disappear. There is only one solution. Food conservation. Today, a third of the global food is wasted because of bad storage, transportation, preparation and packaging, and sell-by date issues. Supermarkets sell large portions of packaged food for profit and much of it goes waste. Restaurants, to jack up prices, increase the portions of dishes, again leading to waste. In India, too, nearly 40 per cent of the food produced is wasted every year because of fragmented food systems and unsound supply chains. We also generate food waste in our homes. The Covid pandemic made us a bit more conscious of our food choices and reduced food waste. We must build on that and insist on calculated purchasing and single-use packaging as the shopping norm. The mindset has to change from ‘food abundance’ mode to ‘food scarcity’.
Source: The Pioneer
