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Amid mounting concerns over how a global population of 9.5 billion will be fed towards the end of the century, we already produce enough food to meet the challenge – but a shockingly high proportion of it is wasted, the IMechE has said.
Dr Tim Fox, head of energy and environment at the institution, said: “We’re wasting and losing a substantial amount of food.” This wastage runs right through the supply chain, from harvesting and transport to consumers’ behaviour in the home, where much perfectly good food is thrown away.
Fox said supermarkets’ desire for “cosmetically perfect” fruit and vegetables, which results in crops being rejected, was just one example of how we waste food.
The IMechE report, Global Food: Waste Not, Want Not, claims that as much as 50% of all the food produced is never consumed by human beings. Fox said: “Part of this is driven by marketing practices and consumer practices.”
In the developing world, the losses are at the other end of the food chain, Fox said. “If food actually gets through to the marketplace and the consumer there’s very little waste, because food is so much more valued in developing nations. The food is lost at the point of harvest and post-harvest production. There are a number of factors but one is poorly engineered infrastructure and poor engineering practices.
“In the harvesting process, food is damaged or it is damaged in the transport phase by being moved in inadequate containers on bumpy roads. Or the food is stored inadequately, without proper ventilation or temperature control.”
This results in large amounts of waste as crops are damaged, Fox said. “In developing countries it’s about sorting out the engineering and the infrastructure. In the developed world it’s about sorting out our profligate consumerism.”
The UN’s median prediction for the global population in 2075 is 9.5 billion. Fox said: “People worry about how we’re going to feed those people but we could make a substantial contribution to that just by cutting out the loss and the waste of the food we already produce. We’re feeding 7 billion at the moment on 2 billion tonnes of food; we produce 4 billion but waste up to half of that.
“There are people who are hungry today in the world – and we could substantially alleviate that hunger by improving our practices.”
Attempts to improve yield of crops should continue but in tandem with a focus on reducing waste, Fox said. “There’s a lot of engineering in that because it’s all about improving infrastructure, processes and practices.” Water and energy were wasted in growing crops that never reached the consumer, and valuable land was taken up that could be used to grow crops for biofuels, for example. “The question is how do we use the finite resources that we’ve got,” Fox said. “If you waste food you’re not just wasting nutrient-rich material that people could eat, but you’re also wasting all the water, all the energy, all the land that was used in production.”
He added: “It’s not just about the food itself but the resources used in the production of that food. And they are strong mechanical engineering-based sectors: there’s a lot of mechanical engineering in water, a lot in energy, and a lot in transportation storage.
“We’re calling for a global organisation like the UN to work with the engineering community to transfer engineering know-how and technology to developing nations to ensure they can solve these issues in the harvest and post-harvest phase.”