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Wastrels

In today’s world, where so many wake up in poverty and go to sleep hungry, each of us should ask: “how can I change this?” It is a sin to waste food while others do not have enough to eat. Every year the food waste in America alone can feed over 50 million people per year. Another example: if a farmer grows 100,000 pounds of tomatoes, usually about half of them (50,000 lbs) must be thrown away. This is because if a tomato is slightly misshapen, discolored, too small (or too big), or blemished in any way, it will not meet the consumer demand for a “perfect” tomato and will therefore be rejected.

This is true for many fruit and vegetable crops. To prevent trucks of produce from being rejected, crops are “culled” (hand sorted) after they are picked. About half goes into the truck on its way to the store. The other half goes into the truck going to the dump, or destined to be plowed under and sprayed with insecticide. The food being thrown away is not rotten or bad in any way.

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The Enemy is Hunger: Rome Conference

“This is a fight we cannot afford to lose, the enemy is hunger”, so said Ban Ki Moon yesterday in Rome. However his words fell on deaf ears. So far only a measly 3 billions has been “promised” to feed the 900 million who are on the verge of starvation. Yesterday I reported that a figure of an annual 30 billion has been calculated by the UN as the ballpark figure to address world hunger. Unfortunately this conference has been highjacked by a brace of tyrants, namely the odious Mugabe of Zimbabwe, and the bearded buffoon from Iran, Ahmadinejad, who both managed to accuse the West for their ills. Additionally, Latin American countries are refusing to sign a declaration on dealing with the world food crisis, delegates at a UN food summit have told journalists (this is still developing) as a final declaration had been set to be released at 1500 GMT. Don’t hold your breath.

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Food Complacency

This is meant to be highlighting the opening of the Rome Food Conference today. For far too long, we in the developed world have taken food supplies for granted. For decades, ample food stocks, a well-supplied export trade and rapidly rising agricultural productivity seemed to have confined food “insecurity”, in the west at least, to the history bin. Cause and effect: it has proved a costly complacency, the scale of which we are only just beginning to realize (latest diaries here, here and here). Have we forgotten the European famines of the war years, the end of British food rationing in 1953, and the US food shortages of the 1930s?

I’m eagerly awaiting the findings of the Food Summit in Rome (which starts today) organized by the United Nation’s Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) though mixed signals have already been sent by same agency: Food prices to remain high despite higher output. Read more »