Edited: The Global Food Crisis and Charity Participation

A third of the world’s food is wasted with millions going unfed, so what is being done to tackle the food shortage?

Wasted food (credit: Housatonic Resources Recovery Authority)

Fruits, vegetables, packed goods and the leftovers are put to waste. All these food products are contributing to one global issue, that few people have knowledge about, an issue that is costing the global economy a whopping £466B a year; food wastage. We are currently in the midst of a global food crisis in which 805 million people go hungry every day, equivalent to 1/8^th of the global population. If you knew the food you were about to dispose off could feed a child in your local community or a child in a third world country, would you think twice about it?

Although food wastage has decreased by 21% between 2007 and 2012, charities and organisations are still fighting a battle with suppliers, supermarkets and consumers globally in order to ensure they protect, recycle and reuse their food to the best of their ability. FareShare, the UK’s largest food redistribution charity aim is to redirect surplus food from these outlets to the 5.8 million people living in food poverty across the UK. The steady rise of food prices has generated the number of people being admitted to hospital with malnutrition, rising by 19% in the last year alone.

Gurvinder Sidhu, Senior PR & Press Officer for FareShare, explains, “Some of our charity members include breakfast and afterschool clubs for children, lunch clubs for the elderly, homeless hostels, refuge centres and hostels for victims of domestic violence and recovering addicts. We have seen an increase in demand from these charities who have faced cutbacks in funding from all sources”.

With smaller charities and community projects facing cutbacks, how confident can we be that manufacturers, growers and supermarkets are doing all that they can to recycle and donate their surplus food. Organisations such as FareShare help properly feed those who need it?

Sidhu continues “currently there are 3.9 million tonnes of food surplus that is wasted and FareShare estimates that at least 10 per cent of this is edible and fit for human consumption. This is around 400,000 tonnes which is equivalent to 800m meals”.

Figures like these reinforce the belief by food and agriculture charities that we are currently dug deep in a global food crisis that is depriving the economy and deteriorating our environment. As a result of this, there is growing pressure on all food surplus organisations (LoveFoodHateWaste, WRAP, to name a few) to help the nutritionally impoverished. Food chains such as Tesco, admit to wasting 30,000 tonnes of food in the first six months of 2013.  However, according to FareShare there is an effort being made by supermarkets to influence all levels of the food supply chain to be more sustainable with their food stocks:

“The supermarkets that we mainly work with have helped us to drive change and influence the food industry by helping us develop relationships with the supermarkets’ supply chain so we can capture surplus before it comes to store” says Sidhu.

FareShare currently relies on the help of volunteers throughout the community who donate their time in order to help transport surplus food around the country, but there are concerns about the government’s commitment in addressing food preservation and redistribution. At present, there is no law in place governing the food industries handling of leftover food produce, but FareShare are urging those in power to follow the steps of the food waste hierarchy ensuring that food surplus is diverted to charities and used to feed people in need.

Sidhu explains that, “The fight to combat hunger and food wastage over the next ten years will only increase and intensify, however, the next ten years will also give way for more innovative ways to produce food sustainability and reduce food surplus overall”.

In combination with this, and government participation, a statute law in defining how the food industry should manage their surplus stock would mean that the work of charities such as FareShare would become increasingly noticed and its prominence would give way to a society in which we can all effectively minimize our own food wastage footprint.