Reducing Food Waste: The role of foreign investors in promot

[Oscar]

Reducing Food Waste: The role of foreign investors in promoting efficiency

[ http://www.iisd.org/blog/reducing-food- ... efficiency ]   

By William Speller, July 25, 2016

EXCERPTS:

The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimates that food wasted annually is more than twice the amount needed to feed the world’s 870 million undernourished people. Yet we are told we need to increase global food production by 70 to 100 per cent to feed the nine billion who will inhabit our planet by 2050.

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Food is lost during production, harvest, sorting, shipping, processing, packaging, wholesale, retail and consumption. There are important differences in how food is wasted between developed and developing countries. In developed economies, most waste is at the consumption end of the food chain, in middle-income countries it is during processing and packaging (including determining what will be accepted by developed country consumers), and in developing countries most food is wasted through post-harvest losses due to inadequate transportation, storage and refrigeration facilities.

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Here are some ideas for how governments and investors could reduce food waste in order to help eliminate hunger and more sustainably use our planet’s finite resource to feed the world.

Investors can:

•Provide training to farmers on storage and techniques to minimize post-harvest loss.
•Help build better storage facilities in the communities where they operate.
•Allow communities on the farm to collect produce that has been missed in the harvest.
•Develop systems for the productive use of waste and by-products, such as bio-diesel from rice husks.
•Play an active role in combatting cosmetic standards for food (not all bananas need to have a curve!).
•Link up and finance food waste campaigns.

Governments can:

•Require investors to have a food waste policy as part of their business plan, detailing how they plan to minimize waste.
•Promote and prioritize investment in storage, transport, refrigeration and other infrastructure to reduce post-harvest losses.
•Improve national transport and trade infrastructure.
•Encourage the use of food by-products for animal feed.
•Prioritise investments with on-site processing facilities.

These are the seeds for an action plan to reduce food loss and waste.

To this end, IISD is working on a project to estimate the total cost of ending hunger worldwide. A key parameter in the model is an estimate of funding needs to pay for effective storage facilities in developing countries. Establishing how much money is required must be complemented with the means to raise the money. As such, IISD is also researching financing for infrastructure, including the development of financing tools and strategies for public and private investment in storage infrastructure. Food waste is egregious in many places and for many reasons, but it is the development of storage infrastructure in developing when most mileage is to be gained in alleviating hunger.

[Oscar]

Italy passes sweeping legislation to tackle food waste mountain

[ http://www.businessgreen.com/bg/news/24 ... e-mountain ]

- Business Green August 4, 2016

New law will cut red tape and offer tax incentives to encourage restaurants and businesses to donate waste food

Italy has this week passed a wide-ranging new law designed to make it easier for shops and restaurants around the country to give away unwanted food.

Facing a food waste mountain which is thought to cost businesses and households more than €12bn every year, Italy's lawmakers on Tuesday hit back with a law to provide tax incentives for companies to cut down on food waste, and sweep away regulatory hurdles that block the distribution of waste food to charities and those in need.

Lawmakers hope the measures will shave one million tonnes of food waste from the estimated five million tonnes thrown out across the country each year.

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Meanwhile, the use of "family bags" - rebranded "doggy bags" - will be encouraged at restaurants and cafes around the country.

The move follows a similar law passed in France in February, which bans supermarkets from throwing away or destroying unsold food. [ https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/ ... permarkets ]