From farm to fork, food is wasted

According to rough estimates, 30% of produced food in the world is wasted even before reaching the end-consumer and Sri Lanka could be without exception. Wastage of vegetables due to oversupply and losses during the transportation are the cases in point of the country – Pic by Shehan Gunasekara 

About 842 million people in the world are in hunger due to lack of food and 98% of them live in developing countries according to Jim Yong Kim, former president of the World Bank Group. It is shameful that nearly one-third of the food produced in the world is wasted being an incessant issue. In developing countries, more food is wasted at the farm level, whereas in developed countries food is wasted at the retail level and by consumers.

Bitter statistics

According to the food waste index report, 2021 of the United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP), household food waste in Sri Lanka is estimated at 1.6 million tons per year. This is equivalent to 76 kg of food per capita annually, while the figure for neighbouring India is 50 kg. Nevertheless, the figure is on par with many other middle-income countries. Yet, this is a deplorable situation given the fact that the levels of child nutrition and maternal malnutrition in the country are very high. According to the Institute of Policy Studies, maternal malnutrition in the estate sector is about 22% being the highest while the figures for rural and urban sectors are 9.2% and 5.6% respectively. 

How food is wasted

Improper storage, stocking more than the requirement and, preparation and serving too much food than the requirement can be the issues at the household level. Confusion with date labels in food assortment also could be a reason as some people may find it difficult to differentiate the date of manufacture from that of expiry often due to illegibility of printed information. In this case, it is questionable as to why the consumer needs the date of manufacture if the date of expiry is there. If it is necessary according to certain regulations of the country, the date of manufacture could be inserted into the bar code so that a relevant authority can scrutinise it when needed. 

Sometimes, different labels such as ‘best by,’ ‘date of expiry’ and ‘use by’ mislead consumers as they may mean different things of which many consumers are unaware. On the other hand, these dates are determined by the manufacturers and are rarely based on government regulations. In most cases, food is safe to be consumed even if its expiry date has passed. Time-to-time sale promotions also influence people to over-buy amounts that are not within their regular needs. In practice, the sellers promote products when their expiry dates are imminent.

It is not only the prepared food that is wasted. Food crops are wasted at the field level due to poor crop management practices and the scenario is generally known as food loss rather than wastage. During harvesting, processing, storing, transporting, and marketing also a considerable portion of food is wasted. According to rough estimates, 30% of produced food in the world is wasted even before reaching the end-consumer and Sri Lanka could be without exception. Wastage of vegetables due to oversupply and losses during the transportation are the cases in point of the country. It was not long before that we witnessed some unsuccessful efforts to minimise damage and wastage of vegetables during transportation by introducing plastic storage bins.

Food waste is water waste

The issue of food waste is of course waste of a huge amount of water known as virtual water. The staple food of the majority of Sri Lankans is rice and to produce 1 kg of rice approximately 2,500 litres of water is needed. For an easy understanding of the scenario of water waste, let us assume that all the 1.6 million tons of estimated annual wasted food in Sri Lanka is cooked rice. Then the amount of water wasted would be equivalent to more than two times the storage capacity of the Senanayake Samudra, the largest reservoir in Sri Lanka. In the global context, it is reported that wasted food contains more than a quarter of total freshwater consumption in the globe.

Waste of energy

Waste of food is a serious concern for energy waste as well, as the calories contained in them are wasted without consumption. In comparison, energy consumed through the supply chain activities such as processing, packaging and transporting, marketing and preparation before eating is found to be eight times the energy used for producing the raw food at the farm level. Although accurate estimates are not available one study has found that the energy embedded in wasted food represents approximately 2% of annual energy consumption in the 

United States.

Environmental effects

Municipal solid waste is still a partly solved problem in the country and wasted food is the single largest component of it. When wasted food is piled up in garbage dumps, it gradually breaks down forming methane, which highly contributes to the greenhouse effect that causes climate change. By the way, methane is approximately 20 times more powerful than carbon dioxide as far as global warming potential is concerned. 

Food waste is a disgusting view and causes air pollution. It is among the leading causes of freshwater pollution as waste easily seeps into rivers and streams and finally to water storage reservoirs during rains. In terms of land usage, food waste means land waste. These might be the lands, which were originally existed as natural forests, and we are not counting the damage done to nature because of this land conversion. 

Concluding remarks

Wasting of food causes huge economic losses and affects the economic development of the country for it represents a waste of many resources such as water, land, energy, and many other inputs used for food production. On the contrary, food waste aggravates the challenging and ever aggravating issue of solid waste management, which requires further money and resources. The irony is that both the cost of wasted food and the expenses on solid waste management are counted for the GDP of the country even though those are non-productive factors. We might not have measured the food waste in the country yet by ourselves. Apparently, we have not taken the issue of food waste seriously rather than concentrating on the solid waste disposal problem; we focus on the effects while completely neglecting potential sources of the issue. 

Most consumer habits and primitive practices matter for food waste as discussed earlier. Education and awareness across consumers of all social classes and all those involved in the food value chain are important being contributors to this massive issue though, perhaps, without their knowledge. If we can increase transparency in the food supply chain with the use of modern technology, over-production at the farm level can be controlled. 

Further, this would enable the producer to choose the type of product to produce based on the demand. Improving infrastructure facilities related to handling, storage, processing, and transport also helps reduce losses and wastage. If we were not taking progressive actions sooner, strenuous efforts being taken for achieving food self-sufficiency in the country would be wasted together with the wasted food without our knowledge.

(Eng. Thushara Dissanayake is a Chartered Engineer specialising in water resources engineering with over 20 years of experience.)