THE ‘zeer’ evaporative cooler system, developed by a Nigerian teacher, Mohammed Bah Abba has received accolades at World Environment Day, as one of the technology that can check food waste globally.
The small-scale storage “pot-in-pot” system uses two pots of slightly different size, preserves fruit and vegetables without refrigeration and costs less than N310 ($2) and can hold up to 12kg of produce. The smaller pot is placed inside the larger pot and the gap between the two pots is filled with sand. Tomatoes and guavas, which would last around two days without storage, last up to 20 days in a zeer.
The technology was mentioned in a report released on WED, which says that one out of every four calories produced by the global agricultural system is being lost or wasted. This poses a serious challenge to the planet’s ability to reduce hunger and meet the food needs of a rapidly expanding global population.
The new working paper, Reducing Food Loss and Waste, shows that more than half of the food lost and wasted in Europe, the United States, Canada, and Australia occurs close to the fork—at the consumption stage. By contrast, in developing countries, about two-thirds of the food lost and wasted occurs close to the farm—after harvest and storage. The report was produced by the World Resources Institute (WRI) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), and draws on research from the FAO.
The report makes a range of recommendations including the development of a “food loss and waste protocol” - a global standard for how to measure, monitor, and report food loss and waste. If what gets measured gets managed, then such a protocol could go a long way toward helping governments and companies implement targeted efforts to reduce food loss and waste.
According to the study, which was released today in Mongolia, global host of WED 2013, the world will need about 60 percent more food calories in 2050 compared to 2006 if global demand continues on its current trajectory.
Halving current rates of food loss and waste, say the authors, would reduce this gap by a fifth. This would also result in major savings in water use, energy, pesticides and fertilizers, and would be a boost for global food security.
“Beyond all the environmental benefits, reducing food loss and waste will save money for people and companies,” said Craig Hanson, Director of WRI’s People & Ecosystems Program and a co-author of the study. “The world needs urgent solutions to feed its growing population and reducing loss and waste is a critical piece toward a more sustainable food future.
“It is an extraordinary fact that in the 21st century, close to 25 per cent of all the calories linked with growing and producing food are lost or wasted between the farm and the fork—food that could feed the hungry, food that has required energy, water and soils in a world of increasing natural resource scarcities and environmental concerns including climate change,” said UN Under-Secretary General and UNEP Executive Director, Achim Steiner.
“Yet within the challenge of food are the seeds of a more cooperative and sustainable future—in short it is an issue that unites everyone today and generations to come,” he added.
“Everyone—from farmers and food companies to retailers, shipping lines, packagers, hotels, restaurants and households—has a role to play, and, in doing so, can contribute to maximizing the opportunities of the Millennium Development Goals, eradicating inequalities in rich and poor countries alike and laying the foundations of a more environmentally sustainable pathway for billions of people,” said Mr. Steiner.
From community food banks in Australia, to the use of metal grain silos by farmers in Afghanistan, the WRI and UNEP study showcases simple, low-cost solutions for reducing food loss and waste that are already delivering significant environmental and economic benefits to communities across the globe.
Replicating and expanding these initiatives could significantly reduce the 1.3 billion tons of food lost or discarded worldwide every year, and make major improvements to global resource efficiency.
The report shows, for example, that water used to produce lost or wasted food around the world each year could fill 70 million Olympic-sized swimming pools, while the amount of cropland used to produce wasted food is equivalent to the size of Mexico. Some 28 million tons of fertilizer are used annually to grow this lost and wasted food. The inefficient use of fertilizers is linked to the growth of ‘dead’ coastal zones around the globe and to climate change.
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