Reducing the world’s 1.3 billion tons of wasted food every year may hold the key to sustainably feeding 9 billion people by 2050, according to interviews from the Institute of Food Technologists-sponsored FutureFood 2050 initiative.
One-third of the food produced for human consumption around the world gets lost or wasted each year, according to the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).
Those 1.3 billion tons of wasted food could feed 1.25 billion people on the planet per year, amidst global food safety concerns.
“So much attention is paid to increasing global food supplies over the next several decades,” said Tristram Stuart, a food waste activist who is profiled in FutureFood 2050’s latest interviews.
“But we waste a third of the world’s food supply already, so one way of tackling food security and the environmental impact of food production is to implement the many ways to more efficiently use the food that we already produce.”
Recently the alarming numbers behind this worldwide dilemma have become frequent headlines in media and food circles.
But far less attention has been devoted to exploring the solutions that can transform the issue of food waste from statistics to success stories.
Interview highlights
The food waste trailblazers profiled for FutureFood 2050 this month include:
•Doug Rauch: The former president of Trader Joe’s sold imperfect and past-its-labeled-prime food in a supermarket experiment
•John Floros: An academic at a US agricultural college has launched a new international food waste innovation center that invests in solutions spanning small village fields to mega-city tables
•Elsje Pieterse: A South African scientist is “farming” fly larvae as a no-waste source of animal feed
•Tristram Stuart: A food waste activist advocates a multi-pronged approach to addressing the issue, which includes everything from changing the ways that companies feed pigs to digging in supermarket dumpsters for still-edible food
The solutions profiled in the interviews range from the traditional (an innovation center dedicated to worldwide waste reduction) to the unconventional (a multi-country movement to sell “ugly fruit” to cash-strapped consumers) and the truly unexpected (celebrating fly larvae as a low-waste source of livestock feed).
Although the FutureFood 2050’s food waste experts profiled agree that many of their solutions require a significant change in cultural expectations about food and waste, they emphasize that tackling a 1.3 billion ton issue can only be successful with fresh thinking and a willingness to embrace new ideas.
Their solutions are always creative and occasionally controversial, particularly as they discuss topics as diverse as genetically modified organisms, “freeganism” (foraging on food discarded by supermarkets) and the tastiness of maggots.
FutureFood 2050 is a multi-year program highlighting the people and stories leading the efforts in finding solutions to a healthier, safer and better nourished planet to feed more than nine billion people by 2050.
Through 2015, the program will release 75 interviews with the world’s most impactful leaders in food and science.
Food waste is the third installment of FutureFood’s interview series.
