Food Loss:
At the production Stage:
- Due to farming mechanism and equipments employed on farms.
- Due to the inefficient usage of pesticide, insecticide e.t.c.,
- Due to floods, droughts or other disasters.
At Distribution Stage:
- Due to inefficient transport and supply chain mechanisms.
- Due to lack of infrastructure.
At Storage Stage:
- Due to lack of Storage facility. for example, A recent study by the Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta, revealed that only 10% of food is covered by cold storage facilities in India
At the Marketing Stage:
- Due to low prices and inefficient marketing mechanisms, perishable food have to wait outside for long period of time, which lead to the perishing of food and that lead to the food loss.
Food Wastage:-
It occurs Normal wastage of the food due to the excessive supply.
Reasons:-
- Some of the rich is perceiving it as the affluence and status symbols.
- Lack of effective mechanism or laws in reducing the food loss, penal provisions , in creating the supply chains between source of the food loss, civil societies or NGOs.
Implications on India and the world whole:-
- According to the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), “One third of food produced for human consumption is lost or wasted globally, which amounts to about 1.3 billion tons per year.”
- According to one estimate, 21 million tonnes of wheat are wasted in India every year.
- Socio, Economic and Environmental implications of food loss or wastage:-
Social Implications:-
- India ranked 100th among 119 countries in the Global Hunger Index for 2017. About 20 crore people go to bed hungry and 7,000 people die of hunger every day.
- Food loss or wastage is creating the social inequality.
Economic Implications:-
- Concentration of food resources in some hands and their wastage is inflationary in nature for the poor and low income individuals.
- Wastage of Resources that is
(i) Using high level of inputs in quantity
(ii) 25% of fresh water is being wasted
(iii) nearly 300 million barrels of oil used to produce food is ultimately wasted.
(iv)Wastage results in national economic loss. To put a monetary value to the loss in terms of wastage, India loses ₹58,000 crore every year, to quote The CSR Journal.
Environmental Implications:-
- The increasing wastage also results in land degradation by about 45%, mainly due to deforestation, unsustainable agricultural practices, and excessive groundwater extraction.
- The energy spent over wasted food results in 3.3 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide production every year. Decay also leads to harmful emission of other gases in the atmosphere; for instance, decaying of rice produces methane. Food waste emissions have a major impact on climate change and result in greater carbon footprint.
Laws to encourage donation:-
Many countries have legislation providing for global best practices, such as the 1996 Bill Emerson Good Samaritan Act in the U.S., which was intended to encourage donation of food and grocery products that meet quality and labelling standards by protecting the donor and the recipient agency against liability, except in the case of gross negligence and/or intentional misconduct. France has taken a lead by becoming the first country in the world to ban supermarkets from destroying unsold food, forcing them instead to donate it to charities or food banks or send it to the farmers to be used as fertilisers in crop production.
In India, there are many civil society, private sector and community initiatives aimed at distributing food among the poor. The government is also committed to securing availability of food grains for two-thirds of the 1.3 billion population, under the National Food Security Act, 2013. While securing food for all or feeding them through such initiatives is important, addressing wastage of food in all forms is equally critical to complete the cycle of food sufficiency and food sustainability. There are initiatives such as India Food Banking Network (IFBN), which is promoting the concept of collaborative consumption with support from the private sector and civil society organisations. Such initiatives, creating networks and channels of distribution between those who have surplus food and those who are in need of them, are necessary.
The government needs to do more and should play a larger facilitating role. The Prime Minister’s call to the nation needs to be followed up with further interventions. There is an urgent need to understand the complexity of the problem and then to devise a national-level strategy to combat it so that surplus of food can be turned into an advantage instead of resulting in wastage. Hunger and food wastage are two sides of the coin. The cycle of hunger cannot be broken without channelising the wasted food to help the needy. Without stopping wastage of food, we cannot do justice to millions of hungry people, our economy and the planet.
