So many people. So little land and water. That's why we write about peak food and peak fertilizer and peak water. People have been saying for years that we are running out of food. Yet TreeHugger has been saying for years that 40% of the world's food is wasted, in the fields, in storage and transport, in the preparation and selling of it, on our plates and in our fridges. Now a new report from the Institute of Mechanical Engineers tells us, as Brad Plumer put it, that "Between 30 and 50 percent of all the food that’s produced on the planet is lost and wasted without ever reaching human stomachs."
One could also point out that even more is wasted if you consider that much more of it hits reaches human stomachs than is actually needed, or how much is food is used to fatten cattle or farmed fish, but that just skews it higher. The real point is that we don't have a food production crisis, we have a storage and transportation crisis and a consumption crisis. The executive summary notes:
The potential to provide 60–100% more food by simply eliminating losses, while simultaneously freeing up land, energy and water resources for other uses, is an opportunity that should not be ignored.
But it isn't easy, and it isn't just about agriculture, but (surprise!) engineering:
Controlling and reducing the level of wastage is frequently beyond the capability of the individual farmer, distributor or consumer, since it depends on market philosophies, security of energy supply, quality of roads and the presence of transport hubs. These are all related more to societal, political and economic norms, as well as better-engineered infrastructure, rather than to agriculture. In most cases the sustainable solutions needed to reduce waste are well known. The challenge is transferring this know-how to where it is needed, and creating the political and social environment which encourages both transfer and adoption of these ideas to take place.
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