Merepeka Raukawa-Tait: Food wasters should be ashamed

Waste and spoilage accounts for an estimated two billion tonnes of food a year. Photo / File

COMMENT
I can't remember a time when I've gone hungry. When growing up and money was tight in our home, my mother made sure our family had sufficient to eat.

If there was any food shortage it would have been my mother who went without.

Mothers do that for their children. But as a child you are unaware someone is making a sacrifice on your behalf. I give thanks and know how lucky I am that I have never had to endure even a week of hunger.

But I do get angry when I read that 30 per cent of the world's food production is wasted, left to rot and ends up in landfills every year.

Those responsible for this wastage should hang their heads in shame. There are people starving and going without food in many countries.

This annual wastage could eliminate hunger and famine for 1.3 billion of the world's population.

Most of these poor souls will live and die never going to bed with a comfortably full stomach. They starve year in year out. Why can't our world leaders put their heads together and plan how to redirect the surplus food to where it is most needed?

I'm not saying it will be easy, if it was it would have been done before, but surely these starving people are worth the effort. When no real effort is made to alleviate their plight then I believe they are being consigned to the landfills as well.

Various reasons are offered up as to why this would be a futile exercise - too expensive to transport and redistribute the food around the world and most often infrastructure is missing or totally inadequate in many of the countries suffering food shortage and famine.

Wouldn't it be possible to prioritise which countries need the most immediate help and get to work on those? The governments themselves can't do it alone.

But other first world countries and leading international aid agencies can collaborate and work constructively together to help overwhelmed and struggling developing nations.

We are asked to give to aid agencies when they appeal for money and I'm sure they do the best they can with what they get. But if it's infrastructure that's the problem then this is where resources must be directed.

World Vision have their definition of famine. At least 20 per cent of households in a given area must face extreme food shortages (I thought it would have been higher than 20 per cent). More than 30 per cent of children in the area must suffer from acute malnutrition and there must be a specific number of deaths for every 10,000 people.

We watch the news on TV that shows countries on the African continent trying to cope with food shortages and famine. South Sudan, Somalia, Nigeria, Yemen and Congo. And we see the heart wrenching scenes of starving children, lying motionless struggling to breath. Has the world become immune to their suffering? Because it appears to carry on every year with little real change.

In the developed world waste and spoilage in harvesting, storage, transport and shops accounts for an estimated two billion tonnes of food a year.

All going to waste. The Global Panel on Agriculture and Food Systems in their report Waste Not, Want Not estimated the value of wasted food reaches US$1 trillion each year.

Imagine if half of that amount could be targeted each year to reduce or eliminate the several factors that contribute to famine and food shortages worldwide: inflation, crop failure, draught, population explosion, localised wars.

It is a staggering amount of food wasting each year that could go to feed those going hungry today.

When you add the unnecessary waste of the land, water and energy resources that were used in producing, processing and distributing the food then you start to realise the true cost of food wastage around the world. Wastage that is contributing to human suffering, especially in children.

Merepeka Raukawa-Tait is a Rotorua district councillor, Lakes District Health Board member and chairs the North Island Whanau Ora Commissioning Agency. She writes, speaks and broadcasts to thwart political correctness.