In the Midst of a Global Crisis, Could Tackling Waste Help Fight Food Insecurity?
Picture by Joel Muniz (Unsplash)
The Covid-19 pandemic has exacerbated food insecurity worldwide; at the same time, we continue to waste about a third of the food we produce.
Long before facing a pandemic our society had already been fighting an array of disruptive, globally widespread social issues, impacting anything from our economy to the environment and the lives of countless individuals. Even prior to covid-19, as roughly one third of the food produced for consumption went to waste, almost 10% of the world’s population was going hungry, and while food waste and food insecurity could hardly cancel each other out, it is undeniable that witnessing their contradictory co-existence at a time of global crisis is all the more frustrating.
On the eve of the first ever International Day of Awareness of Food Loss and Waste, which had been designated by the United Nations just two months before the first reported case of Covid-19, I spoke with Angela Frigo, secretary general of the European Food Banks Federation (FEBA).
“Right now we have 430 food banks operating across 29 countries. After the outbreak, food demand increased by 50%. We’ve managed to redistribute 50% more food compared to this same time last year, but it still wasn’t enough and it is not enough today.”
FEBA set up a dedicated website to address the emergency and publish reports every two to three months. In April and July the organization reported the spike in food demand mentioned by Ms. Frigo, which according to the September report has now waned to 30%. The closing of businesses in the hospitality industry “helped”, as surplus food from restaurants and hotels made up for the shortage of donations caused by panic buying and bottlenecks in the food supply chain.
“Panic buying and the reorganization of food and drink manufacturers caused donations from the distribution and manufacturing sectors to decrease. However, lots of new donors reached out: businesses that were forced to close and wanted to donate surplus food; I’m talking about huge chains with thousands of locations. It was a challenge because mobility was reduced and many of our volunteers are over 65. Now, we are happy to see that restaurants are re-opening, and thankfully donations from manufacturers and retailers are going back to normality.”
Lourdes Juan is the founder and Executive Director of the Leftovers Foundation, a food rescue organization operating in Calgary, Edmonton and, more recently, Winnipeg. She is also the co-founder of Fresh Routes, a mobile grocery store that served as an emergency delivery service during the lockdown. I talked to her a week before my call with FEBA to discuss the impact of the pandemic in Canada. I could not help but ask about the country’s 58% of food being wasted every year, and whether tackling that number could help curb insecurity.
“Food waste is one problem in and of itself, and food security is something completely different, which can’t be solved by the redistribution of food alone. I believe it can be alleviated, by mobilizing people to reduce waste and get food to other parts of the city, but we have to be careful when saying that one problem can solve the other, because it just won’t.”
The Food Insecurity Policy Research reported that almost one in seven Canadians lived in a food insecure household at some point in May, and while it is hard to predict the future developments of the pandemic and economic recession, it is safe to say the crisis will have a long lasting impact on both developed and developing countries.
“Food security only changes when there is some sort of guaranteed basic income into households. On the food waste side, I think that for true systemic change we need behavioral change. When food gets sent to the landfill it produces methane gas, which is 25 times more powerful than CO2, so if we want to have a dinner table conversation about climate change, I think talking about food waste is probably the easiest place to start.”
At the beginning of the lockdown, in the span of just seven weeks, Leftovers surpassed the amount of food rescued in all of 2019; but to keep track of the paradigm shift Lourdes is calling for, she believes it is just as important to track the number of people involved as the tons of food rescued: “we’d rather pick up from a thousand locations that have 10 pounds of food each, than to pick up from three locations that have a couple hundred pounds.”
However, in a world perhaps overwhelmed by the amount of news that flooded our homes and devices in 2020, it seems as if issues like food waste and food insecurity haven’t gained much traction, especially amongst young people. In fact, as mentioned by Angela, most food banks rely on the work of volunteers who are over 65, and the lockdowns took a toll on the workforce, as outlined by the FEBA report survey for April, with some respondents warning they had no volunteers to work in such a high-risk situation.
“I think the first step is to ask for help”, Angela adds. “To recognize that we need the help of more people, and that help could come from young people. I think they could have ideas on how to innovate the way we operate. How would they like to contribute? What is their vision for the future of food banks?”
Over the last few years, young people have proven to be receptive to the discourse around social issues such as environmental sustainability and systemic racism, with a surge in protests worldwide in support of movements like Fridays for Future and Black Lives Matter. Perhaps the key to raise awareness on food waste and food insecurity is to recognize how interconnected these issues are, respectively, with the former.
Food waste is responsible for 8% of all global emissions; if it were a country, it would rank third for environmental footprint after China and the US. Such a staggering figure is easily explained by the impressive amount of energy and resources employed to produce food, and by the release of methane gas caused by the anaerobic decay of waste in landfills.
At the same time, food insecurity disproportionally affects minorities: if we take the United States as an example, because of its diverse population, we find that 25,8% of people of color live below the poverty line, compared to 11,6% of Caucasians. Hunger and malnutrition are Covid-19’s most silent and racist weapons, so it comes as no surprise that African Americans are almost five times more likely to be hospitalized, and two times more likely to die, than white people contracting the coronavirus in the States.
The interconnectedness of social issues, now more than ever, looks like a grim version of the six degrees of separation theory: a vicious cycle of discrimination, poverty, and sickness, bequest of a not so distant segregationist past. And while focusing on the United States comes in handy, because of the abundance of available statistics and resonance of news in a politically polarized society, no country on earth was left unscathed by the effects of this year’s health and financial crises.
Ultimately, tackling food waste could hardly prove to be the answer to food insecurity worldwide, and would likely serve as a Band-Aid solution for a limited number of beneficiaries. However, if nothing, it would serve as a statement of awareness and responsibility, highlighting the importance of doing more for our dying planet and most vulnerable communities.
