Extreme and potentially persisting food inflation is raising awareness around food waste
The news has been pretty bad lately, and among the riling headlines, inflation continues to rear its head. Food prices are soaring, and people don’t have enough to eat. It appears to be another horrible predicament created by the COVID-19 pandemic. Well, while I agree that COVID exacerbated the issue, I feel it’s now becoming more of a blinder to the truth, a distraction preventing us from clearly identifying solutions.
Let’s face it — food insecurity rates have been rising for a while. Famine has become common in countries around the world, and food deserts are expanding too. This is not because of the pandemic, it’s because of climate change. According to the Food & Agricultural Organization (FAO), the global food price index has been “skyrocketing” since 2004, with the average cost of basic items like meat, dairy, cereals, vegetable oils, and sugar rising over 114% during that period.
This is due to the increasing prevalence of adverse weather events throughout the world, including the worst Chinese wheat crop in history in the past year. Drought and wildfires lead to arid lands, reduced crop yields, fickle production calendars, and instability in the workforce. Extreme weather events like hurricanes, floods, and blizzards compound the issue further.
As it stands currently, we’re not able to produce enough food to feed everyone on the planet. The United Nations predicts we’ll need to increase the global food supply by 50% to feed the population in 2050, yet a new study shows that agricultural productivity has decreased by 21% due to the impacts of climate change.
And now, on top of that, we’re up against a disjointed global supply chain. When you factor in international conflicts like the current war between Russia and Ukraine, the food we have can’t even make its way around the table. Ukrainian producers are struggling to grow and export crops and American farmers may not be able to meet increased demand. Together, Russia and Ukraine account for 29 percent of global wheat sales — a slice worth more than $11 billion. Grocery prices have risen by 8.6 percent this year, and will likely spike further.
The pandemic strained the system, but honestly, it was already broken. Climate change and the rise in global geopolitical risks are problems that previously existed and will carry on long into the future, causing food insecurity to scale beyond proportion. The cost of food keeps rising, meanwhile over 800 million people don’t have enough to eat. Some expect the crisis in Ukraine to add another 13 million people to this bubble. As the executive director of the World Food Programme put it, it’s “catastrophe on top of catastrophe.”
The problem is grim, but the solution is at our feet. Do something about food waste. We may not be able to produce enough food, but guess what — we don’t need to — it’s already there. In fact, the amount of food that gets wasted annually could feed the world’s hungry population four times over. Experts estimate that reducing food waste by 50% would reduce the food calorie gap by 24%. This will also help mitigate climate change by lessening methane gas emissions. All we have to do is stop throwing our meals in the trash.
Climate change, global conflicts, and yes, COVID-19, should all bring a headwind and spotlight on organizations with solutions to food waste. They should encourage governments and businesses to seek out both preventive and reductive measures and to do so urgently. Extreme and likely sustained food inflation needs to bring awareness around food waste, and the quite simple solutions there are to alleviating it.
Let’s all be willing to hear it.
