Fighting Food Waste - Helping Farmers
My name is Magda and I have found my passion in the fight against food waste. The fact, that between 30% and 50% of food produced globally is lost or wasted, is outrages. It is clear that food waste is an important social, environmental and economical problem and we need to do our best to limit it to minimum.
Globalization of the food industry over the last few decades has lead to progressive replacement of natural ecosystems by agricultural land. The food supply chain has become longer and more complex, facing challenges such as increasing population, migration to urban areas and, in developed countries, higher customer expectations regarding variety, appearance and freshness of products. The extension and complexity of the food system has led to approximately 1.3 billion tonnes of edible food being wasted globally each year. Despite the continuous increase in global food production that already has the potential to provide food for everybody, there are still about 795 million unnourished people in the world. Even just one quarter of the huge amount of perfectly good food that now gets thrown away, would be sufficient to feed all the unnourished people.
During my studies for MSc in Environmental Management and my work for a start-up tackling food waste, I’ve come across many interesting social enterprises solving the issue at the end of the supply chain, which is why I’ve decided to focus on food waste on farms.
My idea is to develop a digital platform for farmers, which could ideally be used to tackle more problems at once in both developed and developing countries. On one hand it could act as an market place for “sub-standard” surplus produce that could be offered directly to consumers, which would lead to more sustainable shorter supply chain (skipping over the so called quality standards of supermarkets), or would be offered to processing businesses. Moreover, the platform would enable better communication and cooperation between farmers, which could reduce the risk of overproduction.
The UNLEASH lab is an incredible opportunity to connect, brainstorm and work on solutions with likeminded people from all over the world, who wish to leave a positive impact. I believe this year in Denmark we will truly unleash some great solutions that will help us to not only reach the SDGs, but also to truly be the change we want to see around us.
