1.3 Billion Tons of Food Wasted Every Year

1.3 Billion Tons of Food Wasted Every Year

By Awal Mohammed

According to the United Nation’s (UN) Food and Agriculture 1.3 billion tons of food is being wasted every year. It also noted that the amount of food wasted was equivalent to what is being produced in the whole of Sub-Saharan Africa.

The Executive Director of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), said that there were many instances where food that society produced were allowed to go waste without thinking about the effects it would have on the resources that went into its production.

“Some of us have developed consumption lifestyles that we cook more than we can eat and throw the leftovers into the dustbins” he lamented.

He said this on the celebration of the World Environment Day at EFUA Sunderland Park, Accra on the 5^th of June, 2013.

On the national front, he lamented how a lot of foodstuffs were lost especially during bumper harvest due to what he described as “lack of storage facilities and poor transportation network. Ghana like many other developing countries experience food wastage and losses he asserted.

These wastage and losses as it was being experienced in Ghana and the world occurred mainly; at the early stages of the food value chain due to financial, managerial and technical constraints in harvesting techniques as well as storage and food preservation.

To effectively avert this worrying trend, he noted that, the supply chain should be strengthened by supporting farmers with investment in infrastructure, transportation, as well as an expansion of the food and packaging industry. With these supportive mechanism, “we inevitably would also reduce waste materials transported to the cities” he said.

He noted that, all the resources and inputs used in the production of food that is wasted are also lost.