Do Not Throw Away Food!
Sometimes we still have the bad habit of throwing away our food. It can be leftovers on our plates or on our cooking wares. It can also be food that has gone bad and inedible in our refrigerators.
A handwritten note asks people to “take only as much food and drink as they need in consideration of others” at the DKI Joglo housing area under the coordination of the Alms Friends community organization in West Jakarta, Friday (28/8/2020).
Still remember your parents’ warning to always finish your meal? They have various idiomatic warnings, such as “Finish your meal or the chicken will die” or “Don’t throw away the rice or it will cry”. When we were small, we just nodded without understanding what those words meant. We ended up carrying those habits into our adulthood.
Those warnings are correct. The point is that we must never throw away food that our parents have struggled to provide us. The myth of the dying chicken was based on the fact that chicken used to be pricey and most children used to have pet chicks. The “crying rice” was linked to throwing away a blessing.
However, sometimes we still have the bad habit of throwing away our food. It can be leftovers on our plates or on our cooking wares. It can also be food that has gone bad and inedible in our refrigerators.
Also read: National Food Barn
The study titled “Strengthening Food Security through Reduction of Food Waste” (http://ejurnal.litbang.pertanian.go.id/index.php/akp/article/view/4092)(Ketut & Ahmad, 2012) cites an estimation of how many tons of rice are thrown away if every Indonesian left over just one grain of rice on their plates. One kilogram of rice usually contain 50 rice grains. If just one grain of rice is left over in every meal, then three rice grains are wasted by a person in a day. With 250 million people, there are 15 tons of wasted rice in a day or 5,500 tons in a year.
This is just an estimation for Indonesia. What about in other countries? The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said that a third of produced food or a third of a billion tons of all food will be wasted. The FAO also said that the average European or North American wastes between 95 kg and 115 kg of food every year. Meanwhile, food waste in Africa, South Asia and Southeast Asia averages on between 6 kg and 11 kg per person. The Guardian (https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jul/25/food-waste-farms-before-reaching-supermarkets-wrap-study) cites a study by UK-based waste-processing organization Waste and Resource Action Programme (WRAP) that says 3.6 billion tons of food is wasted or consumed by cattle in a year and more than 10 times of food waste is discarded by traders. Money-wise, food worth more than 1 trillion pound sterling is wasted before even reaching the supermarket.
Also read : Food Crisis in 2020
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A bamboo plate of leftover cooked rice is set out to dry on Tuesday (28/4/2020) at the Tambaklorok fishers’ village in the city of Semarang, Central Java. The local people have been using a variety of ways to reduce food waste to survive amid the economic fallout of the Covid-19 health crisis.
Food waste
What is categorized as food waste? In 2013, FAO defined food waste as food that is still edible or has gone bad or expired but is removed from the supply chain due to negligence or poor economic behavior or stock management. Food waste comprises food waste and food loss, each with its unique definition.
Food waste and loss are among the indicators of the Food Sustainability Index issued by The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) in collaboration with the Barella Center for Food and Nutrition. The index was first used in 2016 and the calculation was carried out until 2018.
Indonesia’s score in this indicator is the highest compared to two other indicators, namely 61.4. This is categorically poor and the country ranks 53rd out of 69 countries. Nevertheless, the score is an improvement compared to previous years. The score was 32.53 in 2016 and 42.11 in 2017.
For three consecutive years, we switched positions with Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Barilla (2017) cited that Indonesians wasted away 300 kilograms of food every year. Saudi Arabia is worse at 427 kilograms.
Food loss
Food loss refers to food products that are wasted before reaching customers, including harvest failure and poisoned fish. Indonesia’s 2018 index was 57.4.
The lowest index score was contributed by infrastructure-related food distribution problems (25 percent). This score may rise during the pandemic, as distribution of agriculture harvest is disrupted by regional restrictions.
Also read : Coronavirus and Food Alert
On the other hand, consumer demand also decreases and leads to a buildup of products in agriculture hubs. This decrease is linked to the decline of purchasing power as people’s income also drops. Furthermore, hotels, restaurants and catering services also shutter. This buildup will lead to plummeting prices at the farm level.
A newly planted paddy field lays against the backdrop of a modern housing complex on Friday (17/1/2020) in Sukodono district of Sidoarjo, East Java. The area was once covered with rice fields, which have now been diminished with the incursion of modern settlements like this one. The high demand for land to develop residential areas is increasingly threatening food sustainability and sovereignty in East Java, which is one of the country’s rice production centers.
Moreover, according to the study “Strengthening Food Security through Reduction of Food Waste”, food loss in Indonesia generally occurs throughout the production process and food chain, from the stage of production of raw food ingredients (in farms) to postharvest and processing. The index score of the production process sub-indicator is 97.3 percent.
Relatively huge food loss generally occurs with fresh food ingredients, such as vegetables. This usually occurs as crops change forms, such as paddy turning into rice, corn cobs into corn kernels and fresh vegetables that go into packaging.
Also read : Save the Food Producers
The study also cites that the world’s largest food loss occurs in tubers, namely at 40 percent. When tubers are harvested, it is difficult for farmers to recognize the level of their ripeness as they are underground. Unripe tubers may be harvested along with ripe ones.
The second type of food waste is among fruits and vegetables, namely at 37.6 percent. It is easier for fruits and vegetables to go bad. Once they do, these fruits and vegetables cannot be sold and will be thrown away.
Food waste
Different from food loss, which occurs at producers, food waste occurs among consumers. All food products ready for processing or presented for consumption can go to waste if they are not finished.
Indonesia’s score on the end-user waste sub-indicator is 69.6. The lowest score of this sub-indicator is food waste prevention policy (44.4 percent), food waste reduction (50 percent) and food waste management bodies (50 percent).
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Wida, a 26-year-old resident of the Cireundeu customary village in Leuwigajah, South Cimahi, Cimahi city, West Java, feeds a lunch of steamed cassava “rice” to her 3-year-old son Tian on Friday (23/9). Cassava rice, made from cassava flour, is the traditional staple food of the people of the village.
Barilla’s calculation of indices is correct. Even today, the government’s efforts are minimal in resolving food waste. No regulation exists on food waste. Food regulation in the form of Presidential Regulation (Perpres) No. 83/2017 on strategic policy on food and nutrients will only be revised this year. The plan is for the Perpres to regulate food waste and food loss.
Ketut and Ahmad (2011) in their study cite that potential food waste begins when food ingredients are sold at retailers until they arrive at consumers’ homes. Food can also be stored for too long at the market due to a lack of customers or food can also be stored for too long in consumers’ refrigerators. Leftovers on the plate can also result in waste.
Food waste may also be caused by lifestyle and a lack of knowledge on how to store food. Reluctance to finish meals in front of people for fear of being called out for eating a lot can also cause this.
Impact
Many are unaware of the adverse impact of food waste as caused by food loss or end-user waste. Many believe that food waste is organic, easily decomposed and will not lead to adverse impacts.
However, as it turns out, food waste leads to greenhouse gases that exacerbates climate change. Barilla’s study shows that waste decomposing at landfills will produce methane gas, a greenhouse gas 21 times more dangerous than carbon dioxide. The same study also shows that reducing food waste in the US by 20 percent will lead to an annual greenhouse gas reduction by 18 million tons.
Also read : Building Food Security
Food waste may even unintentionally lead to state losses. Referring to WRI Indonesia’s web page (https://wri-indonesia.org/en/blog/3-steps-tackling-food-loss-and-waste), the FAO has globally estimated that food worth around US$940 billion is lost or wasted in the food supply chain every year.
Furthermore, FAO also reports losses from food loss or waste in a number of countries. China, for instance, wastes food worth around US$32 billion. In South Africa, postharvest losses reach US$4 billion every year. Meanwhile, average annual food waste in households or restaurants reaches US$1,600 in the US and US$1,060 in the UK.
A young woman works on arid land in the Sahel region between the Sahara Desert and Sudan in Africa. More than 5 million people in the region are facing starvation amid the continuing armed conflict during the Covid-19 pandemic.
During the pandemic, food loss from agriculture products must be resolved soon. This will affect not just farmers, which will lead to declining farmers’ welfare.
Another quite significant impact is on food security. Ketut and Ahmad’s study shows that a reduction of food waste by 25 percent will increase Indonesia’s per-capita rice availability by 4.1 kilograms and global per-capita rice availability by 2.5 kilograms. Indonesia has the potential to increase food availability by 975,400 tons. If food waste can be reduced by 50 percent, the additional rice availability in Indonesia will be enough for around 10 million people.
On the other hand, as many more people waste food, many other people are in hunger. The World Hunger Index in 2019 was 20, categorically “serious”. Despite declines and data improvements in the past five indices, several countries have indices over 35 or even 50, categorically “warning” or “extreme warning”. These include the Central African Republic, Yemen, Chad, Madagascar, Zambia, Liberia, Haiti, Timor Leste and Zimbabwe.
During the pandemic, food loss from agriculture products must be resolved soon. This will affect not just farmers, which will lead to declining farmers’ welfare. This will also threaten food availability as farmers may reduce production quality in the next planting season.
On the other hand, the habit of wasting food must also be reduced. We do not know how long this pandemic will last. Available food must be used wisely.
(KOMPAS R&D)
