SPONSORED FEATURE
A world food apocalypse? By Roy Green, Managing
Director, Harford Control
A
ccording to the prophets of doom, we are heading for a worldwide food shortage due to Russia’s invasion of
Ukraine. It is only now becoming apparent that Ukraine exports around 50 million tonnes of grain per year, and Ukraine and Russia together provide about a third of the world’s grain needs. In 2019, Ukraine also accounted for 16% of the world’s corn and 42% of sunfl ower oil, according to UN data. It would, therefore, be reasonable to see Ukraine as ‘the bread basket’ upon whom much of the world has come to depend. The war between Russia and Ukraine
has already had a marked eff ect on exports, though the Ukrainians have been fi nding innovative (but more expensive) ways to export their produce. The fi rst grain shipment by sea was allowed free passage recently through Russian-occupied Ukrainian territory. Yet, even before the Russian invasion, statistics show that more than a third of all food produced globally goes to waste. David Beasley, from the United Nations Food Programme, has warned of “a world famine, which should be taken as seriously as sending tanks to Ukraine”. Global warming is also playing a crucial
role as unpredictable weather patterns play havoc with harvests across the globe.
32 July/August 2022 | Automation
Food waste facts However, whilst the war in Ukraine and global warming may be outside our immediate control to a large extent, there is still much that we can do. Over one third of all food produced globally goes to waste. The UK alone throws away about 9.5 million tonnes of food waste in a single year, even though 8.4 million people in the UK are in food poverty. Billions of pounds are wasted each year when food is disposed of prematurely and unnecessarily. Yet, the UK does not even rank amongst the top eight food wasters in the world. That dubious accolade belongs to the US, Canada, Belgium, Australia, Austria, Denmark, Lithuania and France. These facts pre-date the war in Ukraine. Some 1.3 billion tonnes of food is wasted
across the world every year – that’s one third of all food produced for human consumption. That adds up to three trillion meals thrown away every year, which, if distributed amongst the 820 million malnourished people in the world, would provide them each with a staggering ten meals a day! With these and similar statistics in mind, it is not surprising that food waste and its potential to feed the undernourished is becoming increasingly important,
especially with the planet set to consist of nice billion people by 2050 and the unpredictability of climate change having an even more serious impact on harvests. Not only is food waste a problem in that it could be used to feed the malnourished and those in food poverty, but it’s disposal, much of which goes to landfi ll, has an on-going damaging eff ect on our environment. There is much that we can do as householders and food manufacturers/ packers to reduce food waste.
Reducing commercial food waste There is no doubt that the UK has a long way to go in reducing commercial food waste, some of which is under individual household control, but much of which isn’t and is more determined by external factors such as lack of availability of supply, due to wars and climate change.
Food waste in manufacturing Where we need to place our focus as food manufacturers is upon the part that is under our control – i.e., the food wasted during the manufacturing processes. Within food preparation, some wastage of food is unfortunately inevitable, but much of it isn’t. All too frequently, the FIFO (fi rst in, fi rst out) principle is not followed in
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