Food and the environment

Question

This piglix contains articles or sub-piglix about Food and the environment

Answer 1

Sustainable food system

This piglix contains articles or sub-piglix about Sustainable food system

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Wikipedia

Answer 2

Social and environmental impact of palm oil

Palm oil, produced from the oil palm, is a basic source of income for many farmers in South East Asia, Central and West Africa, and Central America. It is locally used as a cooking oil, exported for use in many commercial food and personal care products and is converted into biofuel. It produces up to 10 times more oil per unit area than soyabeans, rapeseed or sunflowers.

Oil palms produce 38% of the world's vegetable-oil output on 5% of the world’s vegetable-oil farmland. Palm oil plantations are under increasing scrutiny for their effects on the environment, including loss of carbon-sequestering forest land. There is also concern over displacement and disruption of human and animal populations due to palm oil cultivation.

An estimated 1.5 million small farmers grow the crop in Indonesia, along with about 500,000 people directly employed in the sector in Malaysia, plus those connected with related industries.

As of 2006, the cumulative land area of palm oil plantations is approximately 11,000,000 hectares (42,000 sq mi). In 2005 the Malaysian Palm Oil Association, responsible for about half of the world's crop, estimated that they manage about half a billion perennial carbon-sequestering palm trees. Demand for palm oil has been rising and is expected to climb further.

Between 1967 and 2000 the area under cultivation in Indonesia expanded from less than 2,000 square kilometres (770 sq mi) to more than 30,000 square kilometres (12,000 sq mi). Deforestation in Indonesia for palm oil (and illegal logging) is so rapid that a 2007 United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) report said that most of the country’s forest might be destroyed by 2022. The rate of forest loss has declined in the past decade.

Global production is forecast at a record 46.9m tonnes in 2010, up from 45.3m in 2009, with Indonesia providing most of the increase.

Oil palm is a valuable economic crop and provides a source of employment. It allows small landholders to participate in the cash economy and often results in improvements to local infrastructure and greater access to services such as schools and health facilities. In some areas, the cultivation of oil palm has replaced traditional practices, often due to the higher income potential of palm oil.

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Wikipedia

Answer 3

FareShare

FareShare

FareShare is a charity aimed at relieving food poverty and reducing food waste in the UK. It does this by rescuing good quality surplus food that would otherwise have gone to waste and sending it to over 2000 charity and community groups across the United Kingdom.

FareShare only redistributes food inside its best before and use by date; in 2015/16 they rescued 9,070 tonnes of food which would have otherwise gone to waste or landfill. FareShare works with all sectors of the supply chain; producers, manufacturers and retailers. All of the major UK food retailers have encouraged their suppliers to work with FareShare to minimise food waste. FareShare has also run two successful food drives with both Sainsbury's and Tesco.

FareShare contributed towards more than 18.3 million meals in 2015/16, which equates to feeding 211,565 people a week. This food is delivered to a broad range of grass root organisations all across the UK including homeless shelters, day centres, women’s refuge centres and children's breakfast clubs.

In 2010 the charity won "Britain's Most Admired Charity" at the Third Sector awards.

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Answer 4

Food miles

Food miles is a term which refers to the distance food is transported from the time of its production until it reaches the consumer. Food miles are one factor used when assessing the environmental impact of food, including the impact on global warming.

The concept of food miles originated in the early 1990s in the United Kingdom. It was conceived by Professor Tim Lang at the Sustainable Agriculture Food and Environment (SAFE) Alliance and first appeared in print in a report “The Food Miles Report: The dangers of long-distance food transport”, researched and written by Angela Paxton.

Some scholars believe that an increase in the distance food travels is due to the globalization of trade; the focus of food supply bases into fewer, larger districts; drastic changes in delivery patterns; the increase in processed and packaged foods; and making fewer trips to the supermarket. At the same time, most of the greenhouse gas emissions created by food have their origin in the production phases, which create 83% of overall emissions of CO₂.

A range of studies compare emissions over the entire food cycle, including production, consumption, and transport. These include estimates of food-related emissions of greenhouse gas 'up to the farm gate' versus 'beyond the farm gate'. In the UK, for example, agricultural-related emissions may account for approximately 40% of the overall food chain (including retail, packaging, fertilizer manufacture, and other factors), whereas greenhouse gases emitted in transport account for around 12% of overall food-chain emissions. The goal of environmental protection agencies is to make people aware of the environmental impact of food miles and to show the pollution percentage and the energy used to transport food over long distances. . Researchers are currently working to provide the public with more information.

The concept of "food miles" has been criticised, and food miles are not always correlated with the actual environmental impact of food production.

The concept of food miles is part of the broader issue of sustainability which deals with a large range of environmental, social and economic issues, including local food. The term was coined by Tim Lang (now Professor of Food Policy, City University, London) who says: "The point was to highlight the hidden ecological, social and economic consequences of food production to consumers in a simple way, one which had objective reality but also connotations." Food that is transported by road produces more carbon emissions than any other form of transported food. Road transport produces 60% of the world's food transport carbon emissions. Air transport produces 20% of the world's food transport carbon emissions. Rail and sea transport produce 10% each of the world's food transport carbon emissions.

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Wikipedia

Answer 5

Food Race

American environmental author Daniel Quinn coined the term Food Race (by analogy to the Cold War's "nuclear arms race") to describe an understanding of the current overpopulation emergency as a perpetually escalating crisis between growing human population and growing food production, fueled by the latter. Quinn argues that as the worldwide human population increases, the typical international response is to more intensely produce and distribute food to feed these greater numbers of people. However, assuming that population increases according to increased food availability, Quinn argues that this response only ends up leading to an even larger population and thus greater starvation in the end. Therefore, Quinn's clear solution to the Food Race — to stop producing so much food — is not generally a common-sense or intuitive response; instead, it derives from seemingly counter-intuitive or "outside-the-box" thinking.

Quinn bases the Food Race on the premise that the total human population, like that of all other animals, is influenced by food supply. Thus, larger populations are the result of more abundant food supplies, and intensification of food cultivation in response to population growth merely leads to still more population growth. Quinn compared this to the arms race in the Cold War, noting that any increase in food supply is met with a corresponding increase in population. Like Garrett Hardin, then, Quinn sees the only possible conclusions to the Food Race as either abandonment (of such a "race") or catastrophe.

The superficial similarities between this concept and a Malthusian catastrophe are obvious, but Quinn himself notes certain key differences. The primary problem in a Malthusian catastrophe is a population growing larger than its food supply can support; in Quinn's view, this is impossible, as population is a function of food supply, and not merely some independent variable. The problem for Quinn is not the chaos caused by a scarcity of food during a time of overpopulation, but, rather, the chaos of overpopulation itself. So, in some ways, Quinn's "Food Race" is in fact the opposite of the Malthusian problem, which Quinn characterizes as "How are we going to FEED all these people?" in contrast to the Quinnian problem: "How are we going to stop PRODUCING all these people?"

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Wikipedia

Answer 6

Food security

Food security is a condition related to the supply of food, and individuals' access to it. Concerns over food security have existed throughout history. There is evidence of Granaries being in use over 10,000 years ago, with central authorities in civilizations including ancient China and ancient Egypt being known to release food from storage in times of famine. At the 1974 World Food Conference the term "food security" was defined with an emphasis on supply. Food security, they said, is the "availability at all times of adequate world food supplies of basic foodstuffs to sustain a steady expansion of food consumption and to offset fluctuations in production and prices". Later definitions added demand and access issues to the definition. The final report of the 1996 World Food Summit states that food security "exists when all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life".

Household food security exists when all members, at all times, have access to enough food for an active, healthy life. Individuals who are food secure do not live in hunger or fear of starvation. Food insecurity, on the other hand, is a situation of "limited or uncertain availability of nutritionally adequate and safe foods or limited or uncertain ability to acquire acceptable foods in socially acceptable ways", according to the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). Food security incorporates a measure of resilience to future disruption or unavailability of critical food supply due to various risk factors including droughts, shipping disruptions, fuel shortages, economic instability, and wars. In the years 2011-2013, an estimated 842 million people were suffering from chronic hunger. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, or FAO, identified the four pillars of food security as availability, access, utilization, and stability. The United Nations (UN) recognized the Right to Food in the Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, and has since noted that it is vital for the enjoyment of all other rights.

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Wikipedia

Answer 7

Food waste in the United Kingdom

Food waste in the United Kingdom is a subject of environmental, economic and social concern that has received widespread media coverage and been met with varying responses from government. Since 1915, food waste has been identified as a considerable problem and has been the subject of ongoing media attention, intensifying with the launch of the "Love Food, Hate Waste" campaign in 2007. Food waste has been discussed in newspaper articles, news reports and television programmes, which have increased awareness of it as a public issue. To tackle waste issues, encompassing food waste, the government-funded "Waste & Resources Action Programme" (WRAP) was created in 2000.

A significant proportion of food waste is produced by the domestic household, which, in 2007, created 6,700,000 tonnes of food waste. Potatoes, bread slices and apples are respectively the most wasted foods by quantity, while salads are thrown away in the greatest proportion. A majority of wasted food is avoidable, with the rest being divided almost equally by foods which are unavoidable (e.g. tea bags) and unavoidable due to preference (e.g. bread crusts) or cooking type (e.g. potato skins).

Reducing the amount of food waste has been deemed critical if the UK is to meet international targets on climate change, limiting greenhouse gas emissions, and meet obligations under the European Landfill Directive to reduce biodegradable waste going to landfill. Equally great emphasis has been placed on the reduction of food waste, across all developed countries, as a means of ending the global food crisis that leaves millions worldwide starving and impoverished. In the context of the 2007–2008 world food price crisis, food waste was discussed at the 34th G8 summit in Hokkaidō, Japan. UK prime minister Gordon Brown said of the issue "We must do more to deal with unnecessary demand, such as by all of us doing more to cut our food waste".

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Wikipedia

Answer 8

Food waste in New Zealand

Food waste in New Zealand is one of the many environmental issues that is being addressed by industry, individuals and government.

The total volume of food wasted in New Zealand is not known as no research to date (2016) has been undertaken to determine commercial or supply chain food waste. However research has been undertaken into household food waste.

A Waste Not Consulting report to the Ministry for the Environment “Household Waste Data 2008”, calculated that, in 2008, 1,048,993 tonnes of waste were generated by the residential sector, an average of 260 kg per person or 676 kg per household per annum. Over 44% of this household waste was organic, with 24.7% (or 258,886 tonnes) of the total being kitchen waste, and 19.6% being greenwaste (205,526 tonnes).

More detailed research into food waste generated by households, that was disposed of through curbside rubbish collections, was conducted by Waste Not Consulting in 2014 on behalf of WasteMINZ. The rubbish bins of 1,402 households were studied with their food waste sorted, weighed and costed. The study found that 229,022 tonnes of food is sent to landfill by households annually. Of this approximately 50% or 122,547 tonnes is avoidable food waste. The national cost of avoidable household food waste disposed of to landfill in 2014/2015 was $872 million pa. Eliminating this food waste would have the same effect as reducing CO2 equivalent emissions by 325,975 tonnes – equivalent to planting 130,390 trees or taking 118,107 cars off the road for a year.

The average New Zealand household wastes $563 worth of food pa approximately 79 kilos.

The top ten foods wasted in 2015 were:

Statistics on exactly how much edible food is wasted by households and composted, fed to animals or disposed of through a kitchen waste disposal unit is not known. A 2014 survey of 1,365 households found that 66% of those surveyed disposed of some of their food through the council kerbside collection, with 47% disposing of some of their food through composting, 35% through feeding animals and 28% through a kitchen disposal unit. The Love Food Hate Waste Campaign launched in New Zealand on 1st June 2016. The campaign supports families to waste less food by encouraging behaviours to reduce food waste such as using leftovers and correct storage of food.

Some commercial food waste is used to supply pig farms although pig safety concerns and the need for sorting and unpacking makes it less viable. The Biosecurity (Meat and Food Waste for Pigs) Regulations 2005, passed under the Biosecurity Act 1993, prohibits feeding pigs with uncooked meat or food that has been in contact with uncooked meat. This is done in order to prevent the spread of diseases to pigs.

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Wikipedia

Answer 9

Food systems

The term "food system" is used frequently in discussions about nutrition, food, health, community economic development and agriculture. A food system includes all processes and infrastructure involved in feeding a population: growing, harvesting, processing, packaging, transporting, marketing, consumption, and disposal of food and food-related items. It also includes the inputs needed and outputs generated at each of these steps. A food system operates within and is influenced by social, political, economic and environmental contexts. It also requires human resources that provide labor, research and education. Food systems are either conventional or alternative according to their model of food lifespan from origin to plate.

Conventional food systems operate on the economies of scale. These food systems are geared towards a production model that requires maximizing efficiency in order to lower consumer costs and increase overall production, and they utilize economic models such as vertical integration, economic specialization, and global trade.

The term “conventional” when describing food systems is large part due to comparisons made to it by proponents of other food systems, collectively known as alternative food systems.

The development of food systems can be traced back to the origins of in-situ agriculture and the production of food surpluses. These surpluses enabled the development of settled areas and contributed to the development of ancient civilizations, particularly those in the Fertile Crescent. The system of trade associated with the exchange of foodstuffs also emerged in East Asia, North America, South America, and Subsaharan Africa with common commodities of exchange such as salt, spices, fish, grains, etc. Through events in world history such as the conquests of Alexander the Great, the Crusades, the expansion of Islam, the journeys of Marco Polo, and the exploration and colonization of the Americas by Europeans led to the introduction and redistribution of new foods to the world at large, and food systems began to intermingle on a global scale. After World War II, the advent of industrialized agriculture and more robust global trade mechanisms have evolved into the models of food production, presentation, delivery, and disposal that characterizes conventional food systems today.

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Wikipedia

Answer 10

Food waste recycling in Hong Kong

Food waste recycling is a process to convert food waste into useful materials and products for achieving sustainability of the environment.Food waste is defined as all inedible and edible parts of food that creates preceding and succeeding food processing, production and consumption.Greenhouse gases, especially methane can be reduced by food waste recycling. Food waste recycling can also alleviate the saturation of landfill sites in Hong Kong.

The amount of food waste accounts for 38% of the municipal solid waste in Hong Kong . According to the statistics published by the Environmental Protection Department, Hong Kong generates approximately 3,648 tonnes food waste each day. About one third of the food waste comes from the commercial and industry sectors while the remaining part is from households. The situation of food waste disposal in Hong Kong has become more serious in recent years. The amount of food waste from the commercial and industry sectors increased from 400 tonnes in 2002 to 1033 tonnes in 2014.

Food waste recycling involves a three-step strategy which includes separation, collection and recycling. This strategy is adopted in Hong Kong. The three steps are interdependent and equally important in operating and generating good results of food waste recycling action.

The collected sources are separated into two categories: pre-consumer food waste and post-consumer food waste. Pre-consumer food waste includes animal food waste, vegetable food waste, and waste from industrial processed food . Post-consumer food waste is about the left-overs. The source separation also includes a process of removing food packaging and food utensils.

The Hong Kong government sets up new food waste vehicles to collect and deliver food waste to the recycling facilities. The government creates a network of Organic Waste Treatment Facilities (OWTFs) in different areas. It is planned to construct 5 to 6 networks for collection with a goal of recycling 1300 to 1500 tonnes of food waste between 2014 and 2024. The first facility is planned to be built in Siu Ho Wan to serve Lantau Island and districts nearby. The second and third are projected to be built in Sha Ling and Shek Kong so as to serve the New Territories and West Kowloon. The Environmental Protection Department also plans to construct the Organic Resources Recovery Centre (ORRC) to collect the food waste and turn it into compost for recovery. The first centre is planned to be located in Siu Ho Wan too. The construction works is already in progress and will be started operation in 2017.

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