The food waste problem is a multi-faceted issue, a problem bigger than we currently think (there are substantial losses along the stages of the food chain – agricultural production, post-harvest handling and storage, processing and packaging, distribution, and consumption; the reduction of food losses is seen as an important starting point for achieving global food security, freeing up finite resources for other uses, diminishing environmental risks and avoiding financial losses etc.), and is starting to get the attention it really deserves. There is clear evidence that food is lost or wasted throughout the supply chain, from the farm/production stage down to the consumption stage, each actor along the supply chain incurring or conceding some level of loss or waste. It’s time that people start realizing they can do the right thing.
European Retail Academy (ERA) let us know that the Agricultural University of Nairobi, Kenya has provided an educational video with a case-study how to improve one of the big problems of Food Waste: a lack of skills and technologies at the farming and logistical level of developing countries. Next year, in March 2017, the above mentioned Nairobi University (which joined ERA network last year) will organize, as the Kenya Competence Center of the World Food Preservation Center, the first Africa-wide Postharvest Food Loss Reduction Conference and Exhibition. In the opinion of Prof. Dr. Bernd Hallier (coordinator of the volume “Food Waste Management. Systeme gegen Lebensmittelverschwendung” based on an EU-project FORWARD; just remember the conclusion added by Professor Hallier: “It is not the knowledge which is changing the world but the skills of awareness for needs”), this Total Supply Event to fight Food Waste “can be an important local step in building a Global House of Harmony based on Economics, Ecology and Ethics in Africa”, that is why “we should use our global retail know-how to support this initiative”.
