Hunger management: Stemming colossal food waste

From advances in production, distribution and storage, to using technology to feed the needy, we look at some problems and work-arounds to resolve India’s food wastage problem

Curated By: Madhu Kapparath

Published: Apr 15, 2017

25-year-old Ankit Kawatra attended a celebrity wedding and was shocked to see heaps of leftover food

Image by : The Wedding Photography Co (Image for illustrative purposes only)

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25-year-old Ankit Kawatra attended a celebrity wedding and was shocked to see heaps of leftover food being trashed, enough to feed 5,000 people just that night. That spurred him to quit his job as a business analyst and start the organization Feeding India. He built an app that has helped track and feed over a million people across 28 Indian cities so far. Partnering with restaurants, hostels, caterers and corporate houses, the organisation collects and redistributes food every day, to orphanages, old age homes, shelters and schools.

Phenomenal amounts of surplus food goes to waste every day across canteens and kitchens at corporate

Image by : Abhishek Chinnappa / Reuters (Image for illustrative purposes only)

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Phenomenal amounts of surplus food goes to waste every day across canteens and kitchens at corporate organisations. This food is simply thrown away. The Swabhimaan trust collects leftover food from three corporates in Bangalore by early afternoon and reaches it by evening to the needy and poor in the slums of Bangalore. The impact — they provide 500 meals a day and serve 11,000 meals a month.

Social start-ups that address urban hunger are using technology to target the needy. Crowd-sourcing

Image by : Kamal Kishore / Reuters (Image for illustrative purposes only)

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Social start-ups that address urban hunger are using technology to target the needy. Crowd-sourcing data to pinpoint hunger spots and taking food donation requests through their app, volunteers of No Food Waste effectively target and distribute lunch packs of leftovers in cities like Erode and Ahmedabad among others. Nearly 50 percent of under-six-years-of-age slum children in the world’s fastest growing major economy are malnourished, according to a 2015 study by Child Rights and You (CRY).

About 40 percent of India’s fresh fruits and vegetables perish each year before they reaches c

Image by : Vivek Prakash / Reuters (Image for illustrative purposes only)

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About 40 percent of India’s fresh fruits and vegetables perish each year before they reaches consumers, according to an estimate by the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO). One million tonne of onions vanish on their way from farms to markets, as do 2.2 million tonne tomatoes. Overall, 5 million eggs crack or go bad due to lack of cold storage. Dominated by traditional traders, the markets are in urgent need of a revamp involving on-farm training and cold-storage investments.

India is growing more food but also wasting up to 67 million tonnes of it every year, says a study b

Image by : Ajay Verma / Reuters (Image for illustrative purposes only)

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India is growing more food but also wasting up to 67 million tonnes of it every year, says a study by Ciphet, the farm ministry’s harvest-research body. Supply chain bottlenecks, poor handling and storage facilities have led to high rates of spoilage. The value of food lost – Rs 92,000 crore – is two-thirds of what it costs the government to support 600 million Indians with subsidized ration under the National Food Security programme. Delhi Food Banking Network, founded by Kuldeep Nar, collects non-perishable food items — pulses, rice, flour — and provides one nutritional meal every day to 10,000 people at 43 feeding sites in Delhi-NCR. Nar’s organisation works with NGOs who collect the food from its warehouse in Gurgaon and do the cooking on site.

Gluts, pests, rodents, weather and lack of modern storage are the other reasons for wastage. FCI god

Image by : Courtesy Adani

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Gluts, pests, rodents, weather and lack of modern storage are the other reasons for wastage. FCI godowns across the country are notorious for poor storage facilities that have led to losses amounting to crores. Adani has shown the step forward by setting up modern, thermostat-controlled grain storage silos that are equipped with technology to check and prevent pests and mould. The units include custom built railway rakes that are synchronized with the silos for mechanized loading. Government regulations currently prevent some of the world’s most efficient corporations at eliminating waste and spoilage, from operating in India.

(Image: Adani's modern storage facility in Haryana)

Since growing food takes up natural resources, food waste translates to a waste of natural resources

Image by : Jitendra Prakash / Reuters (Image for illustrative purposes only)

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Since growing food takes up natural resources, food waste translates to a waste of natural resources as well. Rice cultivation, for example, needs large quantities of water. According to FAO report, it is estimated that more than 230 cubic kilometers of fresh water, enough to provide drinking water to 10 crore people a year, goes into producing food items that are ultimately wasted in India. China is second with 140 cubic km and Pakistan third with 55 cubic km, says a UN report on food waste and its impact on natural resources.

Globally, one-third of the food produced for human consumption is wasted, costing the world economy

Image by : NASA / Reuters (Image for illustrative purposes only)

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Globally, one-third of the food produced for human consumption is wasted, costing the world economy about $750 billion (more than Rs 47 lakh crore), according to data from the FAO. 28 percent of the world’s agricultural area is used annually to produce food that is lost or wasted. Surprisingly, industrialised and developing countries lay waste roughly the same quantities of food respectively. Even if just one-fourth of the food wasted globally could be saved, it would be enough to feed 780 million hungry people in the world.

High taxation on packaged food deters self-help groups in small towns and rural areas from setting u

Image by : Narinder Nanu / AFP/Getty Images (Image for illustrative purposes only)

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High taxation on packaged food deters self-help groups in small towns and rural areas from setting up packaged food units. Reducing it will encourage ancillary and cottage industries like pickle manufacturing units to use vegetables when the market price drop down to very low levels.

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