Worldwide economic slowdown and food emergencies precipitated by increasing food prices, have resulted in poor families being forced to eat less and remove children from school to work or beg. Food riots have broken out around the world. And there doesn’t seem to be an end in sight as the food crisis pushes more millions into poverty.
Just 5% of American’s leftovers could feed 4 million people for 1 day. An additional aspect of food waste is that the methane produced as a by-product as it degrades in landfills is 20 times more damaging to the environment than carbon dioxide.
The U.N. World Food Programme offers another way of looking at it: It says the total surplus of the U.S. alone could satisfy "every empty stomach" in Africa (France's leftovers could feed the Democratic Republic of Congo; and Italy's could feed Ethiopia's undernourished).
Here are more disturbing numbers:
According to the USDA, just over 25% of the country's food -- about 25.9 million tons -- gets thrown in the garbage can every year.
But according to a study conducted by the University of Arizona, that figure could be as high as 50%, as the University claims that the country's supermarkets, restaurants and convenience stores alone throw out 27 million tons between them every year (representing $30 billion of wasted food).
Either way, it still costs the U.S. around $1 billion every year just to dispose of all its food waste, according to the EPA.
If you think that hunger is a problem found only in third world countries, open your eyes and look at the millions of homeless and runaways that live on U.S. city streets. America’s Second Harvest (now known as Feeding America) — The Nation’s Food Bank Network, a group of more than 200 food banks, reports that donations of food are down 9%, but the number of people showing up for food has increased 20%. The group distributes more than two billion pounds of donated and recovered food and consumer products each year.
Official surveys indicate that every year more than 350 billion pounds (160 billion kg) of edible food is available for human consumption in the United States. Of that total, nearly 100 billion pounds (45 billion kg) -- including fresh vegetables, fruits, milk, and grain products -- are lost to waste by retailers, restaurants, and consumers. By contrast, the amount of food required to meet the needs of the hungry is only four billion pounds, according to Food Not Bombs, an advocacy group, which estimates that every year more than 30 million people in the United States are going hungry on regular basis.
The roadblocks to getting America’s surplus food to starving people in other countries is multi-faceted. Above all is the expense. We have the technology to transport our excess grain and food stuffs to third world countries, we do it every time there is a natural disaster.
People who live in drought stricken areas and those who don’t have the technological knowledge or money to create a food surplus for their fellow countrymen are just as deserving of eating three square meals a day as Americans are. Why can’t we consider starving people living in these areas as victims of a natural disaster and get food to them? Why do we have to wait for a devastating natural event such as an earthquake, hurricane or tsunami?
Despite the fact that food production in the United States and the world has increased more than the population, food rights groups say they believe more people are likely to suffer from lack of food as long the agri-business firms continue to be driven primarily by profits.
People from the more affluent and middle class sectors of U.S. society are drawn to over-consumption as a lifestyle -- validated by a study carried out by the Washington-based World Watch Institute earlier this year.
Helping the world’s poor is really only a matter of priorities, once you set your conscience straight. If developed nations would meet pledges already made that goal of cutting poverty and hunger in half by 2015 would be right on target.
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