Overproduction the main cause of food wastage

Large amount of food being wasted daily

“It’s better to have more than less” and we are producing way more food than what the population needs which has led to excessive consumption and obesity. Apart from that, it undermines agriculture in the developing countries, hindering the eradication of hunger and poverty. If you refer to the photo with the graph below, it shows a graph of the food losses and waste per capital and year. It is evident from the graph that production to retailing contributes heavily to food wastage. On top of that, according to the World Bank’s quarterly Food Price Watch report, with the developed world leading the wastage, the world loses a staggering one-quarter to one-third of all food produced for human consumption.  If the food are not recycled, these food waste will end up buried in landfills where it will eventually produce methane - a greenhouse gas that contributes to climate change. In addition, overproduction will cause all the money and resources used to produce food, which can be used for other areas, to go to waste as well.


Graph that shows the food loss and waste per year

Despite so, there are some potential solutions to limit the amount of food wasted by overproduction. They are,

• changing agricultural production techniques,

• making suitable investments in transport and storage infrastructure,

•  as well as changing commercial and consumer behavior in developed countries.