Need of coordination between stakeholders to reduce food wastage

Kathmandu: Today is the World Food Day. Nepal is also celebrating this day with the theme ‘Sustainable agriculture, nutritious food’.

The International Food Day is celebrated every year on 16^th October in honour of the founding day of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) in 1945. FAO is an agency under the UN which works and organizes various initiation to defeat hunger and bring access and security of nutritious food worldwide.  This organization has 194 member states. It works in over 130 countries worldwide.

According to the available data, almost 60 percent of Nepalis are engaged in agriculture directly or indirectly.

Director General of the Department of Agriculture Govinda Prasad Sharma said that though Covid-19 has made us realize the significance of agriculture, we are not able to convert it into opportunities.

Degradation in the soil quality because of excessive use of chemical fertilizers and extinction of local plants are  a few challenges faced by the agriculture sector.

According to the UN, in the developing countries, 40 percent of food losses happens at post-harvest and processing levels. In the industrialized countries, more than 40 percent of losses occur at retail and consumer level.

UN Environment writes that lack of coordination between actors in the supply chain is a contributing factor and farmer-buyer agreements can be helpful to increase level of coordination. To ensure food security, we must raise awareness among industries, retailers and consumers to find beneficial use for food that is presently thrown away.  This will reduce the amount of losses and waste, writes UN Environment.

In the Sustainable Development Conference organized by the United Nations in 2019, a total of 193 countries committed to run a campaign to end starvation in the next 15 years.

After two months of that, representatives from 195 countries committed to give priority to food security and climate change. They committed to end starvation by 2030.