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Food Loss And Waste is an Alarming Thread

Food Loss And Waste is an Alarming Thread

Food is a tricky thing, we need them, we love them then we toss them away and it becomes problematic. Some of us take the food for granted, while others struggle just to get a spoon. Surprisingly our country sits at number 65th out of 113 countries, which even ranks below other ASEAN countries based on data from the Global Food Security Index (GFSI). Wouldn’t it be surprising if we are an agricultural country but rank at the bottom of the food security index?

That happens probably because the amount of our food waste is quite alarming. Based on data from the Ministry of Environment and Forestry, it is stated that in 2020 food waste is the most common type of waste, which is 39.8 percent of all types of waste produced by the Indonesians. The total food waste produced is 23-48 million tons/year.

Types of Food Waste

Types of food waste itself are divided into 2 categories, Food Loss and Food Waste or often referred to as Food Loss and Waste (FLW). First thing first, before we go further, let’s talk about the difference between Food Loss and Food Waste. Quoted from Waste4change in their article: 

The Difference between Food Loss vs Food Waste and How to Avoid It.

Food loss is typically driven by infrastructure limitations, climate, and environmental factors as well as quality, aesthetic or safety standards. Food loss most often occurs at the production, post-harvest, and processing stages of the food chain.
Whilst food waste occurs at the end of the food chain. Food waste is the food which was originally produced for human consumption but then was discarded or was not consumed by humans.
Food waste as defined here is more directly linked with consumer behaviour. Such as expired packaged or canned food from retail wholesale, unfinished meals, or undercooked products.”

It’s just ironic if we take a look at the number of FLW that our country produces while 8.34 percent of Indonesia’s population is still experiencing food shortages. This food waste problem also has an impact on other sectors.

In the economic sector as said by Medrilzam Director of the Environment Affairs on Ministry of National Development Planning (Bappenas) “This is very detrimental economically, a lot of food is wasted if it is calculated it can reach 4-5 percent of our GDP. And what is wasted is equivalent to feeding 61 million to 125 million people,” Medrilzam said.

Food Waste Side Effects

Meanwhile, if it is associated with Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions, the wasted food can produce 1.73 gigatonnes of CO2 in accumulation, or an average of 7 percent of Indonesia’s total GHG emissions in a year. This of course has a very destructive impact on the environmental sector.

In October last year, the Directorate of Environment of National Development Planning (Bappenas) in collaboration with waste4change conducted a study on Food Loss and waste. The results of the study recommend 45 strategies which are grouped into 5 Policy Directions for FLW Management Strategy in Indonesia. The 5 policies include Behavior Change, Improvement of the Food Support System, Strengthening Regulation & Optimizing Funding, Utilization of FLW, Development of FLW Study & Data Collection.

With these solutive policies, it is hoped that they will be able to help overcome the impact of FLW in Indonesia which is more and more alarming, in the long term.

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