Our Food System Is Broken—But It Can Be Fixed!

Our Food System Is Broken—But It Can Be Fixed!
By Elaine Montegriffo - CEO - SecondBite
Food is very precious. It’s a basic human right that is fundamental to our health and well-being. It nourishes and connects us to our
community and environment.
So why are we wasting $8 billion of food every year in Australia, including 7.5 million tons of food that’s fit for human consumption?
In wealthy countries like Australia, this waste occurs predominantly at the consumer end of the food supply chain, whereas
consumer waste is minimal in low-income countries. If you’re a subsistence farmer in Laos, you never waste anything that could
be eaten, because you know you are facing four to six months each year with nothing to feed your family other than what you can
forage. Ironically, it seems we have become so effective at producing food that we are happy to throw it away in vast quantities.
And why, knowing what we do about the negative impact of carbon emissions on so many aspects of our lives, are we sending the
bulk of that food waste to landfills, where it creates methane gas that traps heat in our atmosphere at a rate 25 times higher than
carbon dioxide? It’s estimated that 14 percent of global emissions are attributable to food waste. Food left to rot in landfills also
contaminates nearby land and waterways.
And finally, why, when we know the extent of the pressure on our planet’s limited natural resources, are we frittering them away?
When we waste food, we also waste the valuable and finite resources used to produce it: the agricultural land, the water, and the
energy. For example, the water used to irrigate the food we waste every year (670 million tons globally) would provide fresh drinking
water for 9 billion people.
Our very methods of food production and the ever-increasing demand for foods that require high amounts of energy to produce are
also contributing to climate change. As societies become more affluent, they desire more meat, which intensifies pressure on land
and increases greenhouse gas emissions—livestock contribute 18 percent of total human-related emissions. Pressure on land means
we feed livestock not grass, but grain, which is fertilized using fossil fuel.
Changes in eating patterns are also contributing to poorer nutrition. When incomes increase in developing countries, people turn
away from traditional foods that are high in nutrition because they are associated with low status and considered “village food.”
Ironically, energy-dense processed food is associated with higher status.
Australia is a fully industrialized, wealthy nation producing enough food for more than 60 million people. For many of us, there
appears to be an abundant, limitless supply of food, but up to 2 million Australians are unable to feed themselves and their families.
We don’t need to produce more, but waste less. By reducing the massive amounts of waste within the food system, we have the
means to provide healthy, nutritious food for many more people while demanding less from our planet’s finite natural resources.
SecondBite rescues fresh, healthy food that would otherwise go to waste. In 2014–2015, we will rescue enough fresh food to provide
14.5 million nutritious meals to vulnerable Australians. For every million kilograms of food we rescue, we save 74 million liters of
water (enough to fill 40 Olympic-size pools), 6 million kilojoules of energy (equivalent to leaving a television on for more than 1,200
years), and prevent 6 million kilograms of greenhouse gas emissions (more than 900 flights from Melbourne to Perth).