By the Gazette Editorial Board Reducing poverty is one of the targets of the UN's new millennium strategy. Innumerable initiatives have been introduced to achieve this goal, the most important one being launched by the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), for cutting food waste in developed and developing countries alike. Contrary to the general view that food waste is a problem for rich countries only, there is proof that poor countries suffer from the same problem and to a much greater degree, because of the lack of the technology that can prevent food from being wasted when being transported from the farm to the market. The FAO has launched a project in co-operation with the African Union and a civil organisation, to help some African countries greatly to reduce their post-harvest losses by 2030. "Our work with the Rockefeller Foundation and the African Union to make food supply chains more efficient will benefit the livelihoods of family farmers in Africa and place less pressure on the environment, which both contribute to our vision of a zero hunger world," said FAO Director-General Jose Graziano da Silva. The project is aimed at saving food that could feed millions of poor people estimated by the FAO to be more than 48 million in Sub-Saharan Africa. According to international statistics, some 795 million people in the world do not have enough food to lead a healthy active life. That's about one in nine people on earth. Every year, 3.1 million children under five die of poor nutrition and this is equal to nearly half (45 per cent) of the fatalities in this age group. Other statistics show that up to one third of all the food produced in the world is being spoiled or squandered before it is consumed by people. One can assume that saving this huge percentage of food waste could be enough to wipe out hunger from our world. However, developing an efficient system for collecting, transporting and preserving food will not be enough to cut food waste. The food consumption culture needs to be changed in many societies, especially the Arab ones. According to the FAO, Saudi Arabia wastes 427 tonnes of food every year and is at the top of the list of countries wasting food. This could be why the Saudi Food Bank has recently urged the authorities to set a fine of SR1,000 per one kilo of surplus food. The Saudi Ministry of the Environment, Water and Agriculture previously estimated the Kingdom's food waste percentage to be 40 per cent. Conditions in a country such as Egypt do not differ much and could even be worse, since they could combine the African problem of lack of technology for gathering, transporting and freezing crops, and the Egyptian culture of spending huge amounts of money on food, to celebrate feasts and weddings. It is upsetting to find that most governments are not paying attention to cutting food waste, despite its negative effect on the environment and the rising poverty rate, which leads to many social and economic problems. Governments in general and of developing countries in particular, should consider policies to cut food waste as an ideal way to combat hunger and poverty among their people.
