Getting better at getting food onto people’s plates
“If the global community is serious about achieving a hunger-free world, we need to prioritise finding solutions to food loss along the entire agricultural value chain,” says Kanayo F. Nwanze, president of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD).
He maintains that there are a number of things, we can do to try and achieve this goal, like:
- Increasing investments in drying, storage and processing facilities for grains and perishable crops, and in decent roads and market access for people to sell their produce before it is lost.
- Training engineers to design suitable facilities and equipment that are locally adapted, easily maintained and accessible by farmers.
- Building more agricultural cooperatives and farmers groups so that farmers can collectively invest in and maintain equipment, lower the cost of threshing, drying, milling and storage facilities and aggregate their produce for secure transportation to market.
- Ensuring that farmers and farmer groups are able to access rural financial packages so that they can invest in food loss reduction.
In his article on the Huffington Post blog, he says that “right now, many farmers are selling their produce as quickly as possible – even directly from the field – to minimise loss. But if they have the knowledge and equipment to avoid losses, they can store their crops until prices are higher and even start processing them to add value. When food losses are minimized, the world’s 500 million small farms will produce enough excess yields to become sustainable businesses. And when that happens, we won’t just eliminate extreme hunger by 2030 – we will be on our way to eliminating extreme poverty as well”.
Read the full story on the Huffington Post Blog.
