The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization take some measure to save food

Tag : Canned Food
Japan waste lots of the food that they import from the other countries. According to an estimate by the Agriculture, Forestry and FisheriesMinistry, households and companies waste about 19 million tons offood per year. Of that, about 6 million tons is edible.
The latter figure is about 1.6 times the annual food consumption ofthe west African country of Mali, one of the world's poorestcountries.
According to statistics from the Agricultural, Forestry andFisheries Ministry and the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry, eachperson in the country consumes an average of 2,548 kilocalories perday, including wasted foodstuffs. Actual caloric intake, therefore,averages 1,891 kilocalories.
Japanese dispose of one-fourth of available foods.
Though the country is known to have some of the world's bestenergy-saving technologies such as hybrid cars, energy efficiencyfor food is surprisingly low.
The Yomiuri Shimbun ran a five-day series of articles starting June19 reporting on relevant numerical data. At the Yomiuri, we believewasting food is just as problematic as wasting oil.
We received many responses from readers, many of them supportingthe articles.
Japan is not the only country where there is a deep-seated habit ofoverconsumption and wastage of food.
Estimates by international organizations show that in the UnitedStates, about 48 billion dollars (about 5 trillion yen) worth ofperishable food is wasted annually.
The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization and other concernedentities have proposed to member countries that the quantity ofwasted foodstuffs should be halved by 2025.
In other parts of the world, such large-scale waste isunacceptable.
Increasing demand for biofuels for developed countries and demandfor food for China and other emerging industrialized countries havecaused grain prices to skyrocket.
This means that already rich countries and rapidly growing nationsare beginning to scramble for limited food resources. Poorcountries have been driven out of the race and are unable to buyenough food. As a result, serious food shortages andfood-shortage-related violence has occurred in some countries.
Though oil can be replaced by other energy sources such as nuclearpower and solar power generation, food cannot be replaced.
In addition, farmland in China and other emerging economic nationsare being transformed into industrial sites at a surprisingly fastpace. If farmland acreage continues to decline, and demand for foodcontinues to increase at the current pace, food shortages willsurely worsen.
Partly due to an increase in the world's population, food pricesthrough 2017 are predicted to rise by 20 percent to 80 percentcompared with the past decade.
It might be possible to live without electricity, but nobody canlive without food. If the scramble to obtain food intensifies, itwill be impossible to maintain peace in the world.
The Yomiuri Shimbun article series described an experiment in whichfood canned 25 years ago was eaten by reporters. Details areavailable in Japanese online athttp://www.yomiuri.co.jp/feature/foodexp3/
Although the canned food tasted terrible, it did not harm theparticipants' health.
Two of the five reports who participated in the experiment saidthey would not dispose of a can of food made 13 years ago.
Human beings invented an excellent method to store food more than200 years ago. Even if expiration dates have passed, I wish peoplewould check foods with their tongues and noses before disposing ofthem.
It is possible that in poor countries, people may kill each otherscrambling for a single can of food.
The international community is united in its promotion ofenergy-saving measures to combat global warming. But wasteage offoods in large quantities has not been made a global issue.
Leaders of wealthy countries who will soon gather at the Group ofEight summit in Toyakocho, Hokkaido, would be advised to discussthis issue.