I bet you never thought of it like this…Dr Charlotte de Fraiture is based at the International Water Management Institute, a non-profit research institute with its headquarters in Sri Lanka…She wrote this small but important opinion while visiting the Institute for Land, Water and Society at Charles Sturt University.
It is estimated that around 40% of all food produced in farmers’ fields globally does not end up in our stomachs. In US households, for instance, as much as 30 percent of food, worth some USD 48.3 billion, is thrown away. In Australia 3.3 million tons of food is thrown by households and industries, close to 200 kilos per household each year. This wasted food is also wasted water.
Crops consume large quantities of water. To produce one kilogram of wheat crops evaporate 500-4000 litres depending where it grows. One kilogram of beef can take up to 10,000 litres depending on how it is produced.
An increasing part of our agricultural production depends on irrigation water. With the combined effects of climate change and higher food demand that water is getting scarcer. Rightly, much effort is spent on using water more efficiently to produce more with less water and leave more water in nature. But what happens with our food once it is produced?
We are providing food to take care of not only our necessary consumption but also our wasteful habits. Throwing 3.3 million tons of food is like pouring 660 billion litres of irrigation water into the garbage can, like leaving 70,000 taps running continuously 24/7/365 – enough water to meet the annual household needs of 5 million people. Cutting back on food waste means saving water.
This kind of story is enough to drive a man to drink.
But be warned. According to my eldest (wine making student) daughter, it take 15 litres of water to make a bottle of wine. Here’s wine writer Jancis Robinson on the topic of water and wine: http://www.jancisrobinson.com/articles/20080325_2.html
And, on a different tack, there’s the whole question of groundwater. Yes, there’s water, water pretty much everywhere down there. But is it enough? And whose is it anyway? Just locally (SA) people are sinking bores all over the place.
Also, there’s the big picture. UNESCO recently released their map of global groundwater. It which highlights the potential for cross-border conflicts over the one resource none of us can live without. See: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn15030
It has been reported for decades that in times of scarcity waste of food tends to INCREASE!
In the UK in the strife torn 70/80s, with constant shortages of items of supamart shelves that when available those things were bought in greater quantity than usually, leading to spoilage and dumping.
Not helped of course by then PM Thatcher’s advocacy of stockpiling emergency stores.
Even petrol is subject to the same contra-indication; at the first hint of shortage some people take leave of their senses, drive hither & dither looking for the stuff and constantly have brimming tanks – hence increasing a slight and (thus far) temporary paucity.
What’s the old saying – enough for everyone’s needs but not for everyone’s greed?
Its seems like a “life-time” since I last heard my mother chastise me (and my even more irrascible siblings) for wasting food by referring to those far less fortunate people who did not have enough to eat. The waste of food is surely inexcusable, and a sign of the wasteful societies that we seem to inhabit.
Buts its much more than that. This article points to the incredible waste of water that goes with the food wastage. Are we such idiots? I think the question is rhetorical.
But its also more than the water – we are in Australia and elsewhere in variable drier climates also witnessing the destruction of our landscapes as we regulate and over allocate water resources, and expand and intensify our agriculture. We are in many places driving our ecosystems to the brink – are we doing this so we can enjoy the privilege of wasting the food and the water? While having this privilege we are undermining the very landscapes that provide the food.
We need food and water for our future – we also need our landscapes and the many benefits we get from them – benefits that support livelihoods and regulate flooding, erosion, sedimentation, water recharge, and even the climate itself. And which provide many aesthetic and spiritual values that keep us sane while surrounded by a faster and more wasteful world……
Its not time to get off and seek a new world; its time to go boldly (or even to boldly go) and stop the waste…..and listen to those whose advice we seemed to have ignored.
Thanks Mum; or is that, sorry Mum?