Watch SBS on Tuesday Night: The Growing Anger of Hunger

By the end of 2008, the number of malnourished people on theplanet had risen to 963 million.

The Growing Anger of Hunger is a documentary to be screened on SBS television on Tuesday 28 April at 8:30 pm.

"This film looks behind the headlines of the food riots which have occurred in the last few year around the world, attempting to find possible explanations and solutions through investigations in Senegal, Haiti, Thailand, Japan, Mexico and India. It also shows how the major international decision makers are currently responding to the crisis. In early 2008 in Cameroun, three days of rioting left 40 people dead. Around the world, over 30 other countries have witnessed similar riots.

This hunger is not due to famine, drought or war but to the soaring prices of basic food sources. It is a food crisis, and it impacts on everyone. In the poorest countries it's a matter of survival, in the wealthier countries it's called a rise in the cost of living"

(Information from SBS Website)

Can our wee (as in urine) save the planet??

Did YOU know that wee is full of phosphate and that we're weeing a valuable source of fertilizer into water ways and up walls where it really does no good, and possibly harm??

I didn't - but now I do because I watched the video on a previous post - it was a talk at UTS given by nutritionist Rosemary Stanton and researcher Dana Cordell, who's been studying the environmental implications of the decreasing supply of phosperous in Australia and the world. The event was part of the UTSpeaks Series.

I know I'm a nerdy freak but I found it fascinating. We're not only facing peak oil but peak phosphorous both here in Australia and internationally. Watch the vid and post a comment.

Food Wise Campaign

Thanks to Daisy for sending me the following about the Food Wise campaign - it's so good to see such a ground swell of community support and awareness about food issues. Particularly that hording food until it goes off is frankly unethical. (I'm not blameless here by the way - but I'm working on it..)

Do Something recently launched their Food Wise campaign. The campaign aims to reduce the amount of food waste Australians produce. They throw some pretty juicy facts and figures at us to support their campaign, the most alarming being that Australians throw away close to 3 million tonnes of food waste per annum. This is 145 kilos per person per annum. Others include:

· It has been estimated that Australians discard up to 20% of the food they purchase, the equivalent of buying five bags of groceries and throwing one away.

· By conservative estimates, Australians threw away about $5.3 billion worth of food in 2004. This comprised $2.9 billion in fresh food; $630 million of uneaten takeaway; $876 million of leftovers; $596 million of unfinished drinks; $241 million of frozen foods, as cited in the 2005 report by The Australia Institute Wasteful Consumption.

· Studies in metropolitan Sydney showed that the average household bin contains 11kg of garbage, with 5.8 kgs of that compostable waste. 95% of this compostable matter was food waste.

· The decomposition of organic matter such as food waste in landfill is a major contributor to the generation of the highly damaging greenhouse gas methane. Methane is 21 times more potent than CO2 in its impacts on climate change (From Sustainability Victoria, Organic Waste Facts and Stats). In 2006, landfill produced 13.2 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent in the form of methane.

· Water is used intensively in growing and processing food. According to CSIRO data, dumping a kilo of beef wastes the 50,000 litres of water it took to produce that meat. Throwing out a kilo of white rice will waste 2,385 litres. Wasting a kilo of potatoes costs 500 litres.

· Tens of millions of kilograms of safe and edible fresh food and groceries are discarded every year, for reasons such as changed labelling regulations, end of season excess stock, production line changeover items, out-dated packaging, discontinued product, as well as slight label or weight inaccuracies which render the food legally unsaleable.

· Hundreds of millions of people around the world go to bed hungry or are starving for the most basic of foods. In Australia one million children go to school without breakfast or bed without dinner every day and two million people rely on food relief in Australia at some point every year.

How much food waste do you produce each week?

If you’d like to reduce the amount of food you waste, save yourself some cash and reduce your environmental impact, and I certainly encourage you to do so, take a look through the Foodwise website for great tips, recipes and opinions. John Dee (Planet Ark) and Kylie Kwong (local foodie) are both currently featured.

Rosemary Stanton on Ethical Eating

A Future for Food report- Public Health Association of Australia (PHAA)

Hello All,

Below is some info cut from the PHAA website re. the Future of Food, the document can be found at www.phaa.net.au

I have not read the report yet- but look forward to doing so.

Regards, Karen.

The Public Health Association (PHAA) in association with its members, and informed by the PHAA Nutrition Round Table, has developed A Future for Food - an initiative calling on government, professionals and industry to work together to establish a national integrated food policy to enable the national to meaningfully address the issues of public health, sustainability and equity when it comes to our food supply.

CURRENT DILEMMAS

The issues facing our food system are complex, extend across many sectors and require integrated solutions. PHAA believes the most effective way to address the complex issues impacting our food system is through an integrated food policy and implementation strategy that can address the many dilemmas Australia currently faces.

For example:

• how appropriate is our current approach to food recommendations?
• is adequate consideration given to chronic disease prevention, environmental sustainability and social equity?
• is there an approach to eating that can address all of these areas?
• how can governments, public sector, public health, food professionals, industry and community work together to achieve a food policy and food recommendations that promote health, protect the environment and celebrate biodiversity?
• is 'everything in moderation' really helpful advice?
• do we need to take the lead from international recommendations that set limits and foods to avoid where the evidence supports it?
• do we have the balance right between land to grow animal feed and land to feed humans directly?
• how greenhouse gas intensive are the foods we eat?
• what role can food policy play in reducing the estimated 47% of food and green matter that Australians discard? ¹
• what role should Australia play in addressing concerns about world population growth and its impact on food security?

Putting farmers and their communities at the centre of development

This paper on the Community Area Based Development Approach (CABDA) proposes an alternative approach to food production in Africa and may have some learnings for how to produce food globally in a more sustainable way.

It is based on a Programme in E. Africa (in Ethiopia, Uganda, Kenya and Malawi) over the past 15 years.

The main points of the paper are summarised below. The full text can be accessed from: http://www.odi.org.uk/resources/specialist/natural-resource-perspectives/119-community-based-development-agriculture.pdf

Main points of Paper

Past approaches to increasing food production in Africa have failed because they have been technical fixes imposed from the outside, which cannot be afforded nor are relevant to the needs of the majority of the peasant farmers who produce 90% of the continent’s food

Instead, CABDA puts these farmers and their communities at the centre of development: They are involved in identifying their food production problems and in planning and implementing the solutions. These are solutions that they can afford and manage.

Using CABDA, farmers make important gains in food production through a combination of early maturing composite varieties of staple crops, crop diversification, new/improved methods of growing crops (agro forestry), introduction of drought resistant crops and better use of water through low cost, manageable technologies. .

CABDA involves the whole community, including women who are key to increasing food production. It also addresses some of main causes of food insecurity: erosion and soil degradation which reduce crop yields and food production.

Under CABDA, farmers control and drive their own development through the creation of farmer and community owned and run institutions that provide the inputs, improved seed and market support that they need.

Local, organic and ...better for the world?

Some of us belong to Sydney Organic Buyers Group - a not-for-profit group which buys organic produce in bulk from the wholesaler, on behalf of our members. We get a box of lovely fresh organic fruit and veg each fortnight.

The group now has a web site - http://www.organicbuyersgroup.org/ and are looking for more members.

There's a bit of a debate going on in the group about whether it's better to buy organic or better to buy local. I'm not sure myself - they both seem pretty important. In brief:

- organic is more sustainable, better for the environment and better for us.

- local means less energy is expended in transporting food long distances, and assists to build a sustainable market for local growers and a secure food supply for people - particularly as we are going into an uncertain future affected by decreasing fossil fuels and climate change.

- antoher important point about buying locally is the impact this has on other countries - monocropping for export contributes to a lack of food in many countries -surely it will improve food security if each community, region, and country around the globe has a good local food supply. But how do communities extract themselves from a dependence the global food market? How much would we still need and want a global food market?

Any thoughts?

Can organic farming feed Africa?

The Radio National program Future Tense broadcast a program on Thursday about a recent UN report which suggests that the best way of breaking the cycle of malnutrition and poverty in AFrica is embrace traditional organic farming practices. You can listen to the program at the program website

Fruit and Vegetable Consumption and Waste in Australia

Thanks to Karen for pointing us to Vic Health where I found a brand-spanking new Research Report - Fruit and Vegetable Consumption and Waste in Australia.

"A highly sought-after objective of both the private and public sectors is to secure a more sustainable food system. Achieving sustainability requires a thorough and holistic understanding of the system and its drivers. This report aims to provide government,industry and non-governmental groups with the necessary information to achieve a targeted investment response to turn around the current low consumption / high waste paradigm to meet the current and future challenges facing the Australian fruit and vegetable system."

I remember hearing a while ago that Australians throw out a large percentage of the food we buy - and not into the compost - just to landfill. From the report:
"a submission to the Senate inquiry by the Boomerang Alliance estimated that food waste comprises 15% of the 20 million tonnes of waste that goes to landfill in Australia each year and that the current recycling rate for food waste is extremely low. Only 10% of food waste is recycled and the other 90% is sent to landfill (SCECA, 2008)."