Less food waste (today 1 billion meals a day) for fairer agri-food systems

The affirmation of fairer food systems necessarily also involves the fight against waste. Suffice it to say that according to the latest Unep report, states Coldiretti, over 1 billion meals a day are wasted on all continents, a paradoxical situation if we consider that in the same time 735 million people were affected by hunger and a third of Humanity has faced food insecurity. The real problem therefore concerns the distribution of food resources and the imbalances linked to the disappearance of food systems built “from below” and based on family farming which must be supported and relaunched. In many countries, these systems are no longer capable of producing and distributing enough food to feed a growing global population, meet nutritional needs, ensure equitable access and operate sustainably. It is the photograph of Coldiretti, sitting at the table on food “Be Human and the future of global food systems towards 2030”, organized in recent days at Palazzo Rospigliosi in Rome in the initiatives of the “Fratelli Tutti Foundation”, by the Encyclical of Pope Francis, with the presence, among others, of Rigoberta Menchú Tum, Nobel Peace Prize winner, Heidi Kühn, winner of the 2023 “World Food Prize”, Ibrahim Assane Mayaki, special envoy of the African Union for food systems, together to the general secretary of Coldiretti Vincenzo Gesmundo and to Maurizio Martina, deputy director of FAO.
“The future of food and consumers is now put in serious danger by cell-based products, the laboratory-created foods that food oligarchs try to pass off as a solution to food and environmental problems, but are in reality the fruit of a technology with dark contours, with many unknowns that risk changing people’s lives and the environment around us forever”, underlines Coldiretti, according to which, by following this path the very concept of food will also transform with the transformation of raw materials to the point of representing a mere form of artificial nourishment, completely in the hands of a few subjects.
An important step to reverse this phenomenon comes from the World Farmers Markets Coalition which is one of the ten FAO programs selected as part of the Food Coalition project with the aim of supporting farmers’ markets in different continents to promote income and employment and fight hunger. The founding organizations are Coldiretti and Fondazione Campagna Amica for Italy, Fmc for the USA, Grønt Marked for Denmark, and Bondens Marked for Norway. Among the countries involved are the USA, Australia, Japan, Canada, Chile, Ghana, England, to name just a few. A reality that already involves 250,000 farmers and families.
Among the objectives of the World Farmers Markets Coalition, explains Coldiretti, is the diffusion of a model of sustainable economic, environmental and social development, through the short supply chain with support for family farming, the promotion of local food and empowerment of farmers, especially women and youth. Some relevant points of the association’s action are the conservation of biodiversity, the fight against climate change and facilitating access to food in the countries most in difficulty.